Field Trip
Report:
Field Trip Report:
Glendon Pyrite!
Standard Mineral Company
Glendon, N.C.
October 9th, 2010
Text and photos by: Lee Fleming
The Standard Mineral Company's Glendon Mine field trip began early Saturday morning. The rockhounds began arriving before 7:00 AM and lined Glendon – Carthage Road on both sides. Austin and I were surprised at the low number of people who arrived early; but it kept the number of cars on the shoulder to a minimum. In the past, the early arrivals had caused problems with traffic on the state road in front of the mine entrance. Finally, at about 7:30 the mine representatives arrive and opened the gate. Instead of the normal flood of people who wanted to sign the mine’s release form, we kept the crowd under control and the entrance was orderly.
The morning was cool with temperatures in the upper 40's. Within minutes, a crowd had gathered at the MAGMA welcome center and the crowd listened to a safety talk from the trip leader and the mine representative. The safety rules were read and discussed and it was stressed that everyone must be out of the mine at 3:00 that afternoon.
Lee Fleming with Mine rep Cody Melchin.
Immediately after the talk, the attendees entered the mine and it became covered with people searching for pyrite and fluorite. Those with metal detectors, were finding the pyrite with no problem and there was enough material to be found by surface collecting to let people find a lot of the pyrite cubes. As can be seen in the following picture, it was evident why so much pyrite was being found – the mine had blasted the bottom of the pit and left great quantities of material laying everywhere.
As the morning went on, people began to find that the pyrite was to be found in several veins in the bottom layer of the mine. Hammers, chisels, sledges and other extracting tools were used to free the large cubes from the base material. Since the pyrite was found in the broken rock, the people were scattered over the whole mine pit bottom.
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