Dr. C’s Blog about Exploring the Herkimer Mining District
Best Website for Herkimer Diamond Information - Made Possible by Collector Donations
Every year something new is discovered
within the Herkimer Mining District. You
can find these under New Discoveries
The information, and photography, on this website is copyright protected
by W. David Hoisington, Ph. D. unless another author/photographer is cited.
Welcome to the New Herkimer Diamond Story!
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Dr. C’s notes and personal reflections on his exploration of the Herkimer Mining District, and the collaborative research project, presented in a casual
conversational format.
What’s New!
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In 1999 I was recovering from completing my Ph. D. while opening amazonite pockets in Colorado. My wife, a true Vermonter, wanted to return home so we
packed everything into a 24ft Ryder truck and made the drive cross country. Shortly after settling into our new home I made a trip over to the Herkimer
Mining district, I had been visiting there since the 1950’s and it was always a way for me to feel reconnected to mineral collecting in the North East.
I opened a few pockets at DA, did the usual cleaning and trimming, and then went to add them to the Hoisington Herkimer collection. As i was organizing
the specimens one of them stood out as unusual. It had this very odd looking druze (I later called this “baby floater” druze, changed to seed crystal druze).
I went on the web to see if I could find out more about this specimen, and to my amazement I discovered that there was very little out there. In fact there
was very little information of substance and detail on the occurrence of Herkimer diamonds. Thus began my journey to change this, and to also make it free
to the public. HerkimerHistory.com was born.
New Website Design - Jan. 2016
MIcroscope Studies Expand Research Project - April, 2016
In 2009 the owners of TCR discovered these small quartz spheres encased in black hydrocarbon. On the left is one that I found (with permission
of the mine owner). It is also a photo taken recently with the new research microscope I purchased. Shortly after the sphere discovery I published
an explanation of the glassy circular features - they were crystal faces, at least an attempt by the sphere to make crystal faces.
When I was putting images of TCR material on the web someone wrote me and said, “We have stuff better than that in Little Falls”. I am always
cautious when I here this because I know that people seem to develop attachments to particular mine sites. There are folks who only go to DA or only
go to AD, and quite naturally they will speak very highly of the “sparkle” that they find there. But shortly after I received this email praising Little Falls
for its quality material I was able to see some of it at a mineral show. I was surprised at how similar it looked to the material from TCR. I had spent two
summers (about 20 field day in total) investigating TCR and when I was invited this spring to visit, while they are actively mining, I was excited to see
for myself if any geologic similarities existed. As a side note: when I started this research one of the first things an old wise collector asked me about
Herkimer diamond mines was, “How come they are all similar and yet different?”
Little Falls Visit Provides New Evidence - May, 2016
Updated - 03/09/2019
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Thank you Shannon Haley
Wilbur for the donation of 30
samples from the Fonda
region.1/05/2019 and 3/2/2019
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