FMF - Friends of Minerals Forum, discussion and message board

[John S. White]

Yesterday I was finally able to visit the recently reopened mineral museum at the U. of Delaware which is only 50 miles from my home. The university has a wonderful display quality collection of great depth, but the museum is small so only about 400 specimens are currently being shown in the new gallery. The gallery is very inviting with wonderful modern cases which are loaded with multiple fiber optics lights, providing more than ample illumination for most of the specimens and excellent color balance so that the color you see is what everyone would like it to be.

Label information is minimal and there are no complex thematic cases but the minerals tend to be arranged in several types of groupings, such as crystal forms, pseudomorphs, by the five major continents, etc.

I urge all who can to make an effort to visit this museum, it is well worth the effort. It is a beautiful display and is loaded with many world class specimens. Among the "braggin rocks" is what is surely the largest fine vesuvianite from Canada.

[Peter Megaw]

John...coould you please get me full contact information for Sharon, I want to get them on the TGMS Museum invitation list!

BTW: The label for the Gypsum from Santa Eulalia can be tigthened and corrected. They're from the 3rd level of the Inglaterra Mine and it's Santo Domingo, Santa Eulalia District.

The Inglaterra Mine was primarily a man-shaft...no ore was ever removed through its headframe. But it WAS an easy place for the clandestine collectors to get to the extensive workings of the Potosi and Buena Tierra Mine...they simply bribed the watchman. From there you can literally walk 5 km to the north in each of 6 sub-parallel mantos...on up to 20 levels!...well over 500 km of workings. Because this is how they got in, these guys often simply said Inglaterra when asked where specimen finds came from. These gypsums, along with the older creedites (pre-1980) and some spectacular quartzes with goethite, rhodochrosite and botryoidal manganese oxide species are about the only specimens that can legitmately be attributed to the Inglaterra Orebody/Mine proper.