Sussex Lead Mine, Sussex Mills (Howellsville), Sparta Township, Sussex County, New Jersey, USAi

Regional Level Types
Sussex Lead Mine	Mine
Sussex Mills (Howellsville)	- not defined -
Sparta Township	Township
Sussex County	County
New Jersey	State
USA	Country

The only Pb mine in New Jersey history.

Sussex Mills is immediately east of the Limecrest quarry. Although the exact position of this locality is not certain it was very likely (almost certainly in this author's opinion) the surface outcrop of the lead/zinc vein exposed in the Limecrest quarry and heavily collected in the 1990's. Hague, et al (1956) note that lead and zinc occur near the marble/gneiss contact in the Limecrest quarry region. They refer to a site called "the Indian mine" and note that it had received some attention. On the map that accompanied their paper the Indian mine is located just east of the Limecrest pit. In the years after 1956 the pit expanded to consume the area of the Indian mine. In the 1990's a significant lens of Mississippi Valley Type lead-zinc mineralization was exposed in the Limecrest quarry. This material contained the common carbonates, barite, fluorite, sphalerite, argentiferous galena and pyrite. It was localized in a fracture parallel to and a few feet below the marble/gneiss contact. This fracture had produced small amounts of sphalerite, hemimorphite and barite sporadically over the years. Portions of it also contained cavities with rutile, feldspar, and other rock-forming minerals similar to the Buckwheat dolomite in Franklin. It is extremely likely that this "ore shoot" occurred in the same fracture as the Indian mine and that the "ore" of the Indian mine was similar to the material found in the quarry in the 1990's.

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References