Historic Pink Lady Fluorspar Mine

Spor Mountain District – Juab County, Utah
Contact us for exact coordinates

The Pink Lady is located in the epitome of Utah's West Desert wasteland. The terrain is rough and rocky, there is no water, and no other resources. This IS NOT the mine for the armchair prospector. If you can brave the hostile conditions and make yourself comfortable out here, you will be rewarded. The mines are deep, expansive and contain some of the most brilliant colors of purple, pink and red fluorite you will find. There is also a history of "irradiated beryl", which sounds a lot like Topaz Mountain to the east. Historical documents simply discuss a dark red form of beryl that has low levels of radiation.

Access is good but restricted to four wheel drive only. The mines are a series of open adits, drifts and stopes. Most are interconnected and showcase some very impressive and large fluorite deposits in all of the levels. Rock is solid and competent and air is clean and clear throughout with no variation in measurements.

This is an underground working and there are inherent risks to accessing mines and working in mines. Vendor, Inc. recommends that all proper safety precautions be taken before any endeavors underground. These precautions include but are not limited to; Underground training and safety briefings. Helmets, proper clothing and protective gear, lighting, Oxygen and other gas meters.

The Spor Mountain district consists of faulted and tilted Paleozoic (500 to 360 million years old) marine sedimentary rocks overlain by Tertiary (42 to 21 million years old) volcanic flows and volcanic tuffs. For millions of years, large volcanic eruptions deposited ash flow tuffs (fused volcanic ash), volcanic breccias (angular volcanic fragments fused together), and lava flows. Then, approximately 21 million years ago, volcanic eruptions and erosion of the older volcanic material deposited the Spor Mountain Formation (mainly composed of tuff, rhyolite, sandstone, and conglomerate). Mineralized fluids from an underlying magma body migrated up preexisting faults, encountered a favorable host rock (the Beryllium Tuff Member of the Spor Mountain Formation), and deposited the beryllium ore. The Beryllium Tuff is a perfect host rock because it is porous and contains carbonate fragments, which react with the mineralizing fluids to precipitate beryllium. Many of the carbonate fragments were replaced by other minerals, forming nodules having an outer rind rich in beryllium and a core containing fluorite, opal, chalcedony, manganese oxides, and other minerals. The fluorspar deposits of Spor Mountain also formed from mineralized fluids from an underlying magma source that moved up pre-existing faults. The host rocks are the Ordovician Fish Haven and Fluoride Dolomites and the Silurian Bell Hill, Harrisite, Lost Sheep and Thursday Dolomites. Many of these deposits are pipe-like in form and contain 60 to 95 percent fluorite (Bullock, 1981a). The uranium deposits on the east side of Spor Mountain were deposited in the volcanic tuff, sandstone, and conglomerate of the Spor Mountain Formation. These deposits were formed either by the erosion of a uranium-rich fluorite body and later concentration of uranium by ground water, or by precipitation from hydrothermal fluids rich in uranium rising up along faults and fractures. Relatively recent volcanic eruptions (8 to 6 million years ago) deposited the Topaz Mountain Rhyolite in the nearby Thomas Range. Topaz, pseudo-brookite, bixbyite, red beryl, hematite, and garnet are found in this rhyolite at Topaz Mountain in the southern Thomas Range.