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Mines and minerals of Dal'negorsk, Russia
Mineralogical Record, Jan/Feb 2001 by Grant, Raymond, Weide, John, Korchevskiy, Viktor
Mines in the region of Dal'negorsk, Russia, have produced world-class specimens of calcite, danburite, datolite, fluorite, ilvaite, quartz and pyrrhotite. They have also produced good specimens of apophyllite, chalcopyrite, galena, hedenbergite, manganaxinite and sphalerite. Over 150 different minerals are reported from the mines in the Dal'negorsk area. The town of Dal'negorsk is located a little over 300 km northeast of Vladivostok and about 35 km from the sea of Japan.
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The Dal'negorsk mineral deposits were discovered in 1872 by the Chinese. They mined in the area for silver and used some of the borosilicates for glass. In 1887 the Russians settled the region and started mining. In 1924 the mining rights were sold to a British Company, Tetyukhe Mining Corporation. After the English left in 1931, the Russians started to mine lead and zinc again. In 1946 the massive datolite ores were sampled and eventually they were mined as a source of boron. At present there are two companies operating in Dal'negorsk: the Bor Company that operates the Bor open pit mine for boron, and Dal'polymetal that has three underground mines for lead, zinc, bismuth, silver, cadmium and indium.
There are eight mines that have produced mineral specimens in the area close to Dal'negorsk (within 15 kilometers). Today, four of these mines are operating and four are closed. The Bor pit or quarry, the only operating open pit in the area, is being mined for datolite as a source of boron (mainly for boric acid). The Danburitiy mine is an abandoned open pit mined briefly for boron. It is the only locality where danburite has been found. The First Sovietskiy mine opened in 1934 and closed about 1965. The Second Sovietskiy mine also opened in 1934 and is operating at present. (The name Second Sovietskiy is used for a series of mines including Eastern Partizan mine, Western Partizan mine, and Svetly Otvod mine.) The Sentyabr'skiy mine opened in the early 1930's and has been closed for 30 years. The Verkhniy mine was the first mine in the region; mining by Russians started in 1897 and is still underway; it was operated first as an open pit mine (even before 1897 by the Chinese) and is now an underground mine. The surface workings are still accessible to collecting. These surface workings are also referred to as the Brenner mine (Hamet and Stedra, 1992). The Nikolaevskiy mine opened in 1982 and at present is the largest producer in the district. The Sadoviy mine closed in 1997 and only a few mineral specimens were found in the past.
The geology of the Dal'negorsk region is complex because of its plate tectonic history of repeated accretion and subduction processes. The oldest rocks in the area are limestones, sandstones and siltstones of Upper Triassic to Upper Jurassic age. They were pushed into their present position as a result of the subduction under the East Coast of Russia. Overlying the sediments are Cretaceous tuffs. All of these rocks are faulted and are intruded by a series of igneous rocks. The first was a Late Cretaceous-Tertiary andesite-granodiorite complex associated with the sulfide deposits. This was followed by two series of Tertiary intrusions associated with the boron mineralization in the region (Lisitsyn and Malinko, 1994). The major host rocks for the sulfide and boron deposits are skams. The primary skarn minerals are wollastonite, hedenbergite, garnet (andradite-grossular), and manganaxinite. The altered skarns contain in addition datolite, hisingerite, quartz, calcite, sepiolite and siderite (Bulavko, 1984). There are many combinations of these minerals in the skams, and they form a very striking rock used as an ornamental stone for mosaics, boxes, tiles, and other decorative purposes.
Also of interest to mineral collectors are the ancient hydrothermal cavities found in the mines. They range in size from a few centimeters across to the size of a house. Because they were present before the intrusion of the last magma, some of these cavities are filled with andesite and other igneous rocks. Others are still open cavities and are the source of many of the fine crystallized mineral specimens.
References
BULAVKO, N. V. (1984) Relationship between skams and hydrothermal polymetallic ores. In Dal'negorsk Ore District Geology, Krasnov, E. V. and Burly, G. I., editors. Vladivostok, p. 125-136 (in Russian).
HAMET, M., and STEDRA, V. (1992) Die blei-zink-and borlagerstatte Dalnegorsk in Ostsibirien. Mineralien Welt, 6, 46-53.
LISITSYN, A., and MALINKO, S. (1994) The Dal'negorsk boron deposit: a unique mineralogical object. World of Stones, 4, 3040.
Raymond Grant and John Wei& Mesa Community College
1833 W. Southern Avenue
Mesa, Arizona 85202
Viktor Korchevskiy
Perbomayskaya St. g2, kv 25
Dal'negorsk, Russia
Copyright Mineralogical Record Jan/Feb 2001
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