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This
gallery is a collection of Cornog Traprock Quarry specimens from an old
Pennsylvania collection. This is a trap rock quarry of precambrian
amphhibolite gneiss. It is an Alpine type deposit of Andularia, Byssolite,
Clinozoisite, Prehnite, Calcite, Pyrite, Smoky Quartz, Axinite, Titanite, and
rarely Apatite. The quarry is now flooded and no longer used. These
are the best by far of about five hundred specimens. Other specimens are
available from prices of $7 to $45. Some of these may be listed on a
future page.
February
2006
The following write up on the Mineral Record website (www.minrec.org) "Whats New in the Mineral World" by Thomas Moore:
Time now, courtesy of Lehigh Minerals, to familiarize ourselves with the
products of a long-gone Pennsylvania locality. Or, in the case of old
Pennsylvanians like the present writer, to re-familiarize ourselves with
a place which we may not have known well enough, or have visited often enough,
in the 1960's, when it last produced its distinctive, often superb specimens. I
refer to the Keystone quarry near the village of Cornog, Chester County, where
road-metal rock was taken from a banded hornblende gneiss with interlayered
amphibolite and lenses of blue quartz. Commercially active from 1908 to 1968,
the Keystone quarry had Alpine-type clefts from which came excellent (though
invariably iron oxide-stained) specimens of adularian orthoclase,
byssolitic actinolite, clinozoisite and prehnite. Very rarely,
too, its clefts gave up world-class crystal clusters of colorless and
transparent fluorapatite that, with their inclusions of acicular
actinolite, very closely resemble the fluorapatites of the famous Knappenwand,
Untersulzbachtal, Austria epidote occurrence. Lehigh Minerals recently
purchased a hoard of about 500 "Cornog" specimens from an old Pennsylvania
collection; previewed at last year's Denver show, the hoard, or anyway the best
of it, was posted on the website (www.lehighminerals.net)
just after the Tucson Show. Opaque milky white adularian orthoclase was found at
Cornog as curious-looking reticulated groups of spindle-shaped crystals, these
little clusters available with Lehigh as self-contained thumbnails or as
thick piles on matrix plates to 7 cm across. Inevitably, the fibrous "byssolite"
variety of actinolite accompanies the orthoclase, as cobwebby aggregates around
the bases of crystals and/or as individual, delicate, upstanding needles.
Clinozoisite comes as dense, parallel groups of very thin, lustrous, gray-green
prisms surrounded by byssolitic actinolite or, in a few specimens, as
individual, thicker prisms to 5.5 cm long. Spiky little crystals of yellow-green
prehnite to a few millimeters, and tiny goethite pseudomorphs after pyrite,
sometimes are seen also suspended in the actinolite clouds…but it grieves me to
say that this specimen lot includes no fluorapatite specimens (at least that we
are to know of). This is a suite which deserves checking-out, at the least for
elementary educational reasons, if not also because it may be your first and
last chance to score something from this significant, never well enough known,
locality. |
5hlkm02 ANDULARIA, BYSSOLITE
- $600
Keystone Trap Rock Quarry, Cornog, Chester County, Pennsylvania
7 x 3 x 3 cm
One of the top 5 pieces. This is an excellent specimen from Cornog. As far as damage: Upper photo upper right hand side looks to have some missing Andularia. Also you could find three or so tips of Andularia with a fraction of a millimeter missing. All is very minor on the overall condition is excellent and probably as good as they get. Display is excellent with no distraction from the minor areas I have mentioned. Some hairlike Byssolite present.
5hlkm03 ANDULARIA, BYSSOLITE - $75
Keystone Trap Rock Quarry, Cornog, Chester County, Pennsylvania
2 x 2 x 1.5 cm
5hlkm04 ANDULARIA, CLINOZOISITE,
BYSSOLITE - $600
Keystone Trap Rock Quarry, Cornog, Chester County, Pennsylvania
9 x 7 x 4.5 cm ok
5hlkm05 BYSSOLITE on BYSSOLITE
included CALCITE - $250
Keystone Trap Rock Quarry, Cornog, Chester County, Pennsylvania
6 x 4.5 x 4 cm
5hlkm06 ANDULARIA - $75
Keystone Trap Rock Quarry, Cornog, Chester County, Pennsylvania
23 x 19 x 6 mm
5hlkm07 PREHNITE, CLINOZOISITE,
BYSSOLITE - $350
Keystone Trap Rock Quarry, Cornog, Chester County, Pennsylvania
7.5 x 7.5 x 7 cm ok
5hlkm08 CLINOZOISITE, BYSSOLITE,
ANDULARIA - $100
Keystone Trap Rock Quarry, Cornog, Chester County, Pennsylvania
4 x 3 x 3 cm
5hlkm09 ANDULARIA - $600
Keystone Trap Rock Quarry, Cornog, Chester County, Pennsylvania
29 x 27 x 14 mm
5hlkm10 ADULARIA, BYSSOLITE,
CLINOZOISITE - $750
Keystone Trap Rock Quarry, Cornog, Chester County, Pennsylvania
25 x 9 x 6 cm
5hlkm11 PREHNITE, BYSSOLITE,
CLINOZOISITE - $100
Keystone Trap Rock Quarry, Cornog, Chester County, Pennsylvania
6 x 5 x 3 cm
5hlkm12 BYSSOLITE, CLINOZOISITE
- $150
Keystone Trap Rock Quarry, Cornog, Chester County, Pennsylvania
7 x 4.5 x 3.5 cm
5hlkm13 SAGENATED QUARTZ,
GOETHITE pseudo after PYRITE, CLINOZOISITE INCLUSIONS - $300
Keystone Trap Rock Quarry, Cornog, Chester County, Pennsylvania
8.5 x 6.5 x 3.5 cm
5hlkm14 ANDULARIA, BYSSOLITE - $100
Keystone Trap Rock Quarry, Cornog, Chester County, Pennsylvania
30 x 25 x 15 mm
5hlkm15 ANDULARIA, GOETHITE
pseudomorph after PYRITE - $500
Keystone Trap Rock Quarry, Cornog, Chester County, Pennsylvania
7 x 4.5 x 4 cm
5hlkm16 BYSSOLITE - $300
SOLD
Keystone Trap Rock Quarry, Cornog, Chester County, Pennsylvania
10 x 8 x 6 cm
5hlkm17 ANDULARIA, BYSSOLITE - $100
Keystone Trap Rock Quarry, Cornog, Chester County, Pennsylvania
3.5 x 2.5 x 1.5 cm
5hlkm18 ANDULARIA - $100
Keystone Trap Rock Quarry, Cornog, Chester County, Pennsylvania
3 x 3 x 1.5 cm
5hlkm19 SAGENATED QUARTZ,
BYSSOLITE - $350
Keystone Trap Rock Quarry, Cornog, Chester County, Pennsylvania
6.5 x 5.5 x 5.5 cm
5hlkm20 BYSSOLITE - $250
Keystone Trap Rock Quarry, Cornog, Chester County, Pennsylvania
11 x 7 x 6.5 cm
5hlkm21 ANDULARIA - $50
Keystone Trap Rock Quarry, Cornog, Chester County, Pennsylvania
17 x 15 x 8 mm
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