Blue Salt Mine, New Mexico, USA

blue salt mine new mexico

Blue Salt Mine, New Mexico, USA

Blue halite crystal with sylvite from New Mexico, USA!

Many millions of years ago in the Permian geologic period (approximately 298-252 Ma), an extensive inland sea encroached onto the North American continent from the south, spreading from what is now the Gulf of Mexico up to Canada. Over the eons, the sea was cut off from the ocean and slowly dried out, which resulted in evaporite mineral deposits being laid down in beds many hundreds of feet thick in what is now the Permian Basin of New Mexico and Texas.

Eddy County, New Mexico, is the potash capital of the United States. The Delaware Basin is geologically a sub-basin of the Permian Basin, named after a minor Pecos River tributary, the Delaware River. The geologic processes there, 225 million years ago, began the manufacture of numerous buried wealths for Eddy County, not only its famed Caverns and its petroleum deposits, but also massive evaporite beds.

 

Potassic minerals (potash) are currently being mined from these deposits near Carlsbad, New Mexico, USA. The mined potassium salts (KCl) are used in agriculture as fertilizer. The ore zones are interbedded with thick halite (NaCl) deposits, more commonly known as table salt. The salt is a gangue mineral (non-commercial ore-associated mineral) and must be separated from the potash during refinement.

Fortunately for mineral collectors, very rare beautiful blue and purple halite crystals have also been found interbedded with the potash ore in these mines in New Mexico.

The samples were mined from a salt pillar in the Mosaic potash mine in 2014.

Blue salt mine around the world:

 

Iran, Semnan Blue Salt (edible)

– 60-80 Mt Annually

– Edible blue salt

– Salt lamp

Iran, Garmsar blue salt

– Limited amount

– Salt lamp

Poland, Kłodawa blue Salt

– Limited amount

– Salt lamp

USA, New Mexico blue salt Limited amount

– Limited amount

– Salt lamp

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