FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Bob Harman]

Pyrite is found in numerous Indiana locations with collectible crystals found in several localities. One of the most prolific and collectible localities is the Harding Street Quarry on the South side of Indianapolis. The pyrite nodules range from 1cm to about 6cm in size and are brilliantly lustrous and stable. They occur in the shale overburden and are thought to be replaced clam fossils, but I have never seen one with any resemblance to a clam. The nodules in matrix are uncommon in relation to the stand alone nodules.
This quarry produces limestone which is crushed up and shipped right next door to a large coal fired electric generating facility for the city of Indianapolis. The limestone is mixed with water and used to clean the coal emissions.
On my last field trip there the nodules sparkled in the morning sunlight and everyone found about a bucket full......not a bad field trip for that day!!!!

[Bob Harman]

For years now I have narrowly focused my collection toward Indiana minerals. Over the years I have managed to collect or acquire nice examples of most, if not all, the collectible minerals of Indiana and many of these minerals are from multiple localities. Over the next several months or years, when I have time, I will be posting an extensive array of these minerals from many Indiana localities. I favor posting these in this thread covering the states of the USA rather than in the "my own collection" thread, but they could have been posted in the "my collection" thread as well.
Here is a compiled list of collectible Indiana minerals. It does not include crusts, most rusty iron oxides, and evaporite minerals formed during dry spells when the limestone or dolostone matrix dries out. It also does not include any minerals found in glacial erratics, gold in stream beds or meteorites. Also I don't profess that this list is complete so please add any minerals that I might have inadvertently omitted.

THE MINERALS: Quartz (and chalcedony), Calcite, Aragonite, Baryte, Celestine, Dolomite (and the various ferroan dolomites including Ankerite), Pyrite, Marcasite, Smythite (the only mineral first recognized and named in Indiana), Chalcopyrite, Millerite, Honnessite (Jamborite and other poorly recognized millerite oxidation minerals), Malachite, Strontianite, Gypsum (Selenite), Fluorite, Sphalerite, Goethite, Galena and ? Hematite.
Any that I missed ???

[Bob Harman]

For CALCITE collectors, Indiana is a paradise. Hi quality collectible crystals are found in many quarries, vugs on roadcuts, and in geodes. Several quality examples have already been posted by others on this thread.
These 2 geodes are about the same size and both from the famous Harrodsburg roadcuts. But the crystals are quite different. The one on the left being a well formed rhombohedral crystal and the one on right being a similar size scalenohedral crystal with micromarcasite inclusions.

[Bob Harman]

ARAGONITE, a crystal polymorph of calcite, is fairly common from several Indiana localities altho not nearly so common as calcite. Occasionally well formed crystals may be found and this one surely qualifies as one of the best ever. It was collected about 1965 by a student mineral collector at Indiana University and passed thru several collectors/dealers until I acquired it about 2008. Since then I have displayed it several times and last year it was donated (along with 4 other specimens) to the Indiana State Museum in Indianapolis where it will go on permanent display with their other Indiana minerals. In addition, it recently was pictured in the Mineralogical Record Midwest collections supplement under the Indiana State Museum pages.

[Bob Harman]

MARCASITE, like pyrite, is commonly found in Indiana. It often occurs in quarries and as inclusions in calcite and Baryte in geodes. When occurring in geodes it may not be able to be differentiated from SMYTHITE, a related iron sulfide. In quarries the crystals are small but occasionally well formed. These examples are both from a quarry near the town of Rensselaer in Jasper County; very close to the well known Marcasite locality in Pleasant Ridge Quarry.

One day quarry management called me at work to tell me they a blasted and there was something for me to see. In the East wall of the quarry, facing West, the blast had opened a huge void. When I arrived there, in late afternoon everything was sparkling in the setting sunlight. I climbed a 10 foot ladder into the void and everywhere was tiny sparkling crystals on limestone plates looking quite like the gills of a shark. These are 2 examples from that void collected about 1985.

[Jamison Brizendine]

Since I went to a small college in Indiana for my geology degree, I own quite a few minerals from that state. I decided to share a recent one though…

One of the minerals on my “wishlist” was a bi-colored celestine crystal from Indiana. I own a few gray colored celestines from Salem, Indiana, but I was finally able to find a locate a nice bi-colored Indiana celestine a few weeks ago at a show.

The locality is one that Bob Harman knows well, it is from the Lehigh Portland Cement Co. Quarry in Mitchell, Lawrence County, Indiana. It is approximately 5.1 x 3 x 3.9 cm and formerly from Les Tolonen’s collection. From my understanding the quarry is now flooded.

Its not a perfect flawless specimen, but I was happy to finally find one.

[Bob Harman]

In Indiana celestine occurs in 2 localities and is unlike any found in Ohio or Michigan. As Jamison showed, it is found as blocky crystals both as floaters and attached in geodes at the Lehigh Portland Cement quarry in Mitchell, Lawrence County and in the (now closed) Hanson Quarry in Salem Indiana, Washington County. The crystals are quite colorful and very collectible, being only rarely for sale at this time. Fabulous colorful examples are often displayed at mineral shows. My example pictured here was donated to the Indiana State Museum and pictured as part of their pages in the recent Mineralogical Record supplement.

