Yellow Cat Mine, Idria (New Idria), San Benito County, California, USAi

Regional Level Types
Yellow Cat Mine	Mine
Idria (New Idria)	Town (Former)
San Benito County	County
California	State
USA	Country

The Yellow Cat Mine is notable for andradite garnets in green, brown and golden colors, the latter often being described as "topazolite", as well as complexly crystallized clinochlores.

The mine was originally named the Junnila Mine after local collector Leza Junnila - one of several localities that has formally or informally carried her name in the Clear Creek area of San Benito County. Under the Junnila Mine name, many Yellow Cat specimens have been sold into the market in previous years.

In 1977 Pete Dunn published a Mineralogical Record article on Topazolites from the Junnila Mine. Although the article references Andradite from the Junnilla Mine, knowledgeable people in the San Francisco area who have spent a lot of time collecting in San Benito County assure me that the garnets Pete Dunn is talking about in his article were really from the Yellow Cat Mine and not the Junnila Mine.

In (2014) "Junnila Mine" refers to the locality that produced fresnoites in the late 1990s; this locality is a few miles south of the Yellow Cat.

Old Junnila topazolite/clinochlore specimen labels and Dunn's article should properly refer to