Ive got an old tourmaline mine...

[abishiai]

I've got an old tourmaline mine...

We've got some property down in San Diego county that has an old tourmaline mine. The property is a hill with a big vein of quartz running through it. The mine shaft goes into the mountain about 30 ft.

How do you mine for tourmaline?
Do we start taking rocks and smashing them?
How do we recognize the good stuff if we find it?

It's probably pretty safe to assume there isn't a whole lot there since whoever dug the shaft into that big quartz vein stopped and the mine is abandoned. But it would be fun to take my kids down there on the weekend and go looking for pretty rocks.

Thanks for any advice.

Cheer,

kp

 

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[Bulletboy]

Re: I've got an old tourmaline mine...

Some mines weren't abandon for lack of product. During WWII non essential mining was curtailed and the men went to war or went to mine necessary product or the war effort. San Deigo county has produce lots of gemstones.

 

[blazen70]

Re: I've got an old tourmaline mine...

An interesting book to read is "Exploring And Mining Gems & Gold In The West" by Fred Rynerson. The book is about the author's experiences mining and cutting gems in San Diego County, mainly tourmaline during the early 1900's.

 

[kdummett]

Re: I've got an old tourmaline mine...

I spent a lot of time crawling all over the hills in San Diego County looking for sources of tourmalines. The area around Escondido is notorious for its production of that mineral. As a matter of fact there are only two places in the whole world where pink tourmaline is found. The mines in Pala, (The Stewart mine, and the Tourmaline Queen ) have been producing all sorts of gems for quite a while. As I understand it you need to tunnel mine to get to the pockets of gemstones in the pegmatite dykes. I would suggest that you go to the Gems of Pala and stop in to the shop there. The people there will fill you in on what to do and what to look for. One amazing fact I learned about San Diego County. There are more types of gems to be found there than any place on earth. Gems such as Tourmaline (pink , blue, green and purple) Topaz, Beryl, Morganite, Kunzite are just but a few. You are extreemly fortunate to have bought some property that even has a pegmatite dyke. It would be well worth the effort to have a professional geologist survey the mine.

Cheers