Gold

specimen number:
2063588

location:
Idarado Mine, San Miguel Co., Colorado, USA

description:
A cut slab through a section of ore very rich throughout with native gold. The specimen comes with a previous label from the collection of Ray DeMark.

Located near Telluride in the San Juan Mountains of San Miguel County, Colorado, the Idarado Mine is a legendary hydrothermal vein deposit formed during Miocene igneous activity, when metal-bearing fluid filled fault fissures within volcanic and caldera collapse structures. Consolidated in 1939 from historic claims like the Treasury Tunnel and Black Bear Mine, the operation produced extensive gold, silver, copper, lead, and zinc until its closure in 1978. The mine became celebrated among mineral collectors for yielding world-class cabinet specimens, including lustrous brass-yellow chalcopyrite crystals sitting on sparkling quartz matrices, translucent green fluorite, rhodonite, and complex sulfosalt minerals. Today, active underground mining has ceased and the site has undergone extensive environmental reclamation, but historic specimens from the Idarado remain prized treasures in mineral collections worldwide.

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