Pyromorphite - Bunker Hill Mine, Shoshone County, Idaho, USA
Pyromorphite from the Bunker Hill Mine, Idaho is one of our Top 100 Minerals.
This lead phosphate gets its name from the Greek pyr, meaning fire, and morphe, form, in reference to the unusual property that when a fragment of pyromorphite is melted, the resulting globule begins to show crystalline faces upon cooling---changing form by fire. Pyromorphite was first described in the mid-18th century by the Swedish mineralogist and chemist Wallerius (1709-1785), who wrote the first definitive handbook on mineralogy.
Prospectors first entered the Coeur d’Alene district looking for gold in the 1870s and found it. By the mid 1880s, they had also discovered several silver and lead bearing veins; the Bunker Hill mine among them in 1885. The district is well-known for several secondary minerals, including cerussite, anglesite and native silver, but it is the pyromorphite specimens it has produced, reportedly from as many as 23 mines in the district, that gave the area world-wide fame. Early reports of specimens are truly astounding but for some reason very few specimens have survived from this period. However, among the greatest finds were those made relatively recently, in the 1980s, after nearly one hundred years of mining. The luster, color and size of the crystals on the best of the specimens from these finds rival those of anywhere in the world.
