Fluorite Deposit Locations

Fluorite is a very common accessory mineral and is found in most geological environments present on Earth. Its most commonly associated with calcite, quartz, pyrite, galena, chalcopyrite, and/or dolomite in hydrothermal veins but can also be found in all sorts of other environments such as vesicular basalts, vuggy dolostines, pegmatites, miarolytic granites, greisens, and skarns and is often associated with metallic ores of copper, lead, iron, silver, tungsten, tin, and gold. Crystals to over a meter in width have been found in enormous vugs at base metal mines in the midwestern United States. Some mines in the US and China have likely produced hundreds of thousands of fine fluorite specimens. The most common color of fluorite is perhaps colorless or purple, which is found at thousands of localities worldwide. The rarest color is pink, which is typically only encountered in alpine style clefts in France, Switzerland, and Pakistan. Specimens of pink fluorite can be worth a fortune.

Fluorite is mined as a source of fluorine for the chemical industry and as a flux in industrial12643-02 steel manufacturing. It is also heavily mined to produce carvings and mineral specimens with the industry in those areas originally being fueled on US fluorite but now on fluorite originating in China. China is the world’s greatest producer of fluorite and has the most diverse array of fluorite specimen producing mines worldwide. Many of the mines in China feature fluorite associated with tin-tungsten mineralization such as at the Yaogangxian Mine, or with base metal sulfide mineralization such as at the Huangshaping mine. China produces a dazzling array of fluorite in every color and habit imaginable. If one mineral best represents China’s mineralogical diversity, it is fluorite.

Many specimens of fluorite have historically come from Western Europe, mostly from the UK, France, Spain, and Germany where they were collected from mines exploiting hydrothermal veins. Spain produces the most fluorite out of any nation in Europe both as ore and as specimens with much of it originating around Asturias. These mines work fluorite mineralized in limestone and produce cubic specimens that are purple, blue, yellow, or colorless.

11655-02The world’s largest fluorite specimens come from the Midwestern United States and like most of the best occurrences, these localities are sedimentary hosted. Cubes up to a meter in diameter have been found around Cave-In-Rock in Southern Illinois. The fluorite from Illinois is famous for its dramatic zoning- specimens have been known to show bright yellows and deep purples in the same pieces.

In addition to the hydrothermal veins discussed here, many fine fluorites have been found in granitic, alpine, or greisen deposits. Fluorite often grows in alpine clefts, on walls of vugs in miarolytic granite, and in veins containing cassiterite and scheelite. Locations producing fine examples of these kinds of mineralization are Zinnwald, Germany-Czech Republic (Greisen), New Hampshire, USA (miarolytic granite), and Mont Blanc, France (alpine cleft).