HISTORY OF MOUNT MICA K. Webber 1 , W. Simmons 1 , A. Falster 1 , R. Sprague 2 , G. Freeman 3 , F. Perham 4 1 Dept of Earth & Environmental Sci., University of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA 70148, kwebber@uno.edu 2 10 Yates Street, Mechanic Falls, ME 04256 2 Coromoto Minerals, 48 Lovejoy Road, Paris, ME 04271 4 1 Dunham Road, West Paris, ME 04289 Maine’s many pegmatite quarries have long been important as commercial sources of industrial minerals, gemstock, and specimens of interest to scientists and collectors. None is more famous than Mount Mica, America’s first gem pegmatite (Hamlin, 1895) located just east of Paris, Maine. The discovery of gem quality elbaite tourmaline at Mount Mica dates to 1820 when Elijah L. Hamlin and Ezekiel Holmes discovered a gemmy green crystal at the base of an uprooted tree near an outcropping ledge (Hamlin, 1873, 1895; Francis, 1985; Perham, 1987; King, 2000). After the specimen was identified as tourmaline, many more crystals were recovered from the ledge by Hamlin and Holmes as well as others in the community. Two years after the initial discovery, Elijah's younger brothers, Cyrus and Hannibal, undertook a more thorough exploration of the ledge by drilling and blasting. They exposed a pocket filled with red and green tourmaline crystals up to 8 cm in length (Hamlin, 1873). Small-scale exploration continued on the ledge by a number of different people, including Samuel R. Carter who mined unsuccessfully in 1864. Two years later, O. M. Bowker, owner of the farm on which the Mount Mica pegmatite was located, discovered a large tourmaline pocket. Bowker's find encouraged Augustus Hamlin and his father, Elijah, to begin work at Mount Mica that continued from 1868 until 1890. Numerous fine specimens of tourmaline and other pegmatite minerals were discovered. In 1871 Hamlin blasted open a large pocket and discovered several large achroite crystals, including one that was more than 11 cm in length (Hamlin, 1895). Many additional pockets discovered shortly after this find produced fine gem material, including beautiful multicolored crystals with a dark blue base, followed by a pink zone that grades into colorless, with a grass-green termination. In 1881 the Mount Mica Tin and Mica Company was formed with Augustus Hamlin and Samuel Carter as president and superintendent, respectively. They operated Mount Mica until 1890 (Hamlin, 1895). In 1882 some of the best crystals from the Hamlin and Carter collections were publicly displayed for the first time at a special exhibition at the Academy Hall in Paris Hill, ME. In 1886 Hamlin and Carter opened Mount Mica's largest pocket at that time. It produced many tourmaline crystals in a cookeite and lepidolite matrix. The most valuable specimen was a spectacular green tourmaline crystal 24 cm long and 5 cm wide that was recovered in four pieces. At the time it was valued at $1,000. A faceted portion of this crystal provided the 34.2-carat center stone for the famous Hamlin Necklace (Perham, 1987) which was later donated to Harvard University. From 1890 until 1913, Loren B. Merrill and L. Kimball Stone had the mining rights to Mount Mica. In 1891 they opened a pocket with exceptional blue tourmalines (Hamlin, 1895). According to Hamlin's records, by May 1895, Merrill and Stone had opened fifty-nine pockets and had extensive mine workings (Figs. 1-4). In 1899 they uncovered a pocket that yielded a 411-carat, flawless blue-green tourmaline nodule that was part of a crystal more than 20 cm long. A second 584-carat gem nodule found in a later pocket was sold to Harvard Professor Charles Palache and is now in the Harvard Mineralogical Museum collection (Francis, 1985). In 1904 Merrill and Stone opened yet another very large pocket that produced more than 34 kilograms of tourmaline crystals, including achroite nodules and a single polychrome tourmaline crystal that weighed more than 13 kilograms and was 35 cm tall and over 15 cm wide This remarkable crystal was sold and disappeared until rediscovered in a home on Beacon Hill in Boston by Benjamin Shaub in 1961(Perham, 1987). It is now in the Harvard collection. Tourmaline mining in Maine began to decline after about 1910, in part because of competition from important new discoveries of high-quality tourmaline in San Diego County, California, and in part because of the collapse of the Chinese tourmaline market. After about 1920, tourmaline production was sporadic at best. Mount Mica was purchased by Howard Irish in 1926 but remained inactive until he began mining feldspar in the late 1940s. Consequently, Mount Mica was not included in the World War II era study of pegmatites by the U.S. Geological Survey, and a description of this historic pegmatite is conspicuously missing from Pegmatite