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Colorado Prospector - Gem and mineral prospecting and mining forums _ Prospectors and Rockhounding Field Work _ Old Quartz Quarry

Posted by: jimmyrig Dec 4 2017, 09:57 PM

Came across this hiking this summer in the Tarryall mountains. Looked like someone blasted the side of a mountain out. Evidence of early 1900s equipment. I'm guessing they were looking for gold. I saw zero evidence of anything but white quartz (enough to build a set of furniture or even a small house out of). Anyone think there could be some topaz or something else hiding in with all that? Is it worth chipping away some?

Posted by: johnnybravo300 Dec 5 2017, 12:08 AM

We lived in teller county for a few years and I found a few of those up there too. Definitely old prospects of some kind but I only found quartz as well. It was pretty stuff but nothing else was around.

Posted by: Clay Diggins Dec 6 2017, 10:53 AM

Why do you think it was quarried? I don't see any signs of rockwork in your picture.

It looks like the typical quartz https://www.mindat.org/glossary/blowout. When these blowouts occur in granite the http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0886779805000106 tends to break up the quartz it surrounds and cause the collapse.

The quartz could have been carried off by humans for building stone or silica sand but more likely the quartz is buried under the resulting eluvial mass from the collapse of the intrusion.

Posted by: johnnybravo300 Dec 6 2017, 11:23 AM

The ones I found were blowouts I think. I've never seen quartz veins that big before but pretty cool.

Posted by: jimmyrig Dec 16 2017, 01:28 AM

I had assumed it was quarried because of the large steel cables and equipment evidence I saw but your right, cout be a blow out that just got carried away for building materials.

Posted by: MikeS Dec 16 2017, 12:20 PM

Most of the quarries I have seen in the area like this one are older (80's or before) and I have concluded that most of them were chasing certain types of the feldspar minerals for industrial use or ore for other minerals. They often threw the quartz to the side.