Tourmaline Frozen in the Quartz

Fall 2008 After locating the lepidolite on one side of my access road and the quartz pocket on the other side it was time to see what was under the road. This would mean that I would lose my easy access for awhile. As I started to clean  the material off the ledge a large area of schorl showed up. Schorl is very common in the quarry but not in the volume that it was showing up now.

Plenty of schorl it mixes with green tourmaline closer to the pump. The green tourmaline is poor quality and very crumbly. You can see a split in the basalt dike right behind the pump.

 After the schorl area as I was raking the excavator teeth across the bottom of the remaining pile Rod Stone showed up to see what was going on and hollered for me to stop digging. He jumped down in the hole and pulled out a couple pieces of opaque watermelon tourmaline. Shutting off the excavator and going to work with a shovel and the hose we started to clean off the area. A pod of quartz started to show up with opaque tourmaline crystals frozen in the quartz. This was very exciting. I had seen seeing hints of tourmaline occasionally but most of it was in muscovite in some of the loose boulders but this was what it is all about. Even though it opaque there was green, pink and watermelon. Also on the edge of the quartz pod was a large area of purple lepidolite. There was a lot of different colors concentrated in this one small area.

Tourmaline mass frozen in quartz

I cut out the tourmaline mass above and was rewarded with this tourmaline fan on the back side. Photo area represents 25cm x 25cm.

After carefully cleaning off the area It was time again to get the hammer drill out and start chipping away at the quartz to see what might be hidden from view. I was expecting with each blow that it would break through into a pocket. This quartz was fairly solid and didn't have too many fracture lines in it. As I continued to break away the quartz I found an area with cookeite and got more excited. My experience with the quartz pocket had shown that the cookeite would lead me to the pocket. Following the cookeite led to a small opening that was filled with kaolin and many small smoky quartz crystals. I was hoping that the pocket would open up and there would be  some tourmaline in the bottom but alas this didn't happen.

An overview of the quartz pod. You can see the tourmaline fan that was below the tourmaline mass in the above picture.

Above is the small smoky quartz pocket that I mentioned earlier and then above that was a montebrasite crystal that I was trying to get out in one piece. Luckily for me as I continued to work on removing the quartz around it, the crystal broke into several pieces and there was a surprise inside. If you expand the above picture you will be able to see some small tourmaline crystals in the frozen in the quartz. I continued to work this area off and on to the end of the season without finding much more. I was going to need to blast to make any real headway in finding what was hidden below.

First Quartz Pocket

Late summer 2008. After finding the lepidolite area I would have liked to continue to clean the ledge off but this was my only access in to the mine. As mentioned previously the old access through the Berry mine was no longer an option. Getting into the mine a different way from the access I was using would be very difficult. Since I had exhausted the possibility of finding a pocket in the lepidolite area without blasting and since some of the participants from The Pegmatite Workshop mentioned the prospects on the further side of the mine I decided to do some work on cleaning the ledge off on the nw side. Since most of the trees had been cut earlier this year much of the work involved removing the material that had been dumped there decades before. The material was hauled out of the mine and this area was washed down. It showed some promise with several areas of quartz. When things were wet in this area you could see a glazing of lepidolite on the feldspar. There were several small areas of lepidolite and another are that looked like the bottom of a pocket. I decided after seeing what the prospects were on this side of the mine and the difficulty in working this side that I would abandon it for now and go back and work where I had been originally.

quartz area from the northwest side of the quarry

Back to narrowing up my access road. This time I chose the opposite side and after moving some material a large area of quartz started to show up. This was encouraging at least to me as it was the largest mass of quartz I had seen in the Havey since I had started. It had been mentioned that quartz was an good sign so I took some time and did a closer look. I could see some cookeite and it was time to bring out the hammer drill and start breaking apart the quartz to see if there was any hidden treasures inside. It was breaking apart pretty good and then the hammer broke through into a pocket and things slowed down. I put the big hammer away and then started to approach the area with a little more tenderness. As I slowly enlarged the opening and reached my hand in I could feel the smooth crystal face of the crystal. Pulling out the lose quartz and feldspar that was around it I finally pulled out my first smoky quartz crystal from a pocket. It was very exciting. The remainder of the pocket contained a mixture of quartz shards, feldspar, cookeite, and muscovite pieces. There was also some milky quartz and several more poorly formed smokies. This pocket turned out to be about the size of a volley ball.

