New Mexico Mineral Symposium — Abstracts

In late summer of the year 2000, two mineral specimens came into my possession that have haunt¬ed and driven my field collection ever since. One is an astonishing plate, 20 cm in length, of skarn¬like material sprinkled with simple rectangular crystals of amber-colored wulfenites (as much as 5 mm in length). The other is a single, loose, very pale purple octahedron of fluorite containing small crystals of chalcopyrite—measuring 2 cm tip to tip.

It is the story of their origin that intrigued me. There is no known record of wulfenite in the north-central Tusas Mountains; there is no known record of fluorite in the extreme northern part of Taos County.

My presentation is a recollection of events in my investigation of these two specimens—attempting to reconcile the oral historical record with the geological model in order to find the source. My documentation of said investigation has taken on overtones of "something funny hap¬pened to me on the way to the symposium." But it makes for a fine "fishing" tale in the annals of New Mexico minerals.