Silliman (1821), quoting an 1820 letter from Mr. Lloyd Seeley, was the first to write about this old classic garnet locality. The well-formed dark red garnets are trapezohedral and varied in size from "grape shot to that of musket and pistol balls" and easily weathered out of the steep hillside Ordovician Ratlum Mountain Schist outcrop. Robinson (1825) includes the same information. Shepard (1837) mentions that the garnets reach walnut size and says that they occur "in such profusion, as to acquire the name of the garnet-rock". Note, these authors use the original town spelling of "Reading".

Elwell (1938) states: "Some extra nice garnets have been found in Redding Glen, in the Curtis mine,—now on private land—no trespassing."

Anecdotal reports placed it under the northern end of the Saugatuck Reservoir, which was created shortly after Elwell's report. However, a sketch map in Hiller (circa 1969) shows it as a cut or gulch in hilly terrain uphill and just west of where state Route 53 crosses the Saugatuck river near the north end of the reservoir (coordinates based on this description and Lidar topographic mapping showing the gulch). The garnets might occur in multiple places. Interestingly he does not include it in his 1971 guidebook.

Most schist-hosted garnet crystals in Connecticut are dodecahedral, whereas these are trapezohedral. They are also usually slightly altered to (probably) very fine-grained chlorite. These two characteristics help identify unlabeled (or mislabeled) specimens as coming from here.

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References