Rutile

specimen number:
2062790

location:
Champion Mine, Mono Co., California, USA

description:
Classic California specimen with several lustrous sharply formed crystals of rutile to 1.7 cm in size embedded up on a pyrophyllite matrix. This is in good condition, one of the crystals has slight natural contacting. The specimen comes with a previous label from the collection of Ray DeMark.

The Champion Mine, situated high on the western slopes of the White Mountains, features a unique geological deposit hosted within fault-sheared, steeply dipping felsic metavolcanic rocks. Originally developed in the early 1920s and operated through 1945 by the Champion Spark Plug Company, the site was primarily mined for massive andalusite lenses used to manufacture high-grade spark plug insulators and industrial ceramics. Raw ore was packed down steep mountain trails via mule trains before being shipped to industrial processing centers. Within the quartz and pyrophyllite alteration zones of the deposit, mineral collectors have prized the site for discovering distinct accessory minerals, notably featuring mirror-bright, deep red to dark crystals of rutile.

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