Fieldtrip Report:

Standard Mineral Company,
Glendon Pyrite
October 21st, 2006

Text and photos by: Lee Fleming

The Standard Mineral Company's Glendon Mine field trip began early Saturday morning. The rock hounds began arriving before 7:00 AM. The morning was cool with temperatures in the low 40's. When the mine representative arrived around 7:30 AM, there was tension in the air. Upon signing the release forms there was a stampede of cars and trucks into the mine site to begin the mornings rock hunting. For the first time in memory, the mine opened their two entrances, thus relieving the parking congestion that normally occurs.

Lee Fleming

Colorado, Savannah, and Eli

Within minutes, the mine site was covered with people searching for pyrite and fluorite. Those with metal detectors, finding the pyrite was no problem and there was enough material to be found by surface collecting to let people find a lot of the pyrite cubes. As I walked around the site, it became clear that MAGMA was well represented. In fact there were between 20 and 30 MAGMA members present for this dig. It was nice to see so many members present for this big dig.

Melissa Branch

Glenn Branch

Warren and Dylan

Steve Barr

As the morning progressed, there seemed to be four methods for finding pyrite. First, the surface collecting produced it's share of material. Then there was the digging method. People were seen sitting on large piles of muddy material and were digging into the mud hills. Next, there were the people digging in the mine's floor. These people were sitting on the soil and were chopping the base material to extract the pyrite cubes. It seemed as though the pyrite being extracted by this method was very degraded and it broke before it could be lifted from the floor of the mine. Finally, the method that worked best for me was to find a good location and use my metal detector to locate the pyrite cubes. I ended up finding almost a full bucket of pyrite using this procedure.

Pyrite cubes in matrix.

Page 2

Back to fieldtrip menu