Enargite. The New Male Enhancement

Haha! Just kidding. Today's mineral won't "enlongen your manhood". In fact, if it does ANYTHING to your manhood you are probably holding it wrong. Geology isn't here to help you out in the bedroom. Pervert.

No, today's mineral is much like every other mineral out there. It sits there on your desk, and whenever you look at it it seems to say "Hey, why not go on dates instead of climbing around rock piles to collect more rocks that you'll stick in your garage and never look at again?" Rocks can be very observant. The answer is that rocks can't reject you. No, no matter how many night-farts you make, they'll never say they are too busy to go out with you. Anyway, let's move on.

Today's mineral is Enargite.



The enargite is that shiny grey stuff in that rock I'm holding. The white stuff is quartz. Go ahead and ignore that. Also ignore the lint-roller and half-eaten box of donuts in the background. They have very little to do with enargite. Well, unless your enargite is covered with lint. Let's take a closer look.



Nope, no lint. While we are on the topic, let's discuss rock collection-maintenance. Rocks are dusty. No matter how much you wash them, they will always seem to be covered in dust. And the more rocks you have, the more likely that everything else you own will become covered in dust as well. This includes your action figures, comic books, self-help books, even your ticket stub to the 2008 Comic Con. Yes, rocks will turn all your shrines to social inadequacy into dusty piles. Just like all the hopes and dreams you once had. This paragraph is bringing me down.

Anyway, a good way to keep the dust down is to keep all your rocks in the garage. In addition to keeping the dust down, it will help delay the process of people finding out that you are a weirdo who collects rocks. This paragraph is also bringing me down. Let's find some happy things to focus on. Here's a picture of enargite next to a bag of off-brand Cookie Crisp cereal.



And here it is next to some diabetes.



Sing it, enargite!



And here is a picture of a neat little spider carving I bought at a gas station once.



So what do those pictures tell us? Let's go create a LIST OF FACTS THAT WE KNOW (LOFTWK)

1. Enargite hates to pay for brand-name cereals
2. Enargite has a "metallic" luster. Remember what that means? That refers to that fresh, classy chrome look that fresh enargite has going on.
3. Enargite had a hit jazz record in the early 80's.
4. Rocks carved to look like other things are pretty cool.

There we go. That's a good start. Well, actually that's a horrible start. Those pictures don't tell us anything at all (except for fact #2). We'll have to turn to a book to figure out some real facts.

Behold! The big green book of dryly-delivered mineral facts!



This book may sound boring, but it looks great on a bookshelf. Well, it does when it's on there with a bunch of Bernstein Bears books. I should update my library collection.

So what does this book tell us? Well, it says here that enargite has a pathetic hardness of 3. That's pretty soft, nearly to the point where you could scratch it with your fingernails. With all that metallic luster you would expect it to be harder, but it isn't to be. Geology is full of disappointments. But before you lose all patience with our disappointingly soft mineral friend, watch as it brings these plants back to life!







BEHOLD! OUR MINERAL GRANTS ETERNAL LIFE TO UGLY BROWN PLANTS!!! Nah, I just watered them. But wouldn't that be cool?

Alright, so what's next? Let's look into what makes enargite. The answer may shock and amaze you.



Probably not though.

Enargite is made up of three atoms of our old friend copper...



Mixed with four atoms of our even older friend sulfur...



And a single atom of, well, arsenic.


For a final chemical formula of Cu3AsS4. Or as I like to think of it, (Pennies)3(Deadly)(Stinky)4. Remember how I once said that minerals with sulfur in them are known as Sulfates? Well, this one isn't. It's known as a sulfosalt. Want to know why? Yeah, me too.

FASCINATING LAST DAY OF SUMMER FACT ABOUT ENARGITE

Enargite has one perfect cleavage!




I found that picture while I was googling "Amazed", so stop thinking that I spend my days at work googling "cleavage". And besides, that's not the type of cleavage I was talking about. In geology, cleavage refers to how it breaks when you smash it (more or less). In enargite's case, it would smash in such a way that only one perfectly flat face would form. That's why it looks all shiny in the light! In fact, that's how it got its name! "Enargite" means "distinct" in Latin, which refers to the distinct cleavage. It's a handy way to tell the difference between two minerals that otherwise look exactly alike. Which most of them do. Yes, cleavage is an amazing thing.

END OF FASCINATING LAST DAY OF SUMMER FACT ABOUT ENARGITE

So, where were we? Ah yes, enargite. So why are we wasting our time even talking about this busty mineral? Well, I'll tell you. We can mine it! Not only can we, we do! Or did, I don't know if we do any more. If you can find enough of this stuff to mine (which is hard to do as it's somewhat uncommon), you can pull off the stinky and deadly parts of it and end up with pure copper, which you can then sell to your local copper interest.



Remember that chemical formula we looked at above? Well, that results in a mineral that is 48.3% copper! That's not great, but it will do. I don't know what you are going to do with the 19.1% arsenic or 32.6 percent sulfur. Maybe become that person who lives out on the edge of town and shoots at people who wander onto their property. They always seem to have lots of pretty unusual things on their land. You're going to need to grow a beard though. This includes the women.