Quartz area with cookeite. Surrounded by feldspar and schorl

When working in these pockets they have a tendency to be packed with different materials. These quartz pockets all had about the same make up as listed above. When working in the pocket it is nice to do it without gloves so that you can feel the crystals although this leads to some pretty nasty cuts. The quartz can have razor sharp edges. Sometimes you won't know you have been cut until you look down and wonder what all the pretty red rock is. In the pockets much of the material is packed in very solidly so it can be quite a bit of work to get out some of it especially in one piece. Many of the pieces in the pockets have fractures or are broken. Sometimes you are able to match up the broken pieces and put them back together. The best a crystal looks is when it is fresh from the pocket. Most of the pocket material that comes out of the Havey is very clean meaning a rinse in the water and you get a good view of what it will look like. Some mines leave a heavy coating of iron or other material on the  crystals.

One of the first quartz pockets. You can see the beginning of a smoky quartz crystal in the hole on the left. Notice the contact with the feldspar and quartz. 

This particular area of quartz I worked off and on over a couple of months. There were several more pockets that had some nice smokies.Almost all of these pockets had one nice smoky at the top(although sometimes it would be heavily damaged and then would have a mixture as listed above. Along with the pockets there were many small vugs that would hold a crystal or two although these were usually smaller crystals. There were many crystal faces along the seems that were discarded because of the poor quality. Some of the smokies had a clear apatite druse covering parts of the crystal faces. Below are a couple of smoky quartz that came out of the first quartz pod.

two views of the same smoky quartz crystal
overall dimensions are 16cm x 12cm

two views of the same same smoky quartz crystal
overall dimensions are 9cm x 10cm
note: clear apatite druse on bottom crystal

Turkey Troubles

Spring 2008. The turkeys are coming! The turkeys are coming! There are many farm fields that surround the Havey so it is a common occurence to see turkeys. You can tell that they visit the mine occasionally because of the stray feathers that they leave. Once in a while you will see them on the way in and sometimes, if there are no engines running, you can hear them gobbling. This spring a mother hen decided to make her nest right beside the road to the mine, so every time anyone went in or out she would crouch down so to camouflage herself. If you didn't know right where to look she was hard to find. She did nest far enough away so that while I was working I did not disturb her. Finally, coming in one day most of the eggs were hatched is she and her brood were gone.

The turkeys have left the area.

 Now that the bulk of the excess material was out of the mine I could continue cleaning up the remaining area and see where the best place would be to start mining. Of course I needed access into the mine for the equipment, so this meant that there was a certain amount of area that I would not be able to look at as easily. The pegmatite workshop had asked to come to the mine so I wanted to expose and clean off as much ledge as possible. I am still  new at this and can use some knowledgable eyes to look and give me some direction. As it turned out the most promising areas so far were to be under the road. As I kept narrowing up the road I was able to remove a fair amount of loose rock. The last time the Havey was mined in the mid 1970's Terry Szenics was having a loader come in and remove the loose rock. While using this machine was optimal at the time, it was not able to rip all of the fractured rock that may have still been bound together after the blast. Now, using an excavator equipped with a ripper tooth I was able to tear down through an additional 1' to 3' of loosened  rock. In doing this I was exposing some new ground that hadn't been seen.

Access ramp into the mine. Note the basalt dike on the left hand side of the picture.

