Halite

specimen number:
2062787

location:
Trona, San Bernardino Co., California, USA

description:
A grouping of light pink lustrous sharp cubic slightly translucent halite crystals, the largest measuring to 3.0 cm in size. No matrix, crystallized all around. The specimen comes with a previous label from the collection of Ray DeMark.

Trona and the adjacent dry Searles Lake bed in San Bernardino County sit within a desert basin shaped by ancient ice age runoff and intense regional evaporation, creating one of the world's richest natural deposits of saline minerals. Mining and collecting history here began in the late 19th century with the discovery of borax, eventually expanding into massive industrial recovery of multiple compounds alongside famous mineral collecting events like the local Gem-O-Rama. The halite found in the lake brines frequently forms striking cubic and hopper crystal structures. Its distinctive light pink color is caused by microscopic halophilic bacteria and algae trapped within the crystal matrix, which produce light-absorbing pigments to survive the extreme salinity and harsh solar radiation of the environment.

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