According to the book Earth Treasures Volume 1-The Northeasten Quadrant, there is supposed to be labradorite at Canadice Lake in New York. The book says from the east side of Canadice Lake to 2 miles west of Honeoye Lake. The keys say that it can be found On the surface and/or in the soil; in washes, ravines, gullies, draws, ditches; loose on shoreline.
So my wife and I have been wanting to get down there and explore. We have planned to do it a couple times before, but there weather has turned out bad. But today I was determined to do it. And what do you know, the weather was pretty bad. We had periodic storms passing through.
On the way down, it alternated between kind of sunny, to torrential downpours. Fortunatly when we got to the lake, it wasn’t raining. You need a permit to access Canadice Lake, but you can get them online. They are free. I parked along the side of the road, and walked down to the lake’s edge. I explored in the water, and along the shore, but didn’t see anything that resembled the pictures I had seen of labradorite. There was also a little stream going into the lake, and I looked here as well. Nothing.
We got back into the car, and head farther south along the lake. There was a small stream feeding into the lake. So we stopped there. I walked up the stream bed hunting for labradorite. Again, I didn’t see any rocks that had anything like the green/blue colors of labradorite.
Next we headed to the boat launch area, and explored the shoreline of the lake. Still nothing.
All together, we spent about an hour and a half looking at rocks and found nothing remotely promising as being labradorite. It is possible there is labadorite there, and we were just looking in the wrong spots. Maybe labradorite is here, but in very small quanities. Or maybe we were actually seeing labradorite, but didn’t know what were looking at. Maybe labradorite is plain looking on the outside. Though I saw pictures of it on the web, and even the plainer looking uncut specimens had a subtle blue/green hue to them. Or maybe the labradorite from this area is a plainer variation, and doesn’t have the blue/green colors? Or maybe the book is in error, and there is no labradorite here at all?
Maybe next time we got the lapidary society club meeting thing that we joined, I will ask them if they know anything about labradorite. I’ll have to see if I can find an email address for the author of the book to see where he got his information.
