Silver, Copper: White Pine mine, Ontonagon County, Michigan, USA
Silver, Copper: White Pine mine, Ontonagon County, Michigan, USA
Description
Species: Silver, Copper
Locality: White Pine mine, White Pine, Ontonagon County, Michigan, USA
Dimensions: 18 x 15 x 3 cm.
SOLD
Michigan’s White Pine mine is known for it’s superb and distinctive specimens of native copper, native silver, calcite, chalcocite, and more. It was the last mine to operate in the Keweenaw Peninsula Copper District, closing in 1995. This is an outstanding large, aesthetic branching group of well-formed copper crystals festooned in one area with large, blocky native silver crystals to over 1 cm. These type of blocky modified dodecahedral silver crystals are very unusual for the White Pine mine, as are the fairly 3-dimensional copper crystals.. most copper and silver specimens from this mine grew between layers of the Nonesuch Shale, a thinly-laminated rock that resulted in delicate, dendritic copper and silver specimens. This is a great White Pine mine specimen for the serious collector of Michigan Copper Country minerals. It stands upright on its own thanks to a small wooden custom base. From the noted collection of Lance T. Hampel and later the A.E. Seaman mineral museum. Mark Cross photo. Classic!