All of a sudden some 10 to 20lb blocks of purple lepidolite started to come up. Much of the lepidolite from the Havey is a fine grained purple and takes an excellent polish. It was time to take a closer look. I didn't always have a camera handy and this was one of those times. There was a lot of cleavelandite beside the lepidolite and upon closer inspections in some of the vugs (small open spaces in the rock) there were some small quartz crystals. If you go by what the books say, things were looking mighty fine.Yes, I was excited. As I slowly cleaned off the area the lepidolite mass kept growing in size until it was over 3' long. There was montebrasite, muscovite, beryl, quartz, and the lepidolite that went from purple to green. This was the place to be. The electric hammerdrill came out in hopes of finding a pocket, but it was not meant to be. I covered it up at the end of the day and although I would expose it periodically I would not mine this exact area for another 16 months.

The first large mass of lepidolite that I exposed at the Havey. Montebrasite at the top right of the greenish lepidolite.
Two rock hounds not having much luck finding the tourmaline.

Shortly after finding the lepidolite mass, the folks from the Pegmatite Workshop showed up. There were between 30 and 40 people with many varied interests. From novices who knew less than I up through some with doctorates in their field of study. It was interesting to listen to some of the scientific debate on the geology of what is going on at the Berry-Havey quarry. Aside from the area I was working, it was pointed out again that some areas on the opposite side of the quarry looked promising for pocket formation. Listening to some of the different ideas  it emphasized the more you know the more you realize you don't know.

Mining for Feldspar

Think for a minute what it must have been like when they were mining the Havey back in the early 1900's. There were no dump trucks or excavators or air drills that they were using. It was mostly manual labor. At the Havey he had a crew of 10 Italian laborers working the mine for feldspar (feldspar is the coating that is on porcelain fixtures and china plates). They were drilling by hammering a steel drill bit and turning it a quarter turn with each hit. I don't know how long this took to drill a hole but I am sure it was just this side of forever. After the blast, the material was broken up with hammers and put in wheelbarrows and the waste would be piled up out of the way or dumped over an embankment. The feldspar was then loaded and transported approximately 3 miles by horse and wagon to the Littlefield Station in Auburn and ground down and put on train cars. If this was what mining was today I would not be there. With the mechanical help that is available today, the work that I can do by myself on a part time basis is more than their whole crew of ten men could do. If you are interested in finding out more about Maine feldspar production there are several USGS publications available if you do a search under Google's book section.

Miners working for feldspar in the early 1900's location unknown. This would have been very typical of the Havey mine operation.   Photo from The Maine Feldspar Company promotional brochure

A large derrick used for lifting. Probably a pile of feldspar in the foreground.  
Photo from The Maine Feldspar Company promotional brochure

A larger operation with a steam drill. You can also see the basket of material being lifted by the derrick.  
Photo from The Maine Feldspar Company promotional brochure                 

Feldspar has no value in Maine at this point in time even though the product is still used. There are cheaper sources to get it. Many times the miners would avoid the areas where the minerals were because the feldspar was of poorer quality in these areas. If you love Maine minerals and/or gemstones, just be thankful that there was an active feldspar industry up through the 1950's in Maine exposing many of the things that we treasure today. Some of the minerals and gems were just a waste product to the feldspar mining. If not for the feldspar mining, many mineral and gem areas may not have been discovered. People are still finding great things in some of these old abandoned workings.

A late winter

Winter 2007-2008 Winter had come and it was time to do some additional research on the Havey. The advent of the internet is a wonderful thing. I was able to start to track down some of the articles that had been printed about the mine. Some of the info I sent away for was in books, magazines and newspaper articles. It is much more efficient to sit behind the desk and look up some piece of history than to travel halfway across the country to find a possible paragraph.Of course, at this point in time I haven't been able to find all that I want, but they keep putting new info online and since much of the information I am looking for is from the beginning of the 1900's, it is going to take a while before it is available. Many times in finding one piece of information, it has lead to one or more other leads. My list of potential news sources keeps getting longer instead of shorter.