SLIGHTLY LESS INTERESTING PART

So we can mine it for copper. As internet geologists, we don't care much about wealth. If we did we would put more efforts into our jobs. No, we are interested in knowing the origins of the very building blocks of our planet. Also, we appear to be interested in Chocodiles. Those things are so good. Anyway, based on our never-ending thirst for knowledge, it may interest you to know that enargite turns into all sorts of other things once oxygen gets involved. Yes-sir-ree, things get down-right funky.

Enargite isn't particularly stable. It's not going to blow up and tear your hands off, but it isn't really happy with itself. And so, it should come as no surprise that it will take any opportunity it can get to turn into something else. For example, say this thing happened....



(That's enargite. I hope you realized that. What if it met up with some water?)



You end up with this!



A fuzzy green mineral! Our weak, bosomy enargite became a bustling community of green stuff! That green stuff is named Olivenite. I'm not going to go into the chemistry behind it all. Knowledge may be power, but it's also really boring.

But behold! The magic doesn't stop there! Olivenite isn't long for this world either! Look at this table! LOOK AT THIS TABLE!!!



As you can see, all sorts of rocky spawn are created by the unearthly mating of olivenite and water! In addition to all them pretty minerals, arsenic and sulfur get released into the air and water and eventually into your liver! Ahhhh, geology.



And so, there we are. Enargite. Maybe not the most fascinating of minerals, but probably one of the minerals you would want to wash your hands after touching. If this blog post just isn't scratching your itch for enargite, you can always go find some for yourself at the Tintic mining district in Utah, or perhaps the Butte mining district in Montana. I'm not driving though.

Ghost Town Tuesday - Diamond, Utah

Just to be clear, I like ghost towns. Even if they don't have anything left, it's fun to go to these places to try as hard as you can to imagine what life must have been like. "Look! There's Pierre the Pervert, hiding behind the bath house!" or "I hear Ted the mule tanner is having a sale on excess mule chunks!" or "Oh no! my digestive system is chock full of undesirable creatures!" All these things happened. Probably.

Today's ghost town is one of the older places in Utah, and is also has a somewhat cooler name than most. I speak of the town of Diamond.




Sadly, unlike a real diamond, the town Diamond came and went pretty quickly. Probably the best part of having a town with a cool name is the possibilities it opens for high school mascots. Everything sounds cool with "diamond" sitting in front of it. For example, this is the Aye-Aye.



Even when it is young, it looks like sun-baked pig corpse wrapped in leather rope. It scurries around in the middle of the night because it is far too hard to sneak up on something in the daytime when you look like a lost mardi gras float. And it doesn't even do all that well at night! The name Aye-Aye comes from the noise that the native folks of Madagascar used to make when they saw it. I'm not sure about this, but I think it means "Creature from the devil's crotch". In short, no self-respecting high school would want to use the Aye-Aye as a mascot. But what if you were in Diamond?



Bam! Diamond Aye-Ayes. I would die to defend such a creature. But we've gotten off-track. Let's get down to the nitty-gritty.

In the year 1869 (which is a long time ago), the land around Diamond looked....probably exactly like it does now. Ticks were the top of the food chain, followed by rattlesnakes, coyotes, ticks again, and then probably some sort of plant. Let's take another look at what I'm talking about...



A land so bleak that angels weep upon visiting. And what do we use ugly land for? Cows! We use it for cows! And this sets the backdrop for the beginnings of Diamond.



Steve Moore wasn't a rich man. He wasn't even an important man. In fact, once we are done within this intro you won't be hearing from him again. But for this paragraph and a little bit of the next one he's very important. Cows (in addition to being tasty) like to wander. This is a pain for people who raise cows because you don't get paid for cows that you no longer own, and so it is in your interests to keep track of all the cows you can. Steve Moore was busy doing that very thing one dusty day in September of 1869. He followed the clues (mounds of cow turds) up a small canyon on the western foothills of the Tintic Mountains. It's this area....



I don't know how helpful that map is going to be. If you were to visit that canyon, this is what you would see.



Those mines weren't there back in 1869, so ignore them. Anyway, I don't know if Mr. Moore ever found his cows, but he did find something of else. Diamonds! Precious diamonds! Treasure of the Gods! Littering the ground! Cows are good, but diamonds are way better. Mr. Moore ran down the canyon with pockets filled with diamonds and showed them to his buddies. They hooted and whistled and threw their hats in the air (probably, I wasn't there), and they named their canyon "Diamond Canyon" because originality wasn't a prospector's strongest suit. Anyway, turns out the diamonds were just worthless quartz, but you don't throw away a catchy name just because it's a horrible lie.

The story could end right there and we would have very little left to talk about, but something else was discovered while everyone was busy filling their pockets with disappointment. Copper, silver and gold were discovered as well! Veins of galena and pyrite were found on the surface, both shoved full of valuable earth goods!! Silver, gold and copper are also better than cows. Cows are actually pretty far down on the list of valuable things, clocking in at number 476, right after a bucket of broken hot wheels and right above the wail of an ill-tempered toddler.