The older deeper pit at this cement quarry produced the most colorful crystals in geodes, but is now flooded. The current shallower pit produces mostly colorless floater crystals with no geodes. Nice floater gypsum var selenite crystals are also found in the current workings.

[Bob Harman]

Two examples from the, now closed, Hoosier Stone quarry, also known as Salem Quarry, Washington County. Like the previous posting these are blocky, colorful and often bicolored. Also like the others these were found as floaters or attached in their host geodes.

[Bob Harman]

While millerite (NiS) is considered one of the "holy grails" of Indiana mineral and geode collectors, its oxidation products like honnessite, jamborite, and pecorite are not nearly so well categorized or pigeon holed. By sight alone, grass green colored sprays may not automatically be called one of the oxidation products of the basic millerite mineral. In fact, as the mineral is often acicular, some mineralogists suggest that some sprays might be a mixture of the basic mineral and its oxidation products so the sprays need multiple strands to be analyzed. To compound matters, there are 2 types of presentation of millerite and the oxidation products as seen here. One type is the acicular spray as seen. The other presentation is the cobweb variant, also as seen here.

[Bob Harman]

Quartz geodes make up the vast majority of common Indiana geodes and the vast number of these are ordinary, dingy and only collected by novices and casual collectors. Finding truly hi quality examples takes some persistence and searching, much the same as a collector finding superior specimens of most other minerals. With some knowledge of the geodes and persistence, good quality examples can often be found; and with the same persistence a number of quartz varieties can be found.

Smoky quartz is one variety, coming from many worldwide localities. It can be both natural and man created (most often secondary to clear colorless quartz being irradiated). When I started finding these examples in Indiana other collectors were quite amazed. I now have about 25 examples, all from a lakeside beach in southern Monroe County. They look like similar types infrequently found in the Keokuk geode area, but had never been reported from Indiana.
One fellow collector half jokingly (only half jokingly!!) thought the dark smoky color might be associated with radiation leaking from a nuclear powered alien space craft buried 100 - 200 feet below the area where they come from! But actually the color apparently is due, not to radiation effect, but to micro petroleum inclusions in the quartz as the crystals are quite fluorescent.

[Bob Harman]

No mineralogical trip thru any of the states or other countries would be complete without several pictures of important localities. Here are a few pictures of the Harrodsburg road cuts in southern Monroe County. Indiana route 37 is now a 4 lane divided highway; in the early 1970s it was widened from a simple 2 lane road. During that construction project the site is said to have swarmed with collectors and many hi quality specimens were collected and found their way into both private collections and a number of museums.

These pictures, taken in the winter, show impressive icicles that can grow to 12' - 15'. Also note the scooped out geode bearing layers surrounded by the softer, less resistant limestone matrix and the cars for scale. Crystallized H2O.....ice....is the most prominent mineral in the photos. Along with active geode and fossil collecting, many natural rock falls occur in late winter and early spring as the limestone is quite porous absorbing lots of water which fractures during freeze/thaw episodes.

[Pierre Joubert]

Fantastic Bob!

[Bob Harman]

Other than a potential rare find in a glacial erratic, copper minerals occur as micro minerals only very sparingly in Indiana and, to my knowledge, only in geodes. The 2 minerals found are chalcopyrite and malachite. These 2 examples of malachite were found in geodes on a lake shore beach in southern Monroe County.

[Bob Harman]

There are currently 2 operating (?) underground gypsum mines in Southwest Indiana near the towns of Georgia, Huron, and Shoals in Martin and neighboring Lawrence Counties. While I have never heard of crystals coming out of these mines, nice selenite crystals and the satin spar variety of gypsum are both found in at least 1 nearby quarry.
The satin spar variety and the sheet of selenite were found as part of a thin 1" - 2.5" seam in the Georgia Quarry West of the Lawrence County town of Mitchell. The tan colored inclusions are probably bits of sand and adjacent rock to the gypsum seam.
The other selenite crystals were found in the nearby Lehigh Portland Cement quarry also near the town of Mitchell; the same quarry producing the nice celestines. These selenites are found as floaters, but probably were attached until freed from the matrix by the quarry blasts.

[Bob Harman]

Dolomite is extremely common in Indiana, occurring both in geodes and in vugs in several quarries. Probably the best known non-geode examples come from the Corydon Stone Quarry in Corydon, Harrison County. There the host matrix is more correctly called dolostone (rather than limestone) as it contains a higher % of magnesium than true limestone. The fresh dolomite from here is basically lustrous pearly pink, but can be aesthetically stained by iron oxides and become a wide variety of colors from pink thru orange to brick red. The dolomite can occur alone or covered by calcites of variable sizes and crystal forms. Infrequent purple fluorite also occurs on the dolomite. There are no true geodes in this quarry, but the druzy dolomite crystals might be found lining vugs up to 3 feet across.