Garnet (Almandine?) (ex Willard Wulff Collection)

Item Description

This one is a bit of a mystery. It came labeled as "Garnet" from "Bakersfield, Calif" from the Willard Wulff collection. I think it could possibly be an Almandine from the theachapi Mountains in Kern County, California, which is the same county where Bakersfield is found. It's a good sized, sharp, trapezohedron of Garnet with minor attached schist on the faces. The color is a brownish-red hue. Hard to determine the origin or exact locality, but perhaps a California expert can help shed some light on this one. As I mentioned, this specimen comes from the collection of Willard W. Wulff (1904-1998) of Colorado Springs, Colorado, a prominent figure and collector of Colorado minerals. Wulff was one of the founding members of the Colorado Springs Mineralogical Society in 1936. You can read Willard's bio on the Mineralogical Record website here ( http://www.minrec.org/labels.asp?colid=1528 ).