4.7" Clear Quartz Crystal Cluster - Arkansas

The Ron Coleman Mine is quartz mine located 4 1/2 miles NNW of Jessieville. Mineralization is quartz veins in Stanley Shale. This mine was and is the most productive quartz mine in Arkansas. It has been producing quartz crystals in large quantities since 1943. When it is operating it has produced about 60,000 pounds of quartz crystals a during a good month. In the 1980s the mine was sold to the Japanese to produce quartz for industrial purposes (fiber optics?). In the early 90s, Ronny Coleman bought the mine back from the Japanese and has operated it intermittently ever since.

Quartz is the name given to silicon dioxide (SiO2) and is the second most abundant mineral in the Earth's crust. Quartz crystals generally grow in silica-rich environments--usually igneous rocks or hydrothermal environments like geothermal waters--at temperatures between 100°C and 450°C, and usually under very high pressure. In either case, crystals will precipitate as temperatures cool, just as ice gradually forms when water freezes. Quartz veins are formed when open fissures are filled with hot water during the closing stages of mountain formation: these veins can be hundreds of millions of years old.