New Mexico Mineral Symposium — Abstracts

Most people do not think of evaporite minerals as truly collectible, with halite from Poland or Searles Lake being possible exceptions. However, within the past three years an occurrence of blue and purple halite has been revisited in the Intrepid Potash East mine that has redefined the quality of colored halite that has come from New Mexico into world class material. An assortment of other interesting minerals makes the storied Carlsbad Potash district a good, if surprising, locality for collecting New Mexico mineral specimens.

Among local New Mexico collectors, blue halite has long been known as a collectible mineral from the Carlsbad Potash district in southeastern New Mexico, but until recently the majority of the available material was sparse and not of very good quality. This changed in the summer of 2007 when the author started work at Intrepid Potash LLC as a summer mining engineering intern. The author's interest was first piqued when the chief mine engineer, Tom McGuire, mentioned that blue halite had been encountered during the mining that took place in the 1970s and 1980s. One or two pieces of the blue halite were sitting on a shelf of minerals that he had collected in the 15 years he had been an engineer at the potash mines. While not of exceptional quality, the specimens were still colorful enough to trigger the author's love for New Mexico minerals. When questioned further about the halite occurrence, Tom recalled driving along in the old tunnels and seeing stringers of blue halite appear in the ribs (tunnel walls) that led into a room that was "almost solid blue halite from top to bottom." A trip to the old, worked out area was eagerly anticipated for the next 10 weeks of the internship, but it wasn't until the very last day of work that the collecting trip was arranged. Needless to say, this first trip turned out to be one of the most memorable ventures in the author's 20+ years of collecting great minerals in New Mexico.

Since that first collecting trip, the author has been on several more trips to the same area and to other levels of Intrepid's East mine and West mine that produce an array of collectible evaporite minerals such as langbeinite, carnallite, gypsum, and leonite. Although these minerals are not typically found in most collections, they provide an interesting picture into the geology and mineralogy of evaporite deposits.