Binghamite (also called silkstone and cuyunite) is a type of agate found only on the Cuyuna Range (near Crosby) in Crow Wing County, Minnesota. [1] The stone occurs near deposits of iron ore.
Mining in the area uncovered deposits of the stone, but since mining operations were discontinued in the area many years ago the stone has become fairly rare. The stone has areas that are highly chatoyant similar to pietersite or tiger's eye. It is a variety of quartz with fibers of goethite or hematite usually in colors of red, gold, and black. The highest quality binghamite compares with pietersite for color and chatoyancy. When the stone's pattern is arranged in parallel bands it is called silkstone. Binghamite is named after William Bingham, a lapidarist, who discovered it in 1936.
Mining is the extraction of valuable minerals or other geological materials from the Earth, usually from an ore body, lode, vein, seam, reef, or placer deposit. The exploitation of these deposits for raw material is based on the economic viability of investing in the equipment, labor, and energy required to extract, refine and transport the materials found at the mine to manufacturers who can use the material.
Jade is a mineral used as jewellery or for ornaments. It is typically green, although may be yellow or white. Jade can refer to either of two different silicate minerals: nephrite, or jadeite.
In geology, rock is any naturally occurring solid mass or aggregate of minerals or mineraloid matter. It is categorized by the minerals included, its chemical composition, and the way in which it is formed. Rocks form the Earth's outer solid layer, the crust, and most of its interior, except for the liquid outer core and pockets of magma in the asthenosphere. The study of rocks involves multiple subdisciplines of geology, including petrology and mineralogy. It may be limited to rocks found on Earth, or it may include planetary geology that studies the rocks of other celestial objects.
Pumice, called pumicite in its powdered or dust form, is a volcanic rock that consists of highly vesicular rough-textured volcanic glass, which may or may not contain crystals. It is typically light-colored. Scoria is another vesicular volcanic rock that differs from pumice in having larger vesicles, thicker vesicle walls, and being dark colored and denser.
Tiger's eye is a chatoyant gemstone that is usually a metamorphic rock with a golden to red-brown colour and a silky lustre. As members of the quartz group, tiger's eye and the related blue-coloured mineral hawk's eye gain their silky, lustrous appearance from the parallel intergrowth of quartz crystals and altered amphibole fibres that have mostly turned into limonite.
Placer mining is the mining of stream bed (alluvial) deposits for minerals. This may be done by open-pit or by various surface excavating equipment or tunneling equipment.
Tanzanite is the blue and violet variety of the mineral zoisite, caused by small amounts of vanadium. Tanzanite belongs to the epidote mineral group. Tanzanite is only found in Simanjiro District of Manyara Region in Tanzania, in a very small mining area near the Mererani Hills.
Hydraulic mining is a form of mining that uses high-pressure jets of water to dislodge rock material or move sediment. In the placer mining of gold or tin, the resulting water-sediment slurry is directed through sluice boxes to remove the gold. It is also used in mining kaolin and coal.
Quartzite is a hard, non-foliated metamorphic rock which was originally pure quartz sandstone. Sandstone is converted into quartzite through heating and pressure usually related to tectonic compression within orogenic belts. Pure quartzite is usually white to grey, though quartzites often occur in various shades of pink and red due to varying amounts of hematite. Other colors, such as yellow, green, blue and orange, are due to other minerals.
Worsbrough is an area about two miles south of Barnsley in the metropolitan borough of Barnsley, South Yorkshire, England. Before 1974, Worsbrough had its own urban district council in the West Riding of the historic county of Yorkshire and it is still counted as a separate place from Barnsley by the 2011 Census, but it is often treated as part of Barnsley as the two settlements run into one another.
Catlinite, also called pipestone, is a type of argillite, usually brownish-red in color, which occurs in a matrix of Sioux Quartzite. Because it is fine-grained and easily worked, it is prized by Native Americans, primarily those of the Plains nations, for use in making ceremonial pipes, known as chanunpas or čhaŋnúŋpas in the Lakota language. Pipestone quarries are located and preserved in Pipestone National Monument outside Pipestone, Minnesota, in Pipestone County, Minnesota, and at the Pipestone River in Ontario, Canada.
