California State Mineral and Mining Museum

Saturday February 16th

One of the spots I wanted to see in this area was the CA State Mineral and Mining Museum in Mariposa, CA.  We got going shortly before noon and then stopped for lunch and gas before we actually got on the road.  I had a discrepancy between the route that I picked out on the Google map on the computer and the route that the GPS picked out, so I ended up going N on CA-99 to Merced and then heading E on CA-140.  It doesn't take long and you are in the foothills and then it starts looking like mountain driving.  In the foothills is an area and a town named Cathey's Valley; exact spelling of my Cathey's name.  So we had to stop there and take pictures and then stopped at a county park dedicated to the Cathey family who settled here before the Goldrush.  They eventually became major landowners in the area and the valley became known as Cathey's valley.  It's far enough in the foothills that most of the agriculture is grazing.

When we got to Mariposa I had a hard time locating the Mining Museum; it turned out to be just out of town at the County Fair Grounds.  They had nice examples of various rock formations from all over the world.  I was surprised at how many examples there were from Upper Michigan.  The first item I looked at was a natural shaped piece of copper from the White Pine Copper Mine in White Pine, Michigan.  That was the last operating underground copper mine in Upper Michigan; I believe it was still running when I first went to work in the UP in 1981.

The rocks were especially interesting because I just started re-reading John McPhee's compilation of books about the geology of the US along I-80.  I identified the green rocks that we had seen earlier at the Cathey Family Monument.  It is 'Serpentine' and is the State Rock of California! 

While I was in the museum, Cathey was talking to the Lion's group that were setting up a large grill to do some cooking in the parking lot.  They were preparing dinner for their wives and sweethearts (not sure if it was associated with Valentines Day, but it was an annual event).  The Lion's group was from three counties; Mariposa, Tulare, and  Calaveras.  Most of them were also "Clampers" which we later found out was a Western Heritage Preservation group that primarily exists in gold mining areas.  

After we left Mariposa we followed CA-49 S to CA-41 which took us back to Fresno.