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!
Return often and follow this developing story. Refresh your
browser (right click) to see new updates
The blog entries are aimed at presenting non technical discussions of the collaborative work being done on expanding the story of how Herkimer
diamonds were made. At the start of each year the blog page will begin fresh and the previous year’s blog entries put on a separate archive webpage.
Click Next to See Past Blog Entries:
What’s New!
Updated - 03/09/2019
Contribute to Herkimer
Diamond research and
have your name below!
I am still working on the Spheres - Curved Features research project. This is ongoing
research and the ongoing research page has been updated to reflect where we are in
this investigation. The rational for focusing on Spheres and Curved Features is that
they are most likely to represent the interaction between quartz bearing fluids and
hydrocarbons (new page added 02/07/2018).
If you have a specimen with curved features, or a clear Herkimer diamond on black matrix, that
you think should be part of this research then send it to:
PO box 107, Danbury NH 03230
Write on it “Donation” or “Please Return”. I’ll bring return specimens to the talk in July 2018
and return them to their owners.
I am still trying to make sense out of the large variety of curved features discovered. I will soon
make a separate web page dedicated to them while also linking them to other pages on this
website. But, for now, you can see the progress on the ongoing research page.
The web pages describing the story of how Herkimer diamonds were made have been updated
so as to reflect the new discoveries made thus far.
Date of this post Jan. 25, 2018
A collection of spherical quartz from TCR. The
largest is 7 mm long. Photo taken in 2011 with
permission of the mine owner.
New Discovery Posted - The Disc Face - 02/01/2018
See the New Discoveries page… The photos of the disc faces on the discoveries page are
top quality examples of this new discovery, which was known back in 2010, but not named
until we found it at a second mine. We needed more samples because we do not have a
good explanation of how these disc faces were formed as part of the Herkimer diamond
making history. The photo on the right shows several disc faces - with their unique mirror
like surface and very circular edges. Note the smaller ones under the word faces. The
larger one is directly facing the camera in the middle of the photo. These disc faces on the
right are not as complete as the ones on the discovery page, but the variations provide
more information to be used in developing a hypotheses about their formation history.
New Page Added - Spheres and Curved Objects - 02/07/2018
Thank you Shannon Haley
Wilbur for the donation of 30
samples from the Fonda
region.1/05/2019 and 3/2/2019
Check out her Facebook.
Photo Request!
In Place Pocket Photos
