Quartz (Specimen #300005)

Mineral(s): Quartz 

Location: Helen-MacLeod Mine, McMurray and Chabanel Townships, Algoma District, Ontario   

Size: 12.6 x 10.4 x 7.4 cm  

Provenance: Ray Bernatchez Collection   

Description:  A very unique specimen of quartz with two generations of quartz in both radiating acicular crystal habit and tabular habit. The quartz crystals are striking and are resting on a brown siderite coated matrix. The quartz crystals are lustrous and translucent. These specimens are rare and only available from old collections. This specimen has only minor bruising. The specimen sits well for display.

The iron deposits north of Wawa Lake were discovered during the Michipicoten gold rush of the late 1890s. The first mine to come into production was the Helen Mine in 1897. Goethite was the principal ore body until [it] exhausted in 1918. Attention in 1939 was then directed to mining siderite ore. The Helen Mine remained an open pit operation until 1950 and in 1960 the George W. MacLeod Mine went into production next to the Helen Mine. Specimens came from both mines, and it is very difficult to distinguish locale – so specimens are labelled as the Helen-MacLeod Mine. The MacLeod Mine closed in December of 1997 as Algoma Steel announced that they could no longer support the high cost of extracting low-grade iron from Algoma Ore.