Garnets are among the most common crystallized minerals you can collect. It is one of the very few minerals that spans the entire spectrum of mineralogy. It has been used as a gem for thousands of years. It has always been popular as a collector mineral. It is useful in the industrial world, and scientists study some garnets to determine the pressures and temperatures that create metamorphic rocks located many kilometers deep in the earth. Several varieties of garnets are delightfully beautiful and exotic, while others are common and easy to identify when you are field collecting.
It may seem odd to associate garnets with the business world, but one little-known fact concerns the world-famous Wrangell, Alaska, garnets. They played an important role in cracking what the business world calls the “glass ceiling.”
Near the mouth of the Stikine River, close by Wrangell, Alaska, is Garnet Ledge, one of the better-known almandine garnet deposits. Specimens from here have been collected for over a century, starting with gold prospectors, once owned by the Boy Scouts, and Juneau’s Presbyterian Church, and now it is a registered Wilderness area held in trust for the children of Alaska.
This story is from the July 2021 edition of Rock&Gem Magazine.
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This story is from the July 2021 edition of Rock&Gem Magazine.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
MORGAN HILL POPPY JASPER
In California, there are very few places to collect semi-precious stones. Many locations from the past have been either exhausted of the material or the land has been developed.
THE ACORN
The briolette gemstone has the same design attributes of a regular gemstone, however, the pavilion is elongated and the crown is usually domed. This is perfect for an elegant pendant, earrings or a pendulum.
HOW TO PUT A PROTECTIVE CAP ON A CAB
To protect a specimen cab, often a cap is needed. In my case, I had a slab with the because of the color of the background and the pattern. This background had a more silicified consistency than most sandstones. It had no graininess like most sandstone, so I'm inclined to compare it to a jasper. The pattern was typical of a dendrite.
The Resilient Revival of Anne Brontë & Her Stones
For the first time, the Anne Brontë rock collection underwent complete description and identification, and along with Professor Hazel Hutchison of Leeds University and Dr. Enrique Lozano Diz at ELODIZ (a company specializing in spectroscopy analysis), an analysis of that collaboration, Anne Brontë and Geology: A Study of her Collection of Stones, was published in April 2022 in Volume 47, Issue 2 of the peer-reviewed journal, Brontë Studies & Gazette.\"
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Call in the Seals!
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