Smithfield, Colchester County
Saturday, April 3rd, was my first glow-hounding trip, under the guidance of glow-hound A. Lohnes. The site was the former Smithfield Lead Mine, in the Brookfield area south of Truro. Smithfield was mined from 1881 to 1951, according to Ann Sabina in her ‘Rocks and Minerals for the Collector: Bay of Fundy Area’ (1964) Sabina identified Galena, Pyrite, Arsenopyrite, Chalcopyrite, Sphalerite, Calcite, Quartz, Barite, Malachite and Azurite here.
Leaving the 102 Highway at Brookfield, Exit 12, we traveled east on the Route 289 to Halfway Brook and from there north to Smithfield.
Parking just off the Lilyvale Road we made the short walk in to a clear-cut and spot the mine dump piles.
The weather could not have been better, a pair of eagles overhead floating over the clear-cut field that has a scattering of open shafts filled with water some posted and others not.
There's beauty here, in spite of the mess left behind, as nature mends.
Its the large dump piles we're interested in examining.
The largest pile gives up some fluorescent material where we set up the UV-black-light Revealer... a cobbled together collection of large box tented with a sleeping bag, the UV light fixture run from a Coleman 12volt power supply through a power inverter.
The second smaller pile down the slope closer to the road gave up some pretty pyrite crystals.
On the return trip we continued on north up the Lilyvale Road with not bad road conditions for spring, with moderate puddles here and there but nothing too difficult to pass, on to Greenfield and in to Truro.
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Wow… Nice article and real love the photos. Can I ask what kind of camera and lens was used?
No special camera or lens, its in the image processing, emulating tilt-shift photography
It’s too bad you didn’t post any photos of the fluorescent material under the UV