I had high ambitions of getting in and starting to mine early. Of course mother nature didn't care how eager I was. We had as much snow piled up as I can remember. I brought up the excavator in early March and started pushing the snow out of the road. It was over 4 feet deep in spots. I cleared out enough snow to be able to drive to the mine and turn the truck around. The spring started off cold which didn't help melt the snow. I did push some snow out of the way and this helped a bit. When Frank Perham and Barry Heath were over late last fall they had pointed out several areas that they thought looked promising. They also said that the indicators that I had for finding tourmaline were better than what they were mining at the moment. Why can't that cursed snow melt?

Road to mine. Spring 2008

Since the island area received a lot of sun I cleaned the snow off from it. This would give me a chance to look around it some more while I waited for the snow to melt in the rest of the quarry. There are some interesting indicators here, but I didn't find much. Since I had some time to kill I continued work on cleaning off the western part of the quarry as it also was getting the spring sun. This part of the Havey hadn't seen any work for almost 100 years. It would be interesting to see what they had buried.

Mid March 2008...looking across a corner of the Berry mine into the Havey

 Before I could make much progress I needed to get the excess material out of the mine.To kill two birds with one stone I decided to take the smaller material that was in the mine and use it to help build up my road into the mine. The road was fine when it was dry but it would rut up during the wet seasons. There was also the issue of water running down the road. I put in several culverts and built most of the road up a foot. There were only a couple of areas that had some minor problems at this point but it was good enough for a mine road. When I have more material there will be quite a bit more work I can do to help improve it. Being an excavation contractor I have high expectations of having a good access road. If any of you have driven into some of the quarries you know what a rough ride is. Some of this is for bragging rights on who has the worst road to their mine, and, of course, miners had much rather be mining than repairing roads.

Moving in the Excavator

Fall 2007 With the trees cut in the primary area to be worked it was time to bring in the machinary and start to remove the remnants of some of the past mining. The first thing was to get the excavator into the mine. I would need to level out one of the tailings piles and try to make a gradual slope down into the mine. This material was from the early 1900's mining era. Much of the pile actually turned out to be sandy material that would have been overburden.  In some areas of the quarry there is, and was, as much as 10' of overburden before getting to hard ledge. In the early 1900's this would have needed to be taken off with hand shovels and wheel barrows, and moved as short a distance as possible. I did separate out the rock and periodically looked through it to see if they might have missed something, but the pile was barren. It was a rather short process to get the excavator into the mine but it would be a much longer process removing all the existing loose rock out of the mine. After getting access in, one of the first things was to grab the brush with the excavator and haul it out of the mine. The excavator had a thumb, so getting the brush out was a pretty easy process. There were areas that needed to be smoothed out and  I needed to move some of the larger rock out of the way so that I could get to the brush that was piled up throughout the mine. This job went so much easier with equipment.

Sand and glacial till overburden in the Berry Quarry

Next was to start removing all the loose rock that was in the mine. I had figured that there was probably just a small amount of loose rock in the mine, but as I progressed, that didn't seem to be the case at all. In some places the loose material was 5 or 6' deep. With the material this deep it was going to create a large amount of material that would need to be moved out.  I started at one of the farthest points from my access road and started pulling the material toward the access road so that I could haul it out of the mine. At the same time I brought up a pump and started to wash down the areas that I was cleaning off. This would be a slow process, and, as I stated before I didn't know a lot about mining so I was doing a lot of inspecting. One thing about washing is that it brings out the color if there is any. Anytime I hit a piece of lepidolite, beryl, or tourmaline with the water, the color would jump right out. Of course, any of the tourmaline I was finding was of poor quality, with most of it being in muscovite. Still, it was exciting to see. It is exciting to see an area cleaned off, wondering what you will find. I started in an area I call 'the island'; this was an area left over from the Havey mining era. They had a derrick sitting on it at one time, and they had removed material all around it leaving this area high. Washing this area down I started to see areas of  lepidolite, cleavelandite, schorl, beryl, quartz, and feldspar. Upon closer inspection, it looked like the quartz area might be vuggy. This prompted me to bring out the generator and hammer drill to help loosen things up some. I did find a few small quartz crystals and some poorly formed smokies. This was a start. With some of the indicator minerals that were showing, I  was having visions of a tourmaline pocket next... but that was to be a while in coming.

