[Rockhounds] Falls Fossil Festival

[Carolyn Reynard]

Where is the Falls Fossil Festival?


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Alan Goldstein" <deepskyspy at insightbb.com>
To: <rockhounds at lists.drizzle.com>
Sent: Sunday, September 16, 2007 9:46 PM
Subject: [Rockhounds] Falls Fossil Festival


Well, the 13th Falls Fossil Festival is history. Saturday was busy, Sunday
was quieter but still steady. The weather was perfect. We had a 15 minute
downpour about an hour before the show started this morning - with one clap
of thunder.

The star of the Festival this year was the "Mineral Collecting Pile" from
the fluorspar district. Someone told me a geology club came up from
Lexington, KY specifically to collect in the pile! I would guess that of the
15 tons in the pile, well over a ton of rock was removed from it yesterday
and another nearly another ton was taken out today! It is really rich in
minerals. I picked up a nice cube (which I gave to a volunteer) because
there is a lot of sand-size particles mixed in that help protect crystals
from being pulverized to dust. A child picked up a partial crystal (yellow &
purple with chalcopyrite inclusions) that could be chipped into a decent
size octahedron. One woman found an 8" rock with yellow fluorite that
contained a vug with a beautiful 5mm spray of strontianite. That had to be
from the Minerva No. 1 mine. I've still got my specimens in HCl, but will
check on them tomorrow. Next year we may bring down two truck loads - 30
tons - of material. You can't even tell anything was removed from the dump
in Rosiclare. It looks like it has been scraped, but not excavated.

The Waldron shale fossil pile wasn't attacked nearly as much, so it ought to
produce some excellent fossils over the next year.

The 2008 Falls Fossil Festival is Sept. 20 & 21.

Alan

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