Excellent Gypsum's From The Red River Flood Way

This specimen is of the amber style and the colour on it is among the most lustrous of any found in the floodway.

This one is a block style specimen. Its called blocky because the crystals are fatter than the blady ones. They are very rarely seen in the amber colour. 

 

]This one is the blade straight through the centre style. As you can see, one large blade is passing through the centre of the specimen. They are very rare and make for a beautiful piece.


There is an example of the sunflower style. They only come in the amber colour.


Gypsum from the floodway is very fluorescent.


This is a very nice bladie one that gives you a good look at the twined crystals.

A quick review on Red River Floodway

The Red River Floodway surrounds the city of Winnipeg, Manitoba. The gypsum specimens are found in gypsum zones in the clay. While the floodway was being constructed, the excavators dug into these zones and exposed the selenite specimens. After that, mineral collectors started to dig holes down to the zones to collect the gypsum specimens. Holes can be anywhere from 1 foot down, up to a 12 feet down. Sometimes there is no need for a hole at all. This happens when the gypsum zone is right at ground level. Also, the floodway is not the only place that gypsums have been found. They have been found in farmer's fields near the floodway. It is very difficult to predict where the gypsum zones will be. 

There are many different styles of specimens that come from this locality. Specimens types include Sunflowers, Ambers, Blocks, Blade's, Powders, Plates, Double Blocks, Fishtails, Potatoes, Elongated ones and Blade Straight Through the Centre ones. Above, I have examples of most of them but for the ones I don’t I will explain now. Powder ones grow in more sandy clay than the rest of the gypsum. As a result the crystals have a coating of powdery sand on them. Plates form when the gypsum grow to closer together and attach to one another resulting in big sheets. They are rare to see because they are very fragile and most get broken during the collecting process. Double blocks are my personal favourites. They occur when two blocks grow together and attach themselves to each other. They are extremely rare. I have seen one specimen that was five blocks attached together, which in my opinion, is one of the best gypsums specimens to be found in the floodway. Fish tails are twined block crystals, also extremely rare. Potatoes are specimens that didn’t have enough time to develop large crystals, resulting in, a mass of gypsum that is typically a brown to black colour that looks like a potato. Elongated gypsums are specimens that for some reason grew very long. Like the plates they are very difficult to collect, so there aren't many to be seen today.