Dwarves' Earth Treasures Online
Museum:
Central Datolites
Central & Central
Exploratory Mines, Keeweenaw Co.,
Michigan
Field-collecting Status:
Central Mine is owned by Copper Country rock club, open to
responsible collecting (no littering!)
Central Exploratory is a
private property and piles are mostly gone: Collect at
one's own risk.
The
Central Mine was one of the longest running fissure mine which
is an unusual case since the fissure-based mines tend to be
short lived. It's well known for so much copper produced from
the mine. The datolites are not common there and once they're
found, they tend to be colorless. There was a story of how a
Central miner took a fancy to the datolites and he collected
any datolites he find as he hauled the rocks up from the
underground mines. So it's possible to see any white and
coarse grained Central datolites in the old collections.
The Central
Exploratory Mine is an exploratory mine to the south to test its
potential for copper mining and there had been some mining
efforts there that bought copper, silver and datolites up to the
surface. The datolites are mostly white and some are dotted with
black spots. I have yet to see any colorful datolites coming
from the site since the datolites recently showed up during the
bulldozing of Central Exploratory piles. There are nearby mines
such as Northwestern, St. Clair and Dana and few datolites
appeared to have been found there.
Click on for larger map.
You can click on the pictures to see larger pictures.
Central Fissure Mine
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I actually found this at the end of Washington Mine
Road. Construction crew brought the rocks from Central to
pave the dirty road. A find of copper chisel chip found at
the same place also confirmed its location.
August 2010 |
Classic Datolite
from Central #2
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Coarse grained datolite
Central Mine |
Central Exploratory Mine
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Interesting colors
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Typical white datolite
Found by Jeffrey A. August 2010 |
With dots and faint yellow hue,
Found by Jeffrey A. August 2010 |
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Dotted with some orange coloration.
Found by Jeffrey A. August 2010 |
Gray with faint greenish hue
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Gray with faint greenish hue |
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Larger size with red dots
all over
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Unusual specimen
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