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Graves Mountain
You are here: MineralCollecting.org >> Posted Articles >> Article 1

Two separate trips were made to Graves in the summer of '99. We were forewarned that the heat would be unbearable. The first day of collecting turned out to be overcast and quite reasonable. The group entered the west pit via the road that winds around the lower west side of the mountain. We stopped initially at a few boulders near the lowest berm of the pit and then the group divided to take different routes from there. The day was decidedly uneventful until about 3p.m. when my dad and I walked over to the east pit. A few small holes had been dug into the floor of the second level of the east pit and my dad immediately recognized sparkles of variscite in the tailings. We also found small pieces of imbedded lazulite and suspected that this is what the original excavators were after. We were unable to determine out of which pit the variscite was coming. My dad poked around in the center pit and I sat down on the edge of the hole to his left, the hole farthest away from the road. It didn't take long for me to realize that the variscite had come from directly beneath where I was sitting. We removed about eight 5-gallon buckets full of material and filled a few more boxes just to make sure we had enough. I've cleaned only a handful of specimens but the material has already revealed the finest variscite crystals that I have seen. We also found woodhouseite, crandallite, barite, augelite, micro rutile, and lazulite. Particular cavities contained red variscite, due to rutile inclusions. Others contained blue variscite due to lazulite inclusions. Two or three masses of what we assume are variscite are a deep emerald green while the rest are pale free standing or densely clustered crystals. The material removed is all micro sized crystals.

The second trip was just about as rewarding as the first. We had a slightly larger group and the variscite pit was the main attraction. Some fine specimens were removed, though nothing like the first find. We widened and deepened the hole to at least double the size that we'd left it on the first trip. Unfortunately the variscite containing material tapped out by the end of the day. We dug down, dug over and dug out and found virtually nothing. All of this material remains in the basement except for a few pieces. I plan on posting pictures of the few specimens we've cleaned and will post further findings as I make them. ~~~Adam.

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