Annotated with site information, including geological / paleontological / mineralogical. Many quarries listed are closed or no longer allow collectors. This album serves to document geological locations – not to provide locations for you to visit. Assume all active mines to be closed to casual collecting.
Atkin’s Quarry in Jeffersonville, Indiana, was visited between 1994 and 2009. Access was curtailed with new management and policies in late 2009. Click on photo to see more.
Hastie’s Quarries, Hardin Co., Illinois
Speed Quarry, Clark Co., Indiana (Operated by Louisville Cement, then Essroc, then Italicementi, and now Heidelburg Cement, it will be closing soon if not already.)
Annabel Lee Mine – A fluorite mine in Hardin Co., Illinois that I visited with Chris Anderson in May, 1987. We spent an 8-hour shift documenting the mine operations and geology.
Coral Ridge / General Shale Brick Company, Jefferson Co., Kentucky – The type locality for the Coral Ridge pyrite-replaced fauna described by James Conkin in his master’s thesis published by the Paleontological research Institute in 1957. Many fossils were found over the years. The site became inaccessible in mid-2010 as our contact and many employees were laid off due to the 2008-9 recession and the lack of home building.
Additional locations – when I have time!
Boyle Co., Kentucky geode hunting – An area with geodes from smaller than an inch to bigger than 2-feet across. Mostly quartz with minor calcite, hematite, etc.
Cedar Creek Quarry, Bardstown, Kentucky – a limestone quarry (now closed) famous for trilobites in the Laurel dolostone. It also had brachiopods, crinoids, cephalopods, pyrite, calcite and sphalerite.
Carroll Co., Kentucky road cuts – in the Kope Formation, Upper Ordovician, they contain brachiopods, bryozoans, graptolites, mollusks, trilobites, and trace fossils.
Corydon Quarry, Harrison Co., Indiana – famous for superb pink dolomite with calcite of various shades of tan to white, often with inclusions of iron, rarely with millerite or MnO2. Quarry is active and closed to collecting.
Elizabethtown Quarry, Kentucky – a long-closed and now privately owned quarry that we collected 900 crinoids between 1990 – 1994. The scientific papers naming 9 new species were a result. The quarry had diverse Muldraugh, Harrodsburg & Salem Formation faunas.
Hardin Co., Kentucky road cuts – on Hwy 313, from the New Providence Shale to the St. Louis Limestone, Middle Mississippian age. Various fossils and geodes of calcite or gypsum.
Illinois side of the IL-KY fluorspar district (excluding Hastie’s & Annabel Lee mines)
Irvington Quarry, Breckinridge Co., Kentucky – famous for fluorite, calcite with minor quartz and other minerals. Locality owned by Liter’s, Inc. Closed to collectors, though the last time I visited, collecting was hardly worth the effort.
Kentucky side of the IL-KY fluorspar district – numerous old mines primarily dot Crittenden and Livingston Counties. No active mines since the 1960s.
Lebanon Quarry, Marion Co., Kentucky – Multiple quarries in various stages from long to recently abandoned to recently opened. Calcite and Ordovician fossils primarily. Oldest quarry has some Devonian fossils, largely weathered too much to be interesting.
Salem Quarry, Washington Co., Indiana – this closed quarry was famous for geodes with celestine and calcite. Fossils were known but not widely collected in the Mississippian formations.