The 1950's Rock & Mineral Collection

I grew up in Schenectady, New York, exactly one block from the Union College campus.  As a kid, I played and rode my bike with friends all over the campus.  I grew up with many playmates who were the children of faculty members.  And, as I have written before, I got to know many faculty members personally.  As a result of one of these faculty friendships, I developed an early interest in rocks and minerals.  While I was still in junior high school, I was allowed to audit a freshman geology class being taught by Dr. Edward S.C. Smith.  Even before that opportunity, I had begun a small collection of rocks and minerals that exhibited the properties of a diode -- allowing electricity to pass in only one direction.  I used these minerals in building experimental crystal radio sets.

One day, while talking to Dr. Smith, I was lamenting the idea that I couldn't collect rocks from distant locations.  He asked why not.  After all, we had a mail system.  He suggested that I write a post card (Who remembers those?) to a company that controlled some mines from which I wanted samples.  He even helped me compose a brief message explaining my interest in rocks and minerals.  I think our first "target" was the New Jersey Zinc Company.  It was at the time the largest producer of Zinc in the country.  Several of their mines -- the Franklin Mine, Sterling Hill Mine, and Buckwheat Pit -- had been producing high-grade Zinc ore for over half a century.  In the area of the Franklin and Sterling Hill mines, 357 types of minerals are known to occur; these make up approximately 10% of all the minerals known to science.  Certainly they could spare a few ore samples.

Wurtzite Ore

 I was very specific in my request.  I had researched the rocks from which Zinc was smelted -- Zincite, Franklinite, Sphalerite, Smithsonite, Wurtzite and others.  I asked for them by name.  Off went my postcard in the mail.  And I waited impatiently for a response.

First came the letter.  It was signed by a senior official of the company.  He expressed admiration for my interest in geology.  He then informed me that two crates of ore samples, all labelled with the location from which they originated, were en route to my home.  Within a couple weeks, I opened the newly-arrived crates to find dozens of gleaming examples.  This became the core of my substantial rock and mineral collection.

I built several long shallow boxes out of thin plywood in which to mount my specimens and their labels.  And I began sending literally dozens of postcards over the next several months.  I'd pick an element, research its sources, determine who controlled the ore supplies, and send a few postcards.  More often than not, they resulted in boxes or crates full of mineral samples.

After I had saturated the U.S. suppliers of minerals, I began extending my requests into Canada.  It wasn't long before I was sending cards to Africa, South America, and even countries behind the iron curtain.  I recall samples arriving from both Poland and Czechoslovakia, both part of the Soviet bloc.

One example stands out in my memory.  I had read an article in Life magazine about a fellow named Charles Steen in Moab, Utah.  Mr. Steen had hit the jackpot, finding a rich uranium deposit during a time when the Atomic Energy Commission kept uranium prices artificially high so that valuable U.S. reserves would not be sold overseas.

Wikipedia describes it this way, "Despite the fact that his three sons, Johnny, Andy and Charles Jr. were all less than four years old and his wife was expecting another child, Steen borrowed $1,000 from his mother and headed for the Colorado Plateau, determined to strike it rich. After being in Colorado for several months the Steens moved into a tarpaper shack in Cisco, Utah. Steen and his family were struggling to get by and were often hungry so Charlie made the decision to move his family to Tucson, Arizona. Steen worked as a carpenter in Tucson for about a year before he returned to his claims in Utah. He and his family once again packed up and headed to their claims. This final trip back to Utah would be the most detrimental for the family because Minnie Lee, Steen's wife, contracted pneumonia, and her medical bills consumed the $350 remaining from the sale of Steen's trailer.

Steen could not afford the standard radiation-detecting equipment used by uranium prospectors - the Geiger counter. Instead, he used a secondhand diamond drill rig and his geologic training for his prospecting. At the time, each prospector had his own idiosyncratic theory about where to find uranium. The uranium industry was composed primarily of individual prospectors and geologists who would attempt to find a large deposit and either mine it for themselves or mine it for a large company (such as Union Carbide) who would transport the ore from the mine to the uranium mill where it could be converted into yellowcake. Steen's theory on uranium deposits was that they would collect in anticlinal structures in the same manner as oil, which others on the Plateau dismissed as "Steen's Folly."

On July 6, 1952, Steen hit it big but he didn't realize until three weeks later. He was drilling down through the layers of sandstone when his drill bit broke off at a depth of 197 feet, just 3 feet short of his goal. Finding this massive deposit of uranium ore only became apparent when he took a piece of the blackish core he found while drilling weeks earlier back to Cisco. He stopped to fill up his jeep and decided to have the core tested by a friend with a Geiger counter and they found that the piece made the Geiger counter needle go crazy. The high grade uranium deposit was located at Big Indian Wash of Lisbon Valley, southeast of Moab, Utah. (Coordinates: N 38.19000 W 109.26000). Sometimes recognized as one of the most important deposits of any kind found during the last century, Steen named the claim the "Mi Vida" mine (My Life). The Mi Vida mine was one of the first big strikes of the uranium boom. Steen made millions off his claims, and provoked a "Uranium Rush" of prospectors into the Four Corners region, similar to the Gold Rush of the 1850s in California."

Uraninite - a uranium ore like samples
I received from Charles Steen in the mid-50's

I sent one of my postcards to Mr. Steen, addressed personally to him.  I received a personal letter back, encouraging me in my interest in geology.  It turned out that he had earned a B.A. in geology in 1943 at the Texas College of Mines and Metallurgy (later the University of Texas at El Paso).  His letter was followed by several crates of ore samples, each in a small cloth bag that included its label.

When I got to high school, my collection had grown too big for our house and I kept part of it in a detached two-story garage building.  While at Mont Pleasant High School, I took a course in Earth Science under Donald Stone.  The school had a small collection of rocks and minerals which came under Mr. Stone's care.  After he was instrumental in my entering the Westinghouse Science Talent Search, I decided he would be a great custodian of my collection, which had grown to over 800 examples.  It took several trips with a school pickup truck to move the heavy boxes.

Mont Pleasant High School, Schenectady, New York

Several years later, long after Mr. Stone had retired, I stopped by Mont Pleasant to see if anyone was still thewre from my days as a student.  I asked about my rock and mineral collection, but no one was even aware of its existence.  Nonetheless, even if it is long gone, I wouldn't have traded the experience of assembling it for anything.