Minerals from Cedar Mountain Stone Quarry
[Pictures from a field trip to the quarry in 1998]
[Mineral Assemblage of Cedar Mountain Quarry paper from JMU 2007 Student Research Symposium]
white xls on orange calcite
colorless cubic xls with curved edges with brassy colored pyrite inclusions and coating
light to dark green,radiating fan shaped xls, singles and clusters of xls. Some epidote is in a matrix of byssolitealbite feldspar
pink, massive, tiny xl sugary grains, euhedral blocky hopper xls and colorless micro plates of diamond shaped xls, singles and clustersFl – a dull deep red
white to grayish white, small rhombohedral xls, dogtooth scalenohedral xls. and orange brown tightly clustered scalenohedral xls.Fl – off white cream color
byssolite
dark green, looks black except on very thin edges bladed xls some with fibrous termination’s, byssolite is white to greenish gray very small tightly compact masses of xls
shades of green massive and some botryoidal xls some non attached spheres
translucent golden brown and dark green, small euhedral xls indifferent matrix types
small copper color dodecahedron xls in epidote and brassy colored xls in pink matrix
white radiating fibrous masses and acicular xls.
light grayish white,waxy, massive nodules
Fl – bright green
colorless, small cube xls on prehnite and platy crystal aggregatesFl – bright yellow
Contributed Papers in Specimen Mineralogy
THE MINERALS OF CEDAR MOUNTAIN QUARRY, MITCHELL, VIRGINIA. L. E. Kearns1, R. N. Jenkins1, and D. Lipscomb2. 1Dept. of Geology and Environmental Science, James Madison University, Harrisonburg, VA 22807; 284 Pottery Ln., Faber, VA 22938.
Cedar Mountain quarry is located on a 1,000-acre tract in Culpeper County, Virginia, near the town of Mitchell. Upper Triassic to lower Jurassic-age diabase is quarried for dimension stone and gravel. The quarry originally opened in 1979, operating under the name of the A. H. Smith quarry. The A. H. Smith quarry became the Cedar Mountain Stone quarry in January 1994. In early spring 1998, mining operations in the quarry exposed several areas of extraordinary mineralization, which produced one of the largest prehnite specimens ever found in the state of Virginia. Sixteen different mineral species have been identified from the quarry.
There are two major styles of mineralization at Cedar Mountain quarry. The earliest resulted in an Alpine vein-like mineral assemblage (amphibole, epidote, titanite, and feldspar) that was later followed by a classic trap-rock/zeolite assemblage (prehnite, pectolite, apophyllite, stilbite, stellerite, and chabazite). Veins and fractures as well as irregularly shaped replacement areas within the diabase were mineralized by hydrothermal fluids immediately following the igneous emplacement of the diabase sheets.
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