Mineral Mondays #17: Red Beryl aka Red Emerald
Red Beryl
Two weeks ago I went over 5 of the rarest gems on earth, one of them being Red Beryl.
Red Beryl really is one of the rarest gems in the world, but if you're in the United States you can dig for some in Utah! We'll get to that later.
Red Beryl, once called red emerald and formerly bixbite, is the red variety belonging to the beryl family which includes aquamarine, emerald, morganite, heliodor, goshenite and golden beryl. For every red beryl crystal found it is estimated 150,000 gem quality diamonds are found.
History
Red Beryl was discovered by Maynard Bixby in 1904 in the Thomas Range Mountains in Utah. The locality is just behind the famous Topaz Mountain. However it wasn't until the discovery in 1958 of the Ruby Violet Claims, about 140 miles south, that a gem grade deposit of red beryl was discovered.
While prospecting for uranium in the new nuclear age, 3 men Lamar & Ray Hodges and Larry Walker discovered red beryl near Beaver, Utah. They filed several claims and for about 10 years he mined it by hand tools. Then in 1976 Ed Harris of Delta, Utah was asked to facet some crystals. He and his brothers Bob and Rex went down to visit the claims. Upon arriving they decided to buy some of the claims from the Hodges and named them The Ruby Claims and The Violet Claims. 1977 was the beginning of actual mining with blasting and heavy equipment.
To this day the mine remains in the hands of the Harris family who mine, facet and sell red beryl across the world.
Where To Find It
As mentioned above, red beryl is found at the Thomas Range, including Topaz Mountain, near Delta, Utah, the Wah Wah Mountains which hold the Ruby Violet claims near Beaver, Utah and Grants Ridge in New Mexico. The latter produces only very small material.
Topaz Mountain, in the Thomas Range, is on BLM land and open to anyone who wants to go and collect specimens. While very rare, occasionally you will hear about someone finding a red beryl crystal there. I've been there mining two times, but have yet to find any. Hopefully third time's a charm as I will be heading back up in the spring of 2018.
Here is a panorama of the caldera of Topaz Mountain.
The mountain itself is deceptive. Even standing inside the caldera the walls don't look that intimidating until you start climbing them. The farthest up I've made it is about half way. The faces become treacherous and one time I became stuck while climbing up. It was not a good feeling and it took me about 2 hours to find a way down.
The mountain is located about 1 hour northwest of Delta, Utah. Delta is located about 2.5 hours southwest of Salt Lake City, Utah. It is easily accessible by any type of vehicle and there are often other prospectors digging on the mountain. More information can be found here: https://www.recreation.gov/recreationalAreaDetails.do?contractCode=NRSO&recAreaId=2214
The Gem
Red beryl is a beryllium aluminum silicate, Be3Al2Si6O18. Trace amounts of manganese give it it's red color. It is only found in topaz bearing rhyolite.
It's rarity is due to the minerals and conditions needed to produce it. Superheated water bearing beryllium & gas made it's way up through cracks and crevices in the rhyolite. At the same time water percolated from the surface in the opposite direction. It brought with it manganese, aluminum and silicon. When all these minerals met they cooled and formed the red beryl crystals. Cooling occurred between 300-600 degrees celsius, so not that cool.
"The Crown of Fire" -Source - Photo by Robert Weldon
Most crystals measure 1 centimeter or less making it even rarer to use for faceting. The largest faceted red beryl is only 4.5 carats. While larger, the "Crown of Fire" shown above, was a lab created red beryl weighing 4.75 carats.
Some Red Beryl Facts
- Shape - hexagonal
- Composition - Be3Al2Si6O18 (beryllium aluminum silicate)
- Hardness - 7.5 - 8
- Refractive index (fire) - 1.56 - 1.57 (diamond is 2.417 - 2.419)
- Color - pink to deep red
- Localities - Thomas Range & Wah Wah Mountains Utah, Grants Ridge, New Mexico.
My Collection
My collection isn't huge, but I have about 20 specimens as well as the faceted gem shown above. It's getting harder and harder to come by this material. The mine has been shut down and from what I am told specimens aren't coming out of the mine right now. In addition the price has been going up. Below are a few more photos of my specimens.
Thanks for reading!
Next Mineral Mondays #18: Taafeite
!steemitworldmap 39.708639 lat -113.103561 long Red Beryl Found Here! d3scr
I do weekly series on Monday, Tuesday and Friday. Here are previous posts for those days.
Mineral Mondays - https://steemit.com/science/@rt395/mineral-mondays-16-benitoite-the-california-state-gem
Travel Tuesdays - https://steemit.com/japan/@rt395/travel-tuesdays-12-cafe-de-copain-ningen-kankei-cafe-pub-in-shibuya-tokyo
Food Fridays - https://steemit.com/food/@rt395/food-fridays-10-yushoken-ramen-and-izakaya-in-irvine-ca
As well as daily topics like crypto, Japan, music and more.
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pretty incredible!
Honestly my pictures don't do it justice. I just don't like using other people's photos.
That faceted gem I have though is amazing. It's an SI with great color and clarity.
It's so much fun hunting for them too. While you are finding topaz after topaz in the back of your mind you're always hoping one of those topaz crystals will turn out to be a red beryl.
Thanks for the vote!
I can imagine how exciting it must be!! Your photos are perfect...we all know how to google those other images. I learn so much from you.
Man, geology is so dang cool. Thanks for doing this series @rt395, I enjoy all the mineral mondays posts!
I didn't go deep enough into the geology. I need to do that more often because it's crazy.
Cali has some of the best geology in the world though as you know.