New Mexico Mineral Symposium — Abstracts

The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum Permanent Mineral Collections got its start in the early 1970s with a contribution of minerals that included some of the finest wulfenite and mimetite coming out of the San Francisco mine in Cucurpe, Sonora, Mexico. Since then, the collections have developed into the finest regional mineral collection maintained by a not-for-profit institution.

The Desert Museum can afford to call its mineral collection the finest because of a distinct advantage it has over many other museums. The collection parameters are highly restricted with the boundaries including the state of Arizona, the state of Sonora, Mexico, and a large portion of the Baja Peninsula and the islands in the Sea of Cortez. This is the interpretive realm of the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, which includes the biology and the geology of what is defined as the Sonoran Desert Region.

About 2% of the entire mineral collection is exhibited either on the Museum grounds or in loan exhibits to other institutions. Other opportunities for exhibition afford themselves through invitations to gem and mineral shows. The majority of the 10,998 catalogued specimens is secured in a vault storage.

In addition to the main body of the mineral collections, about 6,500 micromounts and about 100 cut and polished stones are part of the Permanent Collections. There is also an assortment of meteorites and fossils that are growing in number as the collections are expanded to meet exhibit needs.

Acquisition is accomplished by purchase through the Earth Sciences Fund, by trade (which is done very judiciously), and by donation, as long as gifts are given with no restrictions attached.

The Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum Permanent Mineral Collections is not stagnant by any means. It is a very vital, growing collection of minerals from the most well known mineral localities within the Sonoran Desert Region. The Desert Museum can boast of having the widest variety or the finest of mineral specimens from locations known to collectors worldwide. A Tiger cerussite or a Bisbee azurite, Baja gold or San Francisco mine wulfenites conjure up in the collector's mind visions of exquisite minerals from classic localities. They all have a carefully maintained home in the Permanent Mineral Collections at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.