Colorado Diamonds, North America's Largest Options

[CP]

Hey Everyone, thought this was an interesting tid bit worth posting........Colorado produced North Americas largest faceted diamond. Here is a bit of info from the Kelsey Lake mine.........

The Kelsey Lake mine, located almost on the Colorado-Wyoming line, includes some eight kimberlite pipes, the two largest of which have a combined area of about 20 acres (Hausel 1998). The mine was first opened by Redaurum, a Canadian company; ownership changed to McKenzie Bay International, and it is currently owned jointly by Roberts Construction and BJ&J Jewelers, two North Dakota companies. It was operated from 1996 to 1998 and produced North America's largest-known cut diamond--a pale yellow 16.86-carat faceted stone that was cut from a well-formed 28.18-carat crystal found in 1997. Another, a 28.3-carat yellow diamond mined in 1996, was cut into a 5.39-carat pear-shaped stone.

I'm still looking for some pics of the faceted stones.

CP

[Bennie]

Good post, Bennie.

The ones on the left are garnets and a couple of tiny chrome diopsides, diamonds in the middle and peridot on the right.

I have the last report Dan did when they did the fly-over with the magnetic imaging.
Dan did do a ton of exploring, 'til his office got pissed off that he was spending more time in Colorado than in Wyoming (that's what I was told-I don't know for sure), but I do know (because he told me so) that he explored most of that region on both sides of the line.
He also did alot of bulk sampling, as did several commercial entities. But a viable commercialy feasible pipe wasn't found at that time.
But to me, that really doesn't mean much. Kinda means the opposite to me-to me, it means that it wouldn't be worth it to them to bring in 20 million dollars worth of equipment for 10 million in diamonds. But it still means that there may be ten million worth of diamonds for us to find with our $100.00 equipment!
I'll see if I can get some quotes from the CGS report (just gotta read it again) on some of the bulk sampling they did up there.

J.D.-No, it's not illegal. But it's not legal, either. They do it all over Colorado.
Some people I know who love to do the trails, have bought old mining claims just so they can keep the area open. It is sad, but a lot of these people that own property in these areas think that they are the bomb or something, I guess.
For instance, Vic Norris placed three claims on an incredible iolite deposit in the Palmer canyon area (actually south of it) of Wyoming (http://www.wsgs.uwyo.edu/metals/default.aspx).
A huge deposite. You can see some of the samples that Dan found there on the WGS page. But he had to give the fellow that owns the land surrounding that area two of the claims, just so he could access his. Of course he would have won in court, but like I mentioned before, it takes a lot of time and money.
Down closer to the owners of this site, in the Taryyalls, there are several old mines that the land owners have "blocked-off". For instance, the entrance to the bearcat mines. Used to be a great place for beryl. But you can't get in there now.

There are kimberlite pipes all ove that area. If you use flash earth and look for them, you can see them. Some right off Cherokee road.

todd you and me need to talk!!! We both can benefit from sharing our knowlege and reports and maps my email address is quantumiil@yahoo.com (2 i's i know)
maybe we can go into the field lol

ps i have 100+ reports from hausel that guy is my idol...