Anyway, after the whole diamond debacle, this was a bit of welcome news. This discovery lead to the creation of the Tintic Mining District. By 1870, the hills around Diamond Canyon were filled with this guy....



And wherever that guy goes, towns are soon to follow. First come crude, little miners cabins made from logs, weeds, poor-hygiene and mud. If a town is lucky enough to endure beyond this first stage, stone buildings will start to emerge. The next step is a mono-rail. Diamond never quite made it to the mono-rail stage, but spent most of its time in stage two. The town was named Diamond because even back then the miners knew a cool name when they saw it. The mines around the site were so rich that even the hobos wore tuxedos, and monocle-manufacture was up nearly 8000% within one year of the town's creation (this part I'm making up). The main mines around town included the Joe Bowers...







The Showers and Walker









As an interesting (not all that interesting) sidenote, the Showers Mine had only inclined headframe (those big wooden structures that allow people to get up and down in mines) in the west. Why did they do this? Why should you care? I haven't the foggiest. But still kinda neat to look at.



That photo was taken in 1982. Since then, the headframe has become even more inclined. Some would say that it has become dangerously inclined.



And finally, the Shoebridge Bonanza






The ore from these mines was so rich that it was shipped all the way to Wales because there wasn't anyone in the US who could deal with it. And they still made a profit! Precious, precious profits. And wherever there is a profit, there needs to be a place to spend it. Within one year of the discovery of the not-diamonds, a town boasting 4 stores, 3 hotels, 5 saloons, a post office, and an unfortunately-named newspaper named "The Rocky Mountain Husbandman". This newspaper allowed the wealthy newcomers a chance to read up on the latest badger-related fatalities, then turn the page and read an article concerning the latest improvements in top-hat repair. Old timesy rich people were funnier than nowaday rich people.



By 1871, the town had a population of nearly 900 people, which is pretty impressive considering most people couldn't expect to see their 40th birthday. At first, town was located on the canyon bottom but soon it spread up onto the nearby hills closer to the mines. Very few pictures of the place exist, as no one really thought to take pictures of towns back then.




That mountain in the back is the same mountain as this picture. Or at least I think it is. Who can tell.



So that gives you a little perspective of what is left. Which is to say, nothing at all. That same year a large mill was constructed within the city limits to help process the ores coming out of their mines. Like a drunken uncle at opera, it was considered to be a fairly crude operation and didn't last long.

The town was a rough place (as mining camps tended to be), and it was once said of the place; "Diamond is the chief camp of the Tintic Mining District, and is one of the quietest mining camps in Utah. It has been several days now since a murder has been committed". I'm assuming that comment was meant to be hilarious, and it probably was back in 1880. Some things don't age well though.

But as we've seen several times, towns that are tied to mining rarely need to come up with long-term civic planning. By 1890, the mines around town faced the unconquerable foe of water. At a depth of 300 feet, water was pouring into the mines faster than the primitive steam pumps could keep it out. One by one the mines called it quits, despite the fact that good ore still remained. With the mines all flooded, the miners soon started to migrate north to the richer mines (that didn't require gills to work) by Eureka and Mammoth. They took most of their houses with them.

From 1890 to 1900, the town was somewhat maintained by the fact that you could dig anywhere and find ore, but you could only mine it to a depth of 300 feet before things got particularly moist. By 1900 the population of Diamond was down to a brave 264 people and only three businesses. Then, sadly, in 1923 the last house was removed from the townsite and shipped off to a new life in Mammoth. This was a poor choice on the house's part, as Mammoth would join Utah's list of ghost towns a few years later. Well kinda. A few people still live there. But they all seem to have really mean-looking dogs and don't care for us outsiders.

As has been true with most ghost towns we've looked at, the only remaining signs of one-time township are the mine dumps and the graveyards. The mine dumps we've seen, but where is the graveyard? I'll tell you how to find it. Just walk around until you find a place where you feel really creeped out. Then you'll know you've found it. Now, I'm no ghostologist, but the place gave me the heebie-jeebies.




That's the main gate. So you can pretty much tell the place is haunted from the start. It's nice to get the uncertainty out of the way early. The gravestones have all long ago been lost, but a few replacements are still found between the bushes....



(This tribute to our mother's name
Her loving children raise
Yet feel that neither words nor fame
Can tell our love and praise)





Sometimes the gravestones didn't get replaced in time so we no longer know who's down there. In that case, they get a simple yet elegant rock.



The graveyard was full of rocks. One of them belongs to this fellow...




That mean-looking fellow is Henry Green, and he died in August of 1887 and joined the other lonely souls in the Diamond graveyard. I added that picture because that's the only picture I can find of anything having to do with Diamond. So enjoy it.

The Diamond graveyard is actually supposed to be somewhat haunted. The townsite would be too if there were anything left. I couldn't even find a hole in the ground or an old tin can. So if you go out there, prepare to be disappointed and haunted. Probably by this guy.