May 2002

Field Trip to Fleminsburg Kentucky -- George Heaton

We had only 5 people show up for our visit to the Hanson Aggregates Quarry at Flemingsburg Kentucky on Saturday, June 1st. This included four from the Lansing Michigan Club and two Friends of Mineralogy members. George Heaton counted for both Lansing and F.O.M. The quarry manager who would normaly lead us into the quarry and show us where we would be allowed to collect had taken the day off so we asked if we could go to the area of the old quarry where the quarry management had taken us last year and where we had found very good collecting. They then gave us directions in how to get there. This part of the old pit is now filled with a small lake, but the upper rock layers containing the mineral filled vugs are exposed around the lake shore.

We had only collected there about an hour and a half when two men showed up claiming that one of them was the land owner and that they thought we were fishing. We explained that we thought it was quarry property because the quarry people had taken us here last year to collect, and the quarry had a pump house at the site. The property owner was afraid of liability and still did not want us collecting there, but the other man said he would take us to his part of the property and we could collect there. The rock in this man’s part of the property seemed to have very few vugs and the collecting was very poor. A few nice specimens were found in the first location. As usual the weather was good and we did not get rain until it was time to leave.