New Mexico Mineral Symposium — Abstracts

A significant portion of New Mexico’s mineralogical heritage can be attributed to micro minerals. Noteworthy occurrences are found in a variety of geological environments and regional areas. As with hand specimens, many of the locations for these minerals are no longer accessible, in existence—or even precisely known in some cases. This presentation focuses on a number of the micro minerals that are remarkable due to their rarity, obscurity and in some cases aesthetics. Such mineral examples are widely scattered over our state and include many mining districts and sub-districts. This table summarizes the locations where our specimens come from.

We can see that our special examples come from ten of New Mexico’s 33 counties, where the southwestern counties Grant and Sierra tend to predominate. Also notice from the table that in many cases, it is unlikely that more specimens from these particular places will be recovered because of reclamation and loss of access.

For a moment, let’s also consider the “aesthetics” of these specimens. The exceptional beauty of our selection can only be revealed with the use of a microscope, and the capturing of the images through the techniques of photomicrography. Accordingly, many of the images in this presentation are just…stunning!

While the cognoscenti will know many of these minerals, other names will be unfamiliar to some collectors. The goal of this presentation is to make the remarkable breadth and diversity of New Mexico minerals known to the wider mineralogical community.

Black Hawk district	Grant	Alhambra mine	Private claim
Point of Rocks	Colfax	Point of Rocks	Private ranch land
Georgetown district	Grant	Commercial mine	Reclaimed
Gallinas Mountains district	Lincoln	Buckhorn mine	Reclaimed
Red River district	Taos	Questa mine	Closed and in reclamation
Santa Rita district	Grant	Chino mine	Closed to collecting
Burro Mountains district	Grant	Tyrone mine	Closed to collecting
Central district	Grant	Denver Shaft	Reclaimed
Nacimiento Mountains dist.	Sandoval	Eureka mine	Private claims
Socorro Peak district	Socorro	May Flower mine	Access with permission
Grants Uranium district	McKinley	Poison Canyon, F-33 mine	Reclaimed
Red River district	Taos	Questa Mine	In reclamation

pp. 28-29