Wulfenite

specimen number:
9302327

location:
Red Cloud Mine, La Paz Co., Arizona, USA

description:

Classic American thumbnail specimen with several brilliant orange red lustrous translucent tabular crystals of wulfenite in a cluster with minor matrix. In great condition.

The Red Cloud mine, located in the Silver District of the Trigo Mountains in La Paz County, Arizona, is a historic underground mine internationally famous for producing world-class, deep red-orange wulfenite crystals. Geologically, the deposit consists of an irregular, epithermal lead-silver vein hosted within a fault zone that cuts through mid-Tertiary volcanic tuffs and andesites, as well as Mesozoic metamorphic rocks. Intense supergene oxidation of primary galena and other base metal sulfides by vanadium- and molybdenum-bearing groundwaters precipitated the exceptional wulfenite specimens alongside cerussite and mimetite in open solution vugs. Discovered in 1878, commercial underground mining for silver and lead ran in several distinct phases, primarily from 1880 to 1890, and again intermittently up to 1912. Since the mid-twentieth century, the property has been operated repeatedly by private syndicates solely for mineral specimen reclamation, with notable open-cut and underground specimen mining operations extending through the 1990s and early 2000s.

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