BLUE BELL CLAIMS, BAKER, SAN BERNARDINO CO., CA
On May 21, 2002 my nephew Larry and I left his house near Hesperia, CA and headed Northeast on I-15. We got off at the Zzyzx offramp (milepost 130). We went North on a dirt road, following the directions in the publication by Millard F. Maynard, et al from the San Bernardino County Museum. After about 6 miles we could go no further in Larry’s van, but the mine could be seen at the top of the hill (better than it can be seen in the picture above- I was shooting into the sun). I hiked the rest of the way up, while Larry turned the van around. The adit is open, but I didn’t enter it, since I had no light source, and Larry was a long way off. He could hear me hammer while working on the tailings, but wouldn’t have been able to hear me if I had gone underground.
After getting the material home, cleaning it up, and looking at it under the microscope, I found:
Hematite
Hemimorphite (#982)
Chrysocolla
Chrysocolla pseudomorph after Hemimorphite
Chrysocolla pseudomorph after Aurichalcite (#983)
Malachite
Willemite
Dioptase (#984)
Quartz (#987)
Fluorite (#988)
Calcite
Jarosite (#986)
Wulfenite (#989)
Magnetite
Epidote
Leadhillite
Grossular (#991)
Unknown-A
Unknown-C
Chlorargyrite, var. Embolite (#985 & 990)
Kettnerite
Perite
Kaolinite
Pyrolusite
Numbers in parentheses refer to my price list.
There are still quite a few species known from the Blue Bell that I didn’t get:
Anglesite
Apatite
Aurichalcite
Brochantite
Caledonite
Cerussite
Chalcanthite
Chalcopyrite
Chrysocolla pseudomorph after Caledonite
Chrysocolla pseudomorph after Kaolinite
Chrysocolla pseudomorph after Malachite
Fornacite
Galena
Goethite
Gold
Gypsum
Linarite
Minium
Murdochite
Plattnerite
Plumbogummite (?)
Pyrite (?)
Pyromorphite
Rosasite
Smithsonite (?)
Sphalerite (?)
Tsumebite
Unknown- B
Unknown- D
In
addition to the Museum publication mentioned above, this mine is also written
up in The Mineralogical Record, Nov./Dec. 1977.