The Tarheel
Gem & Mineral Club of Raleigh, NC has regularly hosted
field trips to various Martin Marietta quarries throughout North
Carolina. Today the club went to the American Stone
Quarry at 1807 Hwy 54 West in Chapel Hill, NC.
1/4
inch pyrite cubes were locked inside some of the rock
here. Without a good 5 pound sledge hammer I would not
have been able to get specimens of the pyrite.
I had to
break larger boulders down in order to get something small enough to
take home. One only
needs to explore the walls closely to find the spots where the pyrite
is located. Once discovered you only needed to smash
the broken boulders around that wall to
obtain specimens.
A good friend and rock
hound Bob located a vein of quartz in the quarry wall where some pretty
interesting crystals were found. The vug he discovered
contained
what looked like mangled quartz crystals. There were many
striations throughout all of the crystals as if another mineral had
once grown through them and then dissolved. Although ugly
looking, they had personality.
This was about an 8
inch long ugly looking honker that had grown
between a crack in the quarry wall and contacted on both sides.
Trips
to mines such as this one can be great fun. Since working
quarries are always exposing new areas as a result of blasting you
never know what you might find the next time you go out there.
Persistence can be a rock hounds best attribute.
