Ballard Mine

**BALLARD MINE**
Sweetwater, TN
[CLOSED TO COLLECTING]
The Ballard barite mine has quite a few hills of barite material still left standing after the main barite seams were hauled away. What we’re looking for are vugs lined with fluorite crystals within the barite matrix host rock. There are several different crystal forms of barite, a gray fluorite, a green fluorite, a purple fluorite, and marcasite.



*[Except where noted, all photographs by Jim Flora]* Mike Streeter's specimen fluorite! Photograph by Mike Streeter
Charles and Lori Carter GMS members
Mike Streeter GMS Members
CLOSE-UP OF CENTER OF SPECIMEN 2 Photographs by Mike Streeter
(l) Dan Miller, Field trip leader for Knoxville G&MS (r) Travis Paris, co-leader on this trip.
A little bit of everything in these buckets!

**DMC Field Trip**
***October 23, 1999***
Using the rope to make it down into the mine area!
View of some of the mine dumps!
Boy! - it sure is getting crowded around here!
Jim Haege (Cobb County G&MS Field Trip Leader)
A barite/fluorite pocket being exposed!
A bucket full!
barite/fluorite specimen "Gabe" Lang of the Knoxville G&MS club
white barite, iron stained weathered barite, purple fluorite, and greenish tan botryoidal smithsonite(center of specimen) Charles Carter Cobb/Georgia Mineral member

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