Our last day in Colorado we had 2 fun locations to visit; first of was the Florissant Fossil Quarry, in Florissant and then later in the afternoon, we were to meet up with Joe Doris to film the extraction of some amazonites from a pockect in the 2 Point Mine (The Collector’s Edge).
When we first came through Florissant at the begining of our Colorado adventure, Justin made arrangments with Nancy Clare Anderson to film her family’s quarry (Florrissant Fossil Quarry) and the nearby shop (Nature’s Wealth) when we came back through.
The fossils found in these beds date from over 35 million years ago, in the Eocene Epoch era. Volcanic eruptions deposited ash in the lakes in the area, creating very detailed fossils of plants, fish, bugs and birds.
Here you see a picture of the famous bird fossil Nancy found a few years ago, along with fossil collecting kits that are available onsite.
Lucky for us Dr. Bill Dexter Ph.D (Dr. Dexter’s Mineral World) happened to be visiting with his family, so he was happy to identify specimens and explain the quarry and other Colorado collecting sites to us.
The Florrisant Fossil Quarry has been in the Clare family for over 50 years. They are open for public collecting daily 10-4 in the summer and by appointment. While we were there several groups of people arrived to come collect fossils from North America’s most diverse fossil location. Either Nancy (in picture) or her mother Toni will be on site to instruct visitors on how to make the most out of there visit.
The fossils here are so plentiful, that I found tons of stuff from the pieces pulled out of the shale piles.
Nancy and Toni showed us some of the awesome specimens that had been recently found there.
After bidding farewell to everyone at the fossil quarry, we headed out to meet Joe Dorris (Glacier Peak Art, Gems & Minerals) for a tour of the Crystal Peak area. Joe is a long time miner of Colorado himself, but he also works with the Collector’s Edge in the mining of some of their claims. The Collector’s Edge is THE prominent mining operation in Colorado, and has over 13 years of expirience in mining and exploration, so we were extremely excited to get to see one of their commercial specimen extracting operations at work.
Joe had told us that he had saved a pocket of smoky quartz and amazonite at “2 Point Mine” that they had uncovered a few days before.
On the way up to the mine, Joe gave us an over view of the area, and explained the particulars of various claims. Not being from the area, this was very interesting and quite informative.
When we first arrived George was welding the boom of one of the back hoes. I had never seen anyone welding a backhoe boom back together, so I had to get a photo.
Justin filmed an overview of the loaction and then we climbed down into the pit to check out the amazonite pocket.
Joe started loosening the crystals up, and then he left Justin and I take turns removing the amzonite and smokies from the pocket, piece by piece.
One has to be patient, and diligent making sure to take out every crystal or terminated top piece so that they can be reassembled back in Golden at the Collector’s Edge state of the art cleaning & preparation lab.
After cleaning out the pocket, Joe decided to get George Quist show us how the heavy machinery was used to uncover pockets.
With persistance and old fashioned hard work Joe and George uncovered an even bigger & better pocket after a couple days of digging.
**To read about the “Dragon’s Mouth Pocket” check out Joe Dorris’s article mirrored on The-Vug.com**
Colorado Columbine
