FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[Jordi Fabre]

Maryland the "Old Line State"

We recommend this Web Page of Jake Slagle with very nice images of the minerals of Maryland

[John S. White]

It may not be generally known but Maryland has the type locality for carrollite, the Patapsco copper mines, Carroll County. The actual type specimen, it is believed, was housed at the Maryland Academy of Sciences in Baltimore. Many years ago the Academy decided the mineral collectioin was no longer relevant and they threw it away on a city dump. A couple of local collectors found out about this and they were able to salvage some of the specimens, without labels, but the type specimen of carrollite was lost forever. What a shame.

[Pete Richards]

Here's another Maryland specimen....

[rweaver]

Not a great picture of a very white calcite, with a old Parker Minerals label. They where out of Columbia, MD

[jakslagle]

It took me nearly an hour of scanning under the scope to locate and then capture a photomicrograph (about 30x) showing evidence of crystalization on this very rough 7cm. x 5 cm. x 4 cm. carrollite bearing rock from the now closed and filled in Patapsco Mine in Carroll County, Maryland.

[Jordi Fabre]

Hi Jake, welcome to FMF, and thank you so much to download this Carrollite to ilustrate the comment of John White -> https://www.mineral-forum.com/message-board/viewtopic.php?p=14891#14891

Jordi

[John S. White]

Since Maryland has been under represented, here are some that I have collected myself.

[Jordi Fabre]

A new adition for Maryland published by Jessica Simonoff in this post of her thread Jessica's mineral collection

[John Medici]

A Maryland field trip.
After a VA fossil collecting trip, my son Jay and I were taken by long time friend Ken Boulier (recently deceased) to a John White talk to members of my old Baltimore club, Chesapeake Gem & Mineral Society. Club members asked us to join them on a trip the next day to La Farge quarry in Medford, MD, which was on our way home. After collecting at several sites at different parts of the quarry, we were taken to a new blast area. When we got there, the whole blast, which was a large heap the day before, had disappeared into a hole (sink hole or large calcite pocket?). We were not allowed to go into the hole, but collected some large, mainly ugly, calcite crystals up to 10 pounds or so in a mud zone along the side of the sunken blast. We did not have a UV light at the site, but some of the calcite cleavages we brought home were shown to fluoresce a very nice pinkish-red. The photo I'll try to attach was taken with a stronger short wave UV light than I usually use (weaker one was being repaired) so the color is somewhat more red than usual (digital photo).

[jakslagle]

Specimen measures 7.4 cm. x 5.2 cm. x 2.4 cm. The pink erythrite is on a matrix of talc. I'm not aware of erythrite ever having been officially reported from this now off-limits locality, which has produced more different species than any other locality in the state. Joe Dague obtained the specimen from Jay Lininger, who purchased it from Fred ...

[jakslagle]

Here's another piece from my Maryland Collection

[rweaver]

Former collections of Columbia Univ, AMNH and Eugene Carmichael