Finally I had a good portion of the area washed down. I gave the godfather of Maine pegmatites, Frank Perham, a call to see if he would come over and give me some pointers. He showed up with his mining partner, Barry Heath, and took a tour. Frank has been around pegmatites his whole life, with his father starting the world famous mineral store, Perham's of Maine. Frank had been around in the mid 1970's when the Havey had been worked and was aware of what had transpired at the time. Rumor has it Frank may have even told Havey where to put in a blast or two in 1910.

I continued to wash and explore, but it was getting late in the year. The area of the mine where I have been working does not get very much sun during the winter hours. With nights well below freezing and the day time highs only getting near 40ºF, it was time to call it a season. I didn't have a tremendous amount to show for it, but a lot was learned and I had another year to look forward to when, hopefully, the Havey would start producing pockets of wonderful crystal specimens.

Photo by Encar Roda Robles.       Frank Perham and I, heavy in discussion

Let the Cutting Begin

Summer 2007 Before getting too far along in the mining process, I had to get permission from the town to work the mine. This involved the full-blown permitting, going in front of the planning board, and getting their okay to start mining. With some help, a good presentation was put together and my request was passed unanimously. Then the physical work began, and much of it there was. Although there were few large trees to contend with there were many, many small trees that needed to be removed so that I could start to clean the ledge off of the rock debris and see what I was up against. There was also a need to find a new access into the mine and this was going to be a challenge. The old access had been through the Berry mine and where the access was, was now a 20’ deep hole filled with water. The old access also went across property which I didn’t own. The most likely spot for the new access was through one of the old tailing piles which would need to be removed, and I developed a plan for creating the new access. Now that I had a plan it was time to start cutting all the trees and removing them. This was slow, hard and hot work as it was mid summer when I started. The terrain was very difficult to work, with steep drop offs and large boulders to work around. I did most of it by myself although occasionally I would find another hand to help.

Clearing off one of the old tailing piles in preparation for my new access into the mine

The inside of the mine involved the most tree work but it was also necessary to clear out the parking area and to clear up the edges of the road coming in. My estimate is that 80% of mining is doing laborious work and the other 20% involves mining the fun stuff. If you aren't willing to spend days, weeks, and months working on non productive areas, then you are probably not suited to mine.

Almost done cutting September 2007

It was not all work; I would usually spend some time every day taking a closer look at the rock and to try and figure out what was going on. There were areas that I could clean off with a small amount of shoveling and  other areas where I could peel off the moss and get a look at some clean rock. I didn't get any pictures of some of the first indicators. In truth, there weren't any areas that were jumping out and saying, "Dig here". I didn't spend a lot of time trying to dig through the loose rock as I had plans to bring in an excavator and start removing the loose material.

Getting some education

Summer 2007 When I purchased the Havey it had been 30 years since it had seen any heavy work. I am sure there was the occasional rock hound that had come in for a look, but it was hard to be able to see much as it was overgrown and all the outer rock had a weathered patina. Before work started in the adjacent Berry quarry  in the mid 90’s, it was almost a forgotten site after having had such a glorious past.

Looking into the mine at the beginning of summer 2007

Another thing, although just a minor issue, is that I didn’t know the first thing about mining for minerals. Before purchasing the Havey I had never even visited a mineral mine, but I wasn't about to let a small thing like that slow me down. I am a hands-on learner so it was 'all hands on deck'.  Before purchasing the quarry I had done some research on the Havey and had started studying several books on Maine minerals. There had been some major finds of tourmaline around 1910 and this piqued my interest. I own an excavation company, so I wasn’t completely ignorant about what I was up against as far as moving rock and how to approach the work. Of course that was easy to say then, not realizing how little I knew about minerals; even now I have much to learn. One thing I can say is that the people that are associated with mining in Maine have been more than generous with their time and knowledge in helping me head in the right direction. There will be more on that later.

Although you can't tell from this picture, it looked  promising when it was cleaned off.

