Brockport, Elk County, Pennsylvania, USAi

Regional Level Types
Brockport	Town
Elk County	County
Pennsylvania	State
USA	Country

Brockport is an unincorporated village in Horton Township, Elk County, Pennsylvania. Historically, it served as a railroad junction town for the Pittsburg, Shawmut and Northern Railroad (PS&N); and for the Erie Railroad, where numerous coal mining companies operated as far back as the late 1800s. The largest company in the immediate area was the Shawmut Mining Company, which actually was a subsidiary of the PS&N Railroad (Allen, 1955).

The site was documented by Donald Hoskins (1964) and later Hoskins et al., (1983) in "Fossil Collecting in Pennsylvania". Hoskins cited Brockport in his book as the "Elk County locality" and recorded the site as an abandoned strip mine. There is a possibility that Hoskins' site was the tailings piles of the Robert C. Brian Coal Mine, which was owned and operated by the New Shawmut Mining Company (a successor to the original Shawmut Mining Company), which had started operating in the 1940s (Clark, 2016). In 1983, when the 3rd edition of the book was published another mining company, the Tamburlin Brothers Coal Company, operated numerous strip mines in the vicinity, including near the former Robert C. Brian Mine. Hoskins et al. (1983) noted the site had been excavated to re-expose the shale seam which had the delicate fossils.

In 2005, the New Shawmut Mining Company was acquired by the Rosebud Mining Company. The Rosebud Mining Company expanded the works of the original Robert C. Brian Mine and the original Shawmut Mining Company's #5 Mine to form the Little Toby Mine.

The site contained numerous fossils of the brachiopod Linoproductus which had long slender spines. The fossils were found in the Pennsylvanian Columbiana shale that overlies the Lower Kittaning ("B") coal seam. The Lower Kittaning was the coal seam that was stripped by mining companies. Due to the fragile nature of the spines these fossils were usually damaged.

In a Friends of Mineralogy Pennsylvania Chapter newsletter, author Joseph A. Dague (2003) visited the site in 1988. While searching for the elusive Mesolobus, he discovered numerous siderite nodules that contained wurtzite. The wurtzite formed individual crystals as well as radial groups, similar to those found at Donohoe Station. Another Brockport locality close to the fossil locality was discovered later by Joseph Dague at Mt. Church Road (now Old Penfield Road) in 1993. Dague investigated an erosion channel which had numerous siderite concretions likely dumped or transported from prior mining activity. These concretions also contained microscopic transparent baryte crystals, granular calcite crystals, chalcopyrite, sphalerite and pyrite.

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

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