Sterling Hill Zinc mine and "rainbow-room", Ogdensburg, New Jersey, USA

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Following our visit in the Sterling Hill Mine museum, we went into the mine with Dick Hauck.
To begin with: the mine is flooded just to under ground water level. But... But: the mine is more than twice as deep as the Empire State Building is high...
The Sterling Hill mine reached a depth of about 2,670 feet and the Empire State is just over 1,050 feet high...

Impressive isn't it? For sure because one day later I was looking down from the Empire State... ;-)

More info on the mine/mining: see the Mindat blog article by Daniel Russell

(text and pictures by Frank de Wit)

During our visit of the mine, Dick Hauck sneaked us into the famous "rainbow-room" and turned on the UV-light...
In one word... W-O-W !
See for yourself ;-)

(photo's thanks to and copyright Robert Boymistruk, Earl Verbeek and Jeff Glover)

After visiting the mine, Earl Verbeek took us (on two days!) for a nice walk into all the (freezing cold) open-pits and dumps. Earl explained as much as I could remember about the geology&mineralogy. I must say here: Earl had a lot of patience with me ;-) Because before visiting the Franklin mine I was not interesting at all in fluorescent minerals. So I was completely blank in knowledge... That means that I must have been asking the most stupid questions possible. Why? Because only after visiting the museum and the mine, it hit me that fluorescent minerals are very interesting and special! There's so much to learn there....

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If you're searching for mineralogical articles on this locality (geonieuws-1982-04-83-usa-new-jersey-franklin, geonieuws-1998-01-11-usa-new jersey-franklin, minrec-1991-0910-367-usa-new-jersey-franklin-sterling-hill, minrec-1991-1112-465-usa-new-jersey-franklin-sterling-hill-picking-table, lapis-1992-02-34-usa-new-jersey-franklin, 2004-collecting-fluorescent-minerals etc etc...), please contact us...

Also see: Sterling Hill Mining Museum, Franklin & Sterlinghill Minerals and his mineral section!, The Franklin Mineral Museum, The Fluorescent Mineral Society, Franklin at Night, Chris's Mineral Collecting Page

Mindat.org on this location.

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