In doing some internet research on Maine mining I came across a website for the Maine Pegmatite Workshop  to be held in Maine in late May of that year. This sounded like just what the doctor ordered. It would be in an intensive one week program doing classroom study in the morning and a field trip to a different local mine every day with some pretty interesting and educated people. I signed up and waited impatiently for the time to arrive to start my education. In the meantime I headed up to the Maine Mineral Symposium held in Augusta. This is a weekend-long event with talks, displays, dealers, and field trips. If you are interested in Maine minerals this is one of the annual big events that you don't want to miss. Many of the state's and region's important mineral people are here. This is a great event to catch up with what is going on in the state. I have found that most miners don't venture too far from their own mines during the working season, and we don't get much of a chance to see one another.

Finally, the day of the workshop arrives and it turns out to be a great learning experience. Sure, for someone starting out, some of the geology and the technical terms were a little on the heavy side, but most of the material was covered in a way that made it understandable. It was great to go inside Mount Mica, see it firsthand, and hear the stories about some of the different pockets. To sit around and talk with the legend Frank Perham is a treat that anyone that has an interest in pegmatites should do. He has seen things that most of us can only dream of, and his story telling is unmatched (although he has been known to stray from the subject matter). Either one of these things alone is worth the price for the week. Of course, there is much more to do and see. It was a great week of a hands-on experience and has given me a knowledge base to work from. After a week at Peg camp the one thing I came away with is: no two pegmatites are alike. For me to find out what was in the Havey, I would have to get working. 

	Venue: Poland Mining Camps Poland, Maine, USA May 28 to June 3, 2011 Introduction and Details!
An Educational Week of Classroom, Field Study and Collecting, Studying Granitic Pegmatites in Maine. Presented by Dr. William "Skip" Simmons - University of New Orleans and Faculty of the MP2 Research Group. If you want to be placed on our emailing list for updates, or need further information, please let us know by email.! Fresh from a pocket: Smoky Quartz with parallel growth habit, Citrine Quartz, Smoky Quartz Location: known, classified, but from Maine. You will get to see some of this material if you attend! ©Raymond Sprague, 2011

In the beginning

Although it is 2011 and I am starting a blog on the Havey Quarry, I am going to begin back in 2007 when I first started working the mine so that you are able to see the transformation. Before I start there I will give you a brief history of the Havey. The quarry is actually two different properties, one side being the Berry quarry and the other the Havey quarry. It has stayed this way since mining began here. The workings have overlapped during different periods of time so looking down from a birds eye view it would appear as one continuous quarry.  

Google overhead view of the Berry-Havey mine May 2010.
Active Havey mine is SSW of the pond which is in the Berry Mine

A.R. Berry started mining feldspar in the mid 1890’s. F. L. Havey was a foreman at Mount Apatite mining for feldspar and could see Berry working his property. He must have liked what he saw because he got a lease and started mining the adjacent property around 1902. He worked it off and on until 1910 when he purchased the property. It is believed that he bought it outright in anticipation of hitting tourmaline. 1910 -1912 brought repeated pockets of high quality tourmaline, and then, for unknown reasons, he seemed to just give up on the mine and worked for feldspar in Topsham, over 20 miles away. The news of the finds were written up in newspapers all over the country.  In the mid 70’s it was worked for one year without any major finds and then lay dormant until I opened it up in 2007. The Berry has been worked from the mid 90’s on with some success over the years.

Sterrett, D. B. USGS 497

A. R. Berry feldspar and gem quarry; one and one-half miles south 48 degrees east of Minot, Maine. 
Northwest towards quarry on hill.  F. L. Havey lease on left. 
Androscoggin County, Maine.  June 1913
Note the miner's shacks on the left of the picture. The large maple is still alive, but barely. 

Sterrett, D. B. USGS 499

A.R. Berry feldspar and gem quarry looking north-northwest over F. L. Havey lease. 
Gems found in pockets in foreground.  Best feldspar in further end. 
Androscoggin County, Maine.  June 1913.      Some of these features haven't changed.