September Speaker: Mohawk Valley Mineral Mining!

by Cindy Schmidtlein, MSDC Vice President

Our speaker for September is Bill Stephens, PG, President of Stephens Environmental Consulting, Inc., a full-service environmental consulting, engineering, and surveying company serving the Mid-Atlantic Region since 1995. Bill is a licensed Professional Geologist who will talk to us about mineral mining in the Mohawk Valley, New York.

Bill Stephens is the current president of the Eastern Federation of Mineralogical and Lapidary Societies, Inc. and the Region IV Vice President. He also is president of the Friends of Mineralogy nationally as well as the Pennsylvania chapter. He started collecting when he was 11 years old after being inspired by a National Geographic article on gems of the eastern Appalachians. Family outings and later collecting trips in college focused on North Carolina (Hiddenite, Cowee Valley), with incidental trips to southeastern PA locations including Phoenixville, French Creek, and Cornwall.

Bill's talk to MSDC will provide an update of his September 2022 presentation to MSDC and includes video of significant pocket reveals including Lee Leveques’ remarkable discovery of “Hercules, Medusa and the Baby.” He notes that Hercules weighs more than 28 pounds and, to date, is the undisputed largest reported skeletal, fenstered (windowed), smoky, mud-included Herkimer Diamond cluster on record. Bill also will describe the geology and detailed mapping he did at the site. It's about 50 minutes long so prepare yourselves for a full hour of fun and wows.