Hi Gang,

The start of Mother and my trip to Oshkosh WI all started at midnight on Friday night. After working 9 hours in a glass factory where I am supervisor, we started out on a 280 mile drive to the Vulcan Quarry. It was an uneventful 4 plus hours of driving over to the Americainn on South Park Ave. in Oshkosh WI. A short 2 and a half hour nap and we were ready to head over the gate of the Vulcan quarry for a chance to dig calcite, dolomite, sphalerite, pyrite, and marcasite crystals. Now during my research of this quarry I had assumed that this was the same Vulcan quarry as the one in Mindat.org under Racine County, I was wrong. This quarry is in Winnebago County. So the photos I had been studying on Mindat were not what we would be finding at this other Vulcan quarry found in Oshkosh.

We all lined up at the gate to sign release forms and give a donation of 3 dollars per person to enter.

8:00 Am sat morning people lining up at the Vulcan Quarry scale house waiting to sign releases.

Around 40 people showed up for the dig.

We all followed one of the quarry workers down into the far side of the quarry where he gave a short safety speech about where to hunt and what areas to stay away from. Everybody headed off in different directions to find our best collecting locations.

Our first collecting area, in Photo; Carl on left, Randy center, and I'm over the hill straight past Carl. Here we found vugs in the dolostone with calcite, dolomite, sphlerite, pyrite, and marcasite.

Carl and I talking with the trip leader Cori

Just to give you an idea of scale, Carl is the little black dot in the center right of this photo, this photo was taken from half way across the quarry.

view of the quarry in a different direction.

A view towards the sorting and crushing equipment.

another overlook of the quarry.

The high walls of this quarry were between 75 and 100 foot tall. We were told to say at least 50 feet away from any high wall.

I looked over about 200 yards of quarry and decided to try my luck at the very fresh blasted area well away from the parking area. I noticed that this area had countless more vugs then any of the other spots I had past. After hunting around I found a very nice 6 inch vug that ran into a huge 5 ton boulder. I put my gloves over the vug and headed back to the car for my 8 lb long handled sledge for some serious work of liberating this vug from the looming demise of the crusher. Within about 15 minutes of reducing this boulder by chisel, sledge and hard sweaty exertion I freed a 12 inch chunk with my vug centered nicely in the center.

If you look very close at my right hand, you can see a vug with calcite and marcasite that I will be collecting out of this piece of rock.

Just below my gloves( in pic at my feet to the left of blue hard hat) is a vug of what looks like cubic quartz. As I split this rock (all 40 inches of it) the vug fell apart.

I figured with only 4 hours to collect in the quarry, I’d be taking home some large rock with nice finds instead of trimming down to smaller pieces in the quarry losing valuable collecting time. After all, as my good friend John Cornish says “I have a sickness…….I’m a crystal collector”. We spent around one and a half hours collecting in this location when one of the young ladies from the mineral club whose trip this was said they found an area across the quarry where marcasite and pyrite were in huge vugs. We would have to load up our equipment and head over to the new hot-spot which was over a mile away on the other side of the quarry.

We were told that lots of marcasite and pyrite could be had on the other side of the quarry. The group could not spread out so one of the quarry works brought us a load of the vug bearing material for everybody to pick through.

We drove over to the other side and noticed that one of the quarry workers was down at this collecting spot moving a lot of rock with a huge front end loader with a ten yard bucket on the front.

The Quarry worker also helped us out by lifting the large boulders high into the air to break them as he dropped them.

As we started down the ramp the loader was on its way up. I was first in the line of collectors heading down the ramp the loader stopped next to me. The worker climbed down off the machine which included what looked like a 10 foot step ladder down the side. He said that the other quarry worker was concerned about us getting too far separated from the rest of the group in the quarry and that we would have to head back over to the other side of the quarry, as he said this he smiled and said he would bring us a bucket of the “good stuff” for collecting in. So, we all loaded back into our vehicles and drove back to the far side of the quarry. After what seemed to be just a minute or two here came the huge bucketed machine full of prime collecting. The quarry worker raised the massive bucket into the air and dropped the mother load of collecting from about 25 feet in the air to bust up some of the VW bug sized rock he had scooped up for us. About 10 people made a beeline for the new collecting area as the worker shut off the loader to see what kind of goodies he had brought us. There were pockets upon pockets of pyrite and marcasite crystals littering the ground everywhere. As we collected this area more and more people showed up to see what the big excitement was over. I had around 200 pounds of nice vugs lying by my bag and decided that I had enough of this material as there were around 30 others who had none. I grabbed my sledge and broke up pieces for others to take home. As I found other vugs of this great material I would hand them off to each new person who had walked over. By the end of the allotted collecting time most everybody on the field trip had at least one really nice vug from this huge machine.

The quarry worker who had been in charge of this dig said our 12 noon collecting deadline was coming soon at that we should begin to load up our finds for the drive out. After some frantic collecting in the loaders dump pile everybody hopped into their vehicles for the drive out.

The trip out was pretty dusty following the others out.

Carl and I wanted to get some over-view photos of the quarry so we stayed parked till we were last in line for the drive out. After cresting the top of the quarry we found some nice places to take photos from the top of the quarry. The last truck in line was one of the quarry employees making sure nobody was locked into the quarry from straggling behind.

Panoramic view of the other end of the pit that we were not able to hunt.

This quarry worker came up to talk to us about the quarry and I pointed out the deer which was perched perilously on the cliff across the quarry from us. The worker explained that the Vulcan Quarry system has a great working relationship with the environment and they have nature sanctuaries around almost every quarry that Vulcan owns. In this Oshkosh quarry, on the neighborhood of 26 deer is part of this safe haven for animals.

Vulcan Materials have over 162 stone quarries across 21 different states. They help to build stronger communities by working with schools, supporting environmental education and encouraging employee involvement. Their activities include involvement in adopt-a-school programs, funding scholarships, and establishing and maintaining certified wildlife habitats.

After the dig, a swap and sell took place down at a beautiful park on South Park Ave. Everybody that came to the swap stood around and told about tales and trails during the mineral collecting adventures they each have had. Huge volumes of info for different locations across the US were passed from collector to collector along with some really nice mineral specimens. Around 2 o’clock Mother and I had decided that we better get heading home as we still had our 280 miles to drive back. After another uneventful 5 hour drive we pulled into our drive with around 400 pounds of vuggy rock from the Vulcan quarry in Oshkosh WI.

Special thanks goes out to Cori Nelson for the invite…..thank you Cori and we will see you on Saturday in IA!

Full-size photos can be seen at the following link (click on each photo to enlarge). Click Here