Stilbite (collected by Rich Kosnar - 1969)

Item Description

A rarely seen Stilbite (properly Stilbite-Ca) specimen from this now defunct diabase quarry at Laurel Hill (Snake Hill), New Jersey. This locality is well known to east coast collectors, and dates back to the late 1800s with regard to mineral specimens. Snake Hill is an igneous rock intrusion jutting up from the floor of the Meadowlands in southern Secaucus, New Jersey at a bend in the Hackensack River. It is the type locality to only one species, Petersite-(Y) which was first discovered at Snake Hill in June 1981 by Nick Facciolla (the author of The Minerals of Laurel Hill). This piece features a thin seam in diabase which plays host to lustrous, translucent, golden "sheaves" of Stilbite measuring up to 8 mm. It's more of a reference specimen, but it's a great piece for anybody who is looking to fill a spot in a New Jersey zeolite collection. This specimen was collected by the famous New Jersey-born mineral dealer and collector, Richard A. Kosnar (the namesake for Kosnarite) who was accompanied by his mentor, noted New Jersey collector Frances Patricia "Pat" Gross. The underside of the piece shows his collection number (Stil669SHill) and the date collected was June 12, 1969.