The Cuyuna Range is an inactive iron range to the southwest of the Mesabi Range, largely within Crow Wing County, Minnesota. It lies along a 68-mile-long (109 km) line between Brainerd, Minnesota, and Aitkin, Minnesota. The width ranges from 1 to 10 miles.
The present Silkstone Common railway station, which opened by British Rail on 14 May 1983 serves the village of Silkstone Common, near Barnsley in South Yorkshire, England. The station is 3 miles (4.8 km) west of Barnsley on the Penistone Line between Huddersfield and Sheffield.
Silkstone is a village and civil parish in the Metropolitan Borough of Barnsley in South Yorkshire, England. It is situated in the foothills of the Pennines, between the towns of Barnsley and Penistone, and includes the village of Silkstone Common. At the 2001 census it had a population of 2,954, increasing to 3,153 at the 2011 Census.
India possesses a wide spectrum of dimensional stones that include granite, marble, sandstone, limestone, slate, and quartzite, in various parts of the country.
The Black Hills Gold Rush took place in Dakota Territory in the United States. It began in 1874 following the Custer Expedition and reached a peak in 1876–77.
Deep sea mining is a growing subfield of experimental seabed mining that involves the retrieval of minerals and deposits from the ocean floor found at depths of 200 meters or greater. As of 2021, the majority of marine mining efforts are limited to shallow coastal waters only, where sand, tin and diamonds are more readily accessible. There are three types of deep sea mining that have generated great interest: polymetallic nodule mining, polymetallic sulphide mining, and the mining of cobalt-rich ferromanganese crusts. The majority of proposed deep sea mining sites are near of polymetallic nodules or active and extinct hydrothermal vents at 1,400 to 3,700 metres below the ocean’s surface. The vents create globular or massive sulfide deposits, which contain valuable metals such as silver, gold, copper, manganese, cobalt, and zinc. The deposits are mined using either hydraulic pumps or bucket systems that take ore to the surface to be processed.
The mines of Paris comprise a number of abandoned, subterranean mines under Paris, France, connected together by galleries. Three main networks exist; the largest, known as the grand réseau sud, lies under the 5th, 6th, 14th and 15th arrondissements, a second under the 13th arrondissement, and a third under the 16th, though other minor networks are found under the 12th, 14th and 16th for instance. The commercial product was Lutetian limestone for use as a building material, as well as gypsum for use in "plaster of Paris".
The mining of minerals in Nigeria accounts for only 0.3% of its gross domestic product, due to the influence of its vast oil resources. The domestic mining industry is underdeveloped, leading to Nigeria having to import minerals that it could produce domestically, such as salt or iron ore. Rights to ownership of mineral resources is held by the Federal government of Nigeria, which grants titles to organizations to explore, mine, and sell mineral resources. Organized mining began in 1903 when the Mineral Survey of the Northern Protectorates was created by the British colonial government. A year later, the Mineral Survey of the Southern Protectorates was founded. By the 1940s, Nigeria was a major producer of tin, columbite, and coal. The discovery of oil in 1956 hurt the mineral extraction industries, as government and industry both began to focus on this new resource. The Nigerian Civil War in the late 1960s led many expatriate mining experts to leave the country. Mining regulation is handled by the Ministry of Solid Minerals Development, which oversees the management of all mineral resources. Mining law is codified in the Federal Minerals and Mining Act of 1999. Historically, Nigeria's mining industry was monopolized by state-owned public corporations. This led to a decline in productivity in almost all mineral industries. The Obasanjo administration began a process of selling off government-owned corporations to private investors in 1999. The Nigerian Mining Industry has picked up since the "Economic Diversification Agenda", from Oil & Gas, to Agriculture, Mining, etc., began in the country.
Mining has been conducted in Georgia for centuries. Today, Georgia's mineral industry produces manganese, copper and various types of quarried stone. Although the Georgian economy has experienced significant economic growth in recent years, growth in the mining and metallurgical sector has lagged behind that of the overall economy.