Location | |
---|---|
Location | Albany |
State | Maine |
Country | United States |
Coordinates | 44°18′43″N70°46′52″W / 44.31194°N 70.78111°W |
Production | |
Products | pegmatite, feldspar, beryl |
Type | Underground |
History | |
Opened | 1927 |
Closed | 1966 |
Owner | |
Company | Lawrence Stifler and Mary McFadden |
Bumpus quarry is a quarry in Oxford County, Maine, in the United States. It is primarily known for being the source of some of the largest beryl crystals ever found, up to 27 feet (8.2 meters) in length, weighing 26 tonnes (23.6 metric tons). [1]
The quarry was opened in 1927 by Harry E. Bumpus, on land leased from the Cummings family. Bumpus worked the mine by hand from 1927 to 1933, mining feldspar, and Harold Perham began mining in 1934. In 1936 the title to the land was sold to the United Feldspar and Minerals Corporation. However, it was not clear who now owned the mineral rights for the mine, and a legal battle ensued between the Bumpus family and the corporation. [2] [3] The mine was officially closed from 1940 to 1945 due to the ongoing legal proceedings. During the closure, the mine flooded, and several surveys of the area were made by the United States Department of the Interior. [4]
In 1945, the United Feldspar Corp and Bumpus came to an agreement, allowing Dan C. Douglas to start pumping the mine in April, reopening it later that year. In 1949, the United Feldspar Corp gained full control of the property, and Douglas formed the Northern Mining Corporation in order to officially lease the mineral rights for the mine. [5] Around this time, many large beryl crystals were found, the largest of them being found in 1949. The mine changed hands several times over the next few years, closing down in 1966 after a worker was killed by falling rocks. [6]
In 2005, the mine was bought by Dr. Lawrence Stifler and his wife Mary Mcfadden, with plans to reopen it as an educational facility about the history of mining in Oxford County. Tours around the mine are given for amateur geologists and school field trips. [7]
Although the mine was opened to mine feldspar, and it is most famous for its large beryl deposits, it has produced several other minerals in notable quantities as well. [8] These include:
Amazonite, also known as Amazonstone, is a green tectosilicate mineral, a variety of the potassium feldspar called microcline. Its chemical formula is KAlSi3O8, which is polymorphic to orthoclase.
Beryl ( BERR-əl) is a mineral composed of beryllium aluminium silicate with the chemical formula Be3Al2Si6O18. Well-known varieties of beryl include emerald and aquamarine. Naturally occurring, hexagonal crystals of beryl can be up to several meters in size, but terminated crystals are relatively rare. Pure beryl is colorless, but it is frequently tinted by impurities; possible colors are green, blue, yellow, pink, and red (the rarest). It is an ore source of beryllium.
Ytterby is a village on the Swedish island of Resarö, in Vaxholm Municipality in the Stockholm archipelago. Today the residential area is dominated by suburban homes.
A pegmatite is an igneous rock showing a very coarse texture, with large interlocking crystals usually greater in size than 1 cm (0.4 in) and sometimes greater than 1 meter (3 ft). Most pegmatites are composed of quartz, feldspar, and mica, having a similar silicic composition to granite. However, rarer intermediate composition and mafic pegmatites are known.
Microcline (KAlSi3O8) is an important igneous rock-forming tectosilicate mineral. It is a potassium-rich alkali feldspar. Microcline typically contains minor amounts of sodium. It is common in granite and pegmatites. Microcline forms during slow cooling of orthoclase; it is more stable at lower temperatures than orthoclase. Sanidine is a polymorph of alkali feldspar stable at yet higher temperature. Microcline may be clear, white, pale-yellow, brick-red, or green; it is generally characterized by cross-hatch twinning that forms as a result of the transformation of monoclinic orthoclase into triclinic microcline.
Plagioclase is a series of tectosilicate (framework silicate) minerals within the feldspar group. Rather than referring to a particular mineral with a specific chemical composition, plagioclase is a continuous solid solution series, more properly known as the plagioclase feldspar series. This was first shown by the German mineralogist Johann Friedrich Christian Hessel (1796–1872) in 1826. The series ranges from albite to anorthite endmembers (with respective compositions NaAlSi3O8 to CaAl2Si2O8), where sodium and calcium atoms can substitute for each other in the mineral's crystal lattice structure. Plagioclase in hand samples is often identified by its polysynthetic crystal twinning or 'record-groove' effect.
Evje og Hornnes is a municipality in Agder county, Norway. It is located in the traditional district of Setesdal. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Evje. Other villages in the municipality include Åneland, Dåsnesmoen, Flatebygd, Gautestad, Hornnes, Kjetså, and Øvre Dåsvatn. Evje og Hornnes was created as a new municipality on 1 January 1960 after the merger of the two older municipalities of Evje and Hornnes. The Norwegian National Road 9 runs north–south through the municipality, along the river Otra.
Cassiterite is a tin oxide mineral, SnO2. It is generally opaque, but it is translucent in thin crystals. Its luster and multiple crystal faces produce a desirable gem. Cassiterite was the chief tin ore throughout ancient history and remains the most important source of tin today.
Phenakite or phenacite is a fairly rare nesosilicate mineral consisting of beryllium orthosilicate, Be2SiO4. Occasionally used as a gemstone, phenakite occurs as isolated crystals, which are rhombohedral with parallel-faced hemihedrism, and are either lenticular or prismatic in habit: the lenticular habit is determined by the development of faces of several obtuse rhombohedra and the absence of prism faces. There is no cleavage, and the fracture is conchoidal. The Mohs hardness is high, being 7.5 – 8; the specific gravity is 2.96. The crystals are sometimes perfectly colorless and transparent, but more often they are greyish or yellowish and only translucent; occasionally they are pale rose-red. In general appearance the mineral is not unlike quartz, for which indeed it has been mistaken. Its name comes from Ancient Greek: φέναξ, romanized: phénax, meaning "deceiver" due to its close visual similarity to quartz, named by Nils Gustaf Nordenskiöld in 1833.
Granodiorite is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock similar to granite, but containing more plagioclase feldspar than orthoclase feldspar.
Greisen is a highly altered granitic rock or pegmatite, usually composed predominantly of quartz and micas. Greisen is formed by self-generated alteration of a granite and is a class of moderate- to high-temperature magmatic-hydrothermal alteration related to the late-stage release of volatiles dissolved in a magma during the solidification of that magma.
The Spruce Pine Mining District is a swath of the valley of the North Toe River in the Blue Ridge Mountains of northwestern North Carolina. The area is mined for its mica, kaolin, quartz and feldspar. Spruce Pine district is one of the largest suppliers of high-purity quartz, which is used in the manufacture of silicon chips. The district is named after the town of Spruce Pine, which is located in the middle of the region and is the hub of major mining activity there. The district is approximately 25 miles long and 5 miles wide.
Litchfieldite is a rare igneous rock. It is a coarse-grained, foliated variety of nepheline syenite, sometimes called nepheline syenite gneiss or gneissic nepeheline syenite. Litchfieldite is composed of two varieties of feldspar, with nepheline, sodalite, cancrinite and calcite. The mafic minerals, when present, are magnetite and an iron-rich variety of biotite (lepidomelane).
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.
Tanco Mine or Bernic Lake mine is an underground caesium and tantalum mine, owned and since 2019 owned and operated by Sinomine Resource Group on the north west shore of Bernic Lake, Manitoba, Canada. The mine has the largest known deposit of pollucite and is also the world's largest producer of caesium.
The mining industry of Yemen is at present dominated by fossil mineral of petroleum and liquefied natural gas (LNG), and to a limited extent by extraction of dimension stone, gypsum, and refined petroleum. Reserves of metals like cobalt, copper, gold, iron ore, nickel, niobium, platinum-group metals, silver, tantalum, and zinc are awaiting exploration. Industrial minerals with identified reserves include black sands with ilmenite, monazite, rutile, and zirconium, celestine, clays, dimension stone, dolomite, feldspar, fluorite, gypsum, limestone, magnesite, perlite, pure limestone, quartz, salt, sandstone, scoria, talc, and zeolites; some of these are under exploitation.
The geology of Maine is part of the broader geology of New England and eastern North America.
Kosnarite is an alkali zirconium phosphate mineral (KZr2(PO4)3) named after an expert of pegmatites Richard A. Kosnar. Kosnarite contains potassium, oxygen, phosphorus, and zirconium with sodium, rubidium, hafnium, manganese and fluorine (Na, Rb, Hf, Mn, and F) being common impurities found in kosnarite. It was discovered in nature for the first time in 1991 by Vandall T. King. Samples that were found in granitic pegmatites from the Mount Mica Quarry, Paris, Oxford County, Maine, USA were sent to Eugene E. Foord for study. This became the first recorded case of naturally occurring kosnarite.
The Harding Pegmatite Mine is a former adit mine that extracted lithium, tantalum, and beryllium from a Precambrian pegmatite sill. It ceased operations in 1958 and its owner, Arthur Montgomery, donated it to the University of New Mexico, which runs the site as an outdoor geology laboratory with mineral collecting permitted on a small scale.
Bavenite is a calcium beryllium aluminosilicate, and it is a part of the Bavenite-Bohseite series. Its name originates from its type locality, which is Baveno, Italy. This mineral is approved by the IMA, and got grandfathered, meaning it is still believed to refer to a valid mineral species. It was discovered in 1901 in a pink granite mined in Lago Maggiore. When bavenite was discovered, it was considered as a member of the zeolite series. Later it was removed from the series as unlike zeolites, bavenite loses the water stored in its crystal lattice in a way higher temperature, between 210 and 320 °C. It is a cheap mineral considering its rarity.