July 2001

JULY Wallace Quarry – George Heaton

Our July field trip was to the Wallace Quarry near BayPort Michigan on Saturday July 14th. The visit to the Wallace Quarry was made possible thanks to the efforts of Bob Frost who made the arrangements for us. This proved to be a very popular trip, attracting at least 25 or more people. So many I failed to get an accurate count. I think we had about 8 or 10 Friends of Mineralogy members and the rest were from my Lansing club plus a few guests.

Mr Bronson, the quarry manager, did not allow us to visit the north end of the quarry where most of the brown and iridescent calcite is found, and he wanted us all to stay together with Bob Frost. We spent all of our time in the part of the quarry where the small millerite geodes are found. With a bit of hard work, removing the blocks of rock from the top of the quarry wall to get down to the thin mudstone layer where these little geodes are most plentiful, some of us were able to collect quite a few of these little nodules. Most of these nodules are solid but a few will be hollow, quartz lined geodes and some of these will contain other minerals including millerite.