Crestmore Quarry Info?
9 messages in this thread
If anyone has been to the Crestmore Quarry in Riverside, CA and can suggest
what one should look for and what is available, I'd be interested as I am going
there next weekend. Also any references on the place? Thanks!
Hi, Peter–
There follows a copy of the Crestmore entries in my LOCALES database (it is
part of ROCKDB.ARC in the forum library), which lists only fluorescent
minerals. The repetitive place names are removed.
My Mineralogical Record Index for years 1970-1983 mentions these – 2:154,
156, 160, 161, 197-199; 4:166; 8:11, 62, 429, 433; 10:41; 11:14. The
numbers before colons are yearly volume numbers, the other numbers are page
numbers (which span 6 issues each year, starting at 1 in the January issue).
This index lists even the most trivial mentions-in-passing of a place name,
thus I would be most interested in volume 2 pages 154..199, which sounds
like issue number 2 (March-April) of that year, more or less.
It is a real pity you did not ask a week or two earlier; Rod might have seen
this (he is traveling now) and invited you or reported on the recent
Fluorescent Mineral Society meet in Pasadena, CA where Crestmore minerals
were discussed and shown.
–Doug
'Deweylite'
SW fluor: (less)light-yellow
LW fluor: light-yellow
State: CA
City: Crestmore
County: Riverside
Mine:
Albite
SW fluor: bright green
LW fluor: bright green
Apophyllite
SW fluor:
LW fluor: yellow
Aragonite
SW fluor: (less)white,yellow
LW fluor: white,yellow
Calcite
SW fluor: pink-orange,sky-blue
LW fluor:
Datolite
SW fluor: bright-green
LW fluor:
Diopside
SW fluor: blue
LW fluor:
Forsterite
SW fluor: (less)white,tan
LW fluor: white,tan
Foshagite
SW fluor: yellow-white,blue-white
LW fluor:
Gyrolite
SW fluor: green,blue-green
LW fluor: green,blue-green
Harkerite
SW fluor:
LW fluor: weak-dark-red
Microcline
SW fluor: violet-blue,weak-dark-red
LW fluor: violet-blue
Okenite
SW fluor: dim white-blue
LW fluor:
Opal
SW fluor: green
LW fluor: green
Plombierite
SW fluor: (less)yellowish-white,yellow
LW fluor: yellowish-white,yellow
Prehnite
SW fluor: blue-white
LW fluor: yellow
Scapolite
SW fluor: washedout-yellow-white
LW fluor: white-yellow,orange,pink
Scheelite
SW fluor: bright-yellow-white
LW fluor:
Szaibelyite
SW fluor: tan
LW fluor: tan
Thaumasite
SW fluor:
LW fluor: dull-white
Torbermorite
SW fluor:
LW fluor: yellow-white(?)
Wollastonite
SW fluor: (less)pink,peach,yellow
LW fluor: pink,peach,yellow
Wollastonite
SW fluor: yellow NS
LW fluor: yellow NS
Xonotlite
SW fluor: weak-gray-white
LW fluor: weak-white
Zircon
SW fluor: bright-yellow-orange
LW fluor: bright-yellow-orange
Peter:
Last I knew (10 years ago) Crestmore did not have tours or let anyone in to
poke around. Therefore, for a fieldtrip, we went instead to some small
non-operating quarries in the Jurupa Hills: south of Crestmore proper, south
and west of the town of Fontana. Should show up on topos. Not the Rubidoux
Quarry that you can see from Route 60 (to the west of there). I do not
remember what road(s) got us there.
My instructor called these "poor-man's Crestmores", but I'm not sure they are
really examples of the aureole metamorphism of which Crestmore is the textbook
example, or maybe just dolomitic limestone roof-pendants with classic
calc-silicate metamorphism at the edges. I remember wonderful wollastonite
needles, sprinkled with cinnamon garnet and diopside, small vesuvianites,
possible epidote, um-um-um… Ten years is a long time. The marble is
extremely coarse and in some places blue (although, maybe picked out, unless
someone has been working the quarries in the meantime). Also tourmaline and
other accessory minerals in the pegmatites.
The ground rock in that corner of the Jurupas is the Bonsall tonalite (Kbt
on maps) — which is a monzonite or maybe quartz monzonite as I recall. With
major swirl-y inclusions of (apparently) San Marcos gabbro.
All this is from my not-always-reliable memory of under-graduate studies. Let
me know if Crestmore is in fact open to public again. I would be interested in
reviving those memories! If not, take some comfort in the knowledge that most
of the minerals "typed" at Crestmore (crestmorite, riversidite, etc) or
allegedly common (xonotlite, foshagite, et al) are not too pretty — to us
non-fluorescent rockhounds anyway (sorry Doug!).
Waiting to hear your experiences — E.
Hi, Elizabeth–
I am not too sure many of those exotic minerals look like much under UV
either, or I likely would have seen more of them at Fluor. Min. Soc. meetings.
Indeed, when I brought up the subject of a Crestmore visit at an FMS meeting,
no one seemed to be aware of any fluorescent minerals besides calcite, which
suggests to me the fluorescences on that list I gave are uncommon at Crestmore
and/or dim. There was mention of a $15/person collecting fee (perhaps only for
members of a group visit).
Did any of those minerals from the "poor-man's Crestmores" fluoresce?
–Doug
>> Did any of those minerals from the "poor-man's Crestmores" fluoresce?
I, umm, well, can I interest you in a diffraction pattern? Thin section
stained with alizarin red? Very small idocrase with what look like reentrant
angles through the binocular scope? 35mm-slides from an undergraduate thesis
defense?
Sorry Doug, my tendencies have always been to the laboratory and academic
disciplines! (I don't have a lamp, even!)
— E.
And I didn't find any of the rarer calc-silicates, in spite of practically
taking the hillside away by the teaspoon… I *really* wanted to find them, too
(for the thesis).
Hi, Elizabeth–
Umm, I'll pass on the patterns and sections, but I could get interested in
learning what "reentrant" means in this context (to me it is a subroutine that
may be called by its own subroutines or independently-timed tasks).
–Doug
As I understand it, there are no open tours or collecting unless you are
connected with some VIP. However, the Jurupa Cultural Center in Glen Avon, off
Hwy 60, used to have special permission to take 1-2 groups in per year-there
was a maximum number and I think a waiting list-call them for more info. Does
not Crestmore have the second largest number of minerals at any location? I
remember we used it as an unknown back in crytallography days.
steve
I would venture second largest number of *new* minerals described from one
location *in the US/NoAmerica* (next to Franklin NJ). Without looking it up.
Places like Mountain Pass CA and various ore deposits that escape my recall at
the moment — you know, those layered ones — also have abundant mixtures of
minerals, but most were described elsewhere first.
I would also guess that the largest number of new minerals in the world goes to
that place in Africa (Tsumabi <<sp?>> something like that, my recall is real
sketchy tonight!). There could also be locales in the former USSR, that we
didn't study back when.
But, yes, that's what Crestmore is known for. (Not of course what it was
*quarried* for. Mineralogists had to race the cement makers to characterize
those new minerals!) — E.
That is Tsumeb, Namibia.