While we were organizing the office at NHSM, a DVD was found, entitled The Minerals of Maryland: Unexpected Surprises. It was a presentation by Fred Parker for the 37th Rochester Mineralogical Symposium in April of 2010. Apparently, in the mineral world, Maryland is not held in high esteem. If you say you collect minerals in Maryland, people will think you are joking. But Fred and many of the rockhounds of Maryland would disagree. In fact, Fred claims that collecting in Maryland has been the highpoint of his more than 60 years of collecting.
As recently as 30-40 years ago, Maryland had many working quarries and old mine sites that produced some unexpectedly fine mineral specimens, such as grossular garnet, millerite, barite, smoky quartz crystals, and so on. Before that, there were even more. Fred’s lecture summarizes the principle collecting locations in Maryland prior to 2010, most of which cannot be accessed for collecting today. Enjoy! NOTE: As a bit of a departure, we will be playing the DVD, stopping it at points for Fred to comment. Fred will also take questions at the end.
Fred was introduced to minerals at age 11 in New Jersey, and once he visited the famous Franklin N.J. mines, he was hooked for life! He earned a Masters of Science degree in Geology and Materials Science. After working in R&D for 22 years, Fred joined the US Patent and Trademark Office, from which he retired after 21 years of service. To date, he has authored/co-authored 16 refereed articles, registered 5 patents, and given many talks related to Materials and Geology/Mineralogy. Now retired, he moved to New Mexico in 2104 where he collects at the wide variety of mine locations in the Land of Enchantment. Fred’s mineralogical specialties include the minerals of Franklin-Ogdensburg N.J., minerals of New Mexico, classic locations of North America, and of course the minerals of Maryland, mostly self collected!
