Green fluorite

One of my more recent posts deals with a locality where corundum (sapphire, ruby) can be found in Southern California. This new post deals with another Southern California mineral locality, and it is where green fluorite can be found.

Flourite consists of calcium fluoride. It is a common mineral and used as an indicator of a hardness of 4 on the Moh’s Scale of hardness from 1 to 10. Flourite can come in a wide variety of colors (especially purple), but green fluorite is a relatively less common color.

The green-flourite locality is called the “Felix Mine” locality, which is just north of the city of Azusa, California in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. The mine, established in 1892, is no longer accessible because of urban sprawl, and the vein which yielded the green fluorite has long been mined out. The specimen shown below was recently kindly donated to me by a collector.

Green fluorite (maximum dimension 2.3 cm) from the Felix Mine, Southern California.
The black material is the mineral galena (iron sulfide).

The largest crystals ever found of green fluorite at the Felix Mine were reportedly about 8 cm long. Most of the crystals, however, were very small to small size. The fluorite occurred in numerous subparallel veins cutting through decomposed granite. The mineral galena is commonly associated with the green fluorite.