I have known about the Penfield Quarry for a long time, and have always wanted to visit it. Even before I got into rockhounding. Ellison Park, a local park that I have hiked many times, borders on the quarry, and I always wanted to go explore it. But I haven’t wanted to trespass on private property.
My wife and I joined a local rock club, and they had a field trip to the Penfield Quarry today. I had loaded most of the stuff in the car last night. We had to be at the quarry at 6:45am. I set my alarm for 5:15, and was awake before it went off. I get up, and vegged for a while and then got dressed, and finished loading the car. I brought all the tools I thought I might need. Basically the same kind of stuff I took to dig for Herkimer Diamonds. Sledges, bullpoint chisel, crack hammers, screens, pick axe, wedges, etc. I also packed our new hard hats. And we both wore our new steel toed boots.
We arrived at the quarry a little after 6:30 and there were a bunch of people already there. We hung out by our car, not sure what to do. Eventually we saw people heading inside the building, so we followed them. We signed a release form. Then it was time to head down into the quarry. We headed back to our car, and followed the line of cars to the area with filled with boulders.
We donned our hardhats, and headed to look at the boulders. We weren’t sure what to do, so we watched other people. I knew we were after fluorite, but I wasn’t sure what I was looking for. I had seen pictures in my books, but that didn’t help. I asked a couple guys, and they said the fluorite was in vugs. Okay. So we got our tools, and started busting rock. I was splitting open cracks. We pretty much only found dolomite, these little white crystals. We moved to a different area, and were busting on some rocks. I found a big rock that was already cracked. I worked at splitting it open more to see what was inside. More dolomite and calcite. I managed to tear some skin off of one of my fingers, and came close to breaking one of my legs when the rock I was standing on moved. Oh the fun of it!
Someone found something and everyone got excited. I went down to look at it was a tiny crystal that sort of looked like a short brown pine needle. Apparently it is rare.
We also found some selenite which was kind of cool looking. I found a big yellowish cystal on top of some dolomite as well as some tiny clear crystals. I showed them to a couple other guys who looked like they knew what they were doing. these turned out to be calcite. It looked different than the calcite we found at the herkimer mines. Then we found a tiny brown crystal mixed in with dolomite. I showed it to one of the geology students, and he told me what it was. I thought it started with “sph” and ended with “ite”. Not sure. I looked in my books when I got home. Maybe he said it was a Sphalerite. We found another one as well.
Then I found a piece covered with dolomite, and a tiny speck of purple. It almost looked like an amethyst. I showed it to the geology student and he said it was fluorite and got all excited at this tiny bit. I commented that I thought that it would be larger. I showed him where I thought I got it, and he asked if he could work the rock. I told him go ahead. He worked it for a bit, then moved on.
We kept working at vugs and breaking rocks. A little while later, I found part of a crystal with some blue in it. This was larger. I showed it to another guy and he said it was fluorite. I went back and found there was more under where I found the piece. I set about with the crack hammer and bullpoint chisel to break away the rock around the fluorite. It was tough. I didn’t want to destroy the flourite. I worked my way in towards the fluorite. The big piece of fluorite was already broken into smaller pieces, and I started pulling out the pieces. We collected a handfull of fluorite pieces. We showed them to the college student. He and his friends ooohed and ahhed over the pieces. I showed them where I got it. There was still a little bit left showing. I let them have the rock. He and he friends went to work trying to break it apart.
My wife and I were hungry and tired, so we headed home. We will probably try to come back next time they let people in. It was kind of fun.
