California State Mining and Mineral Museum | |
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![]() Interior of the California State Mining and Mineral Museum | |
Location | Mariposa County, California, United States |
Nearest city | Mariposa, California |
Coordinates | 37°27′51″N119°56′51″W / 37.46417°N 119.94750°W Coordinates: 37°27′51″N119°56′51″W / 37.46417°N 119.94750°W |
Established | 1999 |
Governing body | California Department of Parks and Recreation |
The California State Mining and Mineral Museum is a museum of the state park system of California, United States. The museum exhibits and interprets the state's mineral resources and mining heritage. It is located in Mariposa, a city in central California, on the Mariposa County fairgrounds. [1]
The museum houses a collection that was created in 1880, with the establishment of the California State Mining Bureau. Henry G. Hanks was the first California State Mineralogist and was tasked with managing the collection. The collection was housed in the Ferry Building in San Francisco until 1983. The collection was moved at the Mariposa County Fairgrounds in 1986. Responsibility for it was transferred from the California Department of Conservation to the California Department of Parks & Recreation in 1999. It is the only California State Park without associated land. The international collection holds over 13,000 minerals, rocks, gems, fossils, and historic artifacts.
Exhibits include the crystalline gold Fricot Nugget, weighing 201 troy ounces (6.25 kg), the largest found during the California Gold Rush; a working scale model of a stamp mill over 100 years old, demonstrating the process of extracting gold from quartz rock; and a replica hard rock mine tunnel that allows visitors to better understand California's hard rock mines.
The California State Mining and Mineral Museum has artifacts from the Mother Lode, along with international gems, stones, and other artifacts.
The California Mining and Mineral Museum was one of the 48 California state parks proposed for closure in January 2008 during the Arnold Schwarzenegger Administration as part of a deficit reduction program. [2]
The City of Leadville is a statutory city that is the county seat, the most populous community, and the only incorporated municipality in Lake County, Colorado, United States. The city population was 2,602 at the 2010 census and an estimated 2,762 in 2018. It is situated at an elevation of 10,158 feet (3,096 m). Leadville is the highest incorporated city in the United States and it is surrounded by two of the tallest 14,000 foot peaks in the state.
Mariposa County is a county located in the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 U.S. Census, the population was 17,131. The county seat is Mariposa. It is located in the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains, north of Fresno, east of Merced, and southeast of Stockton.
Mariposa is an unincorporated community and census-designated place (CDP) in and the county seat of Mariposa County, California, United States. The population was 1,526 at the 2020 census. The community is named after the flocks of monarch butterflies seen overwintering there by early explorers.
The Gold Country is a historic region in the northern portion of the U.S. state of California, that is primarily on the western slope of the Sierra Nevada. It is famed for the mineral deposits and gold mines that attracted waves of immigrants, known as the 49ers, during the 1849 California Gold Rush.
Keweenaw National Historical Park is a unit of the U.S. National Park Service. Established in 1992, the park celebrates the life and history of the Keweenaw Peninsula in the Upper Peninsula of the U.S. state of Michigan. As of 2009, it is a partly privatized park made up of two primary units, the Calumet Unit and the Quincy Unit, and 21 cooperating "Heritage Sites" located on federal, state, and privately owned land in and around the Keweenaw Peninsula. The National Park Service owns approximately 1,700 acres (690 ha) in the Calumet and Quincy Units. Units are located in Baraga, Houghton, Keweenaw, and Ontonagon counties.
Empire Mine State Historic Park is a state-protected mine and park in the Sierra Nevada mountains in Grass Valley, California, U.S. The Empire Mine is on the National Register of Historic Places, a federal Historic District, and a California Historical Landmark. Since 1975 California State Parks has administered and maintained the mine as a historic site. The Empire Mine is "one of the oldest, largest, deepest, longest and richest gold mines in California". Between 1850 and its closure in 1956, the Empire Mine produced 5.8 million ounces of gold, extracted from 367 miles (591 km) of underground passages.
New Almaden, known in Spanish as Nueva Almadén, is a historic community and former mercury mine in the Capitancillos Hills of San Jose, California, located at the southwestern point of Almaden Valley in South San Jose. New Almaden is divided into two parts: the mines and much of their immediate surroundings, including historic ghost town settlements in the Capintancillas, which together form the Almaden Quicksilver County Park, and the largely residential historic district surrounding the Casa Grande.
Pendarvis is a historic site located in Mineral Point, Iowa County, Wisconsin, United States. The site, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is made up of several 19th century cabins built by Cornish immigrants who came to Mineral Point to mine lead. Today the site is owned by the Wisconsin Historical Society and serves as a museum of Wisconsin's early lead mining history. Programs at the site also interpret the groundbreaking preservation work by Robert Neal and Edgar Hellum, begun during the Great Depression.
The National Mining Hall of Fame is a museum located in Leadville, Colorado, United States, dedicated to commemorating the work of miners and people who work with natural resources. The museum also participates in efforts to inform the public about the mining industry.
Jerome State Historic Park is a state park of Arizona, US, featuring the Douglas Mansion, built in 1916 by a family of influential mining entrepreneurs in Jerome, Arizona, a mining region in the northeast of the Black Hills, east Yavapai County. A museum is located in the old Douglas Mansion.
Gold mining in the United States has taken place continually since the discovery of gold at the Reed farm in North Carolina in 1799. The first documented occurrence of gold was in Virginia in 1782. Some minor gold production took place in North Carolina as early as 1793, but created no excitement. The discovery on the Reed farm in 1799 which was identified as gold in 1802 and subsequently mined marked the first commercial production.
The Leadville mining district, located in the Colorado Mineral Belt, was the most productive silver-mining district in the state of Colorado and hosts one of the largest lead-zinc-silver deposits in the world. Oro City, an early Colorado gold placer mining town located about a mile east of Leadville in California Gulch, was the location to one of the richest placer gold strikes in Colorado, with estimated gold production of 120,000–150,000 ozt, worth $2.5 to $3 million at the then-price of $20.67 per troy ounce.
The Burra Burra Mine is a copper mine located in Ducktown, Tennessee, in the southeastern United States. Named for the famous mine in Australia, the Burra Burra Mine is located in the Copper Basin geological region, and extracted over 15 million tons of copper ore during its 60 years of operation between 1899 and 1959. The mine's remaining structures are listed on the National Register of Historic Places as part of the Burra Burra Mine Historic District. The site is also home to the Ducktown Basin Museum, and the museum and mine are a Tennessee State Historic Site operated in partnership with the Tennessee Historical Commission.
Ironstone’s Crown Jewel is the world’s largest piece of crystalline gold. At 44 lbs troy (16.4 kg), it is substantially larger than the Fricot "Nugget" and the Whopper, the next two largest specimens.
The Rice Northwest Museum of Rocks and Minerals is a non-profit museum in Hillsboro, Oregon, United States. Located just north of the Sunset Highway on the northern edge of Hillsboro, the earth science museum is in the Portland metropolitan area. Opened in 1997, the museum's collections date to the 1930s with the museum housed in a home built to display the rock and mineral collections of the museum founders. The ranch-style home is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the first of its kind listed in Oregon. In 2015 the museum became a Smithsonian Affiliate museum.
Rancho Las Mariposas was a 44,387-acre (179.63 km2) Mexican land grant in Alta California, located in present-day Mariposa County, California.
The Arizona Mining and Mineral Museum in Phoenix, Arizona, was a museum focused on minerals and mining. Last operated by the Arizona Historical Society, a state government agency, its exhibits included more than 3,000 minerals, rocks, fossils, and artifacts related to the mining industry. The museum closed in May 2011. In April 2017, legislation was passed to reopen the museum under the ownership of the University of Arizona.
Yogo sapphires are blue sapphires, a colored variety of corundum, found in Montana, primarily in Yogo Gulch in Judith Basin County, Montana. Yogo sapphires are typically cornflower blue, a result of trace amounts of iron and titanium. They have high uniform clarity and maintain their brilliance under artificial light. Because Yogo sapphires occur within a vertically dipping resistive igneous dike, mining efforts have been sporadic and rarely profitable. It is estimated that at least 28 million carats of Yogo sapphires are still in the ground. Jewelry containing Yogo sapphires was given to First Ladies Florence Harding and Bess Truman; in addition, many gems were sold in Europe, though promoters' claims that Yogo sapphires are in the crown jewels of England or the engagement ring of Princess Diana are dubious. Today, several Yogo sapphires are part of the Smithsonian Institution's gem collection.
Stockton Creek is a tributary of Mariposa Creek in Mariposa County, California. It was named after Robert F. Stockton who owned a mine and stamp mill during the California Gold Rush. An impoundment on the creek owned by the Mariposa Public Utilities Commission holds a major source of water for the community of Mariposa.
The Fricot Nugget is a crystalline gold nugget found in El Dorado County, California in 1865 during the California Gold Rush by William Russell Davis. The nugget was found in Davis' Grit Mine at Spanish Dry Digging's at a depth of 60.96 metres. The Fricot Nugget weighed 5.69 kilograms, and was later shipped to New York where it was purchased by Jules Fricot for approximately $3,500. Fricot took the nugget to Paris for the 1878 Paris Exposition. Following the Paris Exposition, the Fricot Nugget was missing until 1943 when it was found in a safe deposit box in Calaveras County, California. The nugget came close to being stolen in 2012 when a theft occurred at the California State Mining and Mineral Museum where the nugget was being held, however safety measures protected the Fricot Nugget from the intruders. The nugget is listed as the eleventh largest gold nugget ever found and is the second largest gold nugget found in the United States of America. The Fricot Nugget is currently the largest surviving single piece of gold from the California Gold Rush. It is on permanent display in the California State Mining and Mineral Museum.