A 2007 Collecting Venture in Herkimer County, New York: Thirty-eight Quartz Pockets

摘要

During fall 2007, Jay Medici and I worked for three months in the town of Newport, Herkimer County, New York, as commercial miners for Herkimer Diamond Mines, Inc.'s famous quartz crystal locality. The mine is located immediately across from the KOA Campground on State Route 28. It features some of the toughest rock I have ever encountered in twenty years of field collecting. Although quartz crystals can be found throughout the sedimentary rock layers, there is one layer (the "table") that hides large pockets that are 1-4 feet in diameter. Getting to these pockets was our goal. Unfortunately, 4 feet of barren rock covered the table in our work area. Four feet of overburden is not much compared to the 8 feet of misery covering the table in most of the mine. Still, it's a lot of rock to move by hand. So we brought in an excavator, a driller, and a blaster-being commercial miners has its privileges! It took two days to clear and drill the site. We had half the dynamite laid out when a fast-moving lightning storm forced us to repack everything. I learned from our blaster that it's a bad idea to handle dynamite and fuses during an electrical storm. After an hour, the storm passed, and we reloaded the holes and sounded the air horn to warn people away. The blast went off without a hitch. It was 21 August and our work as miners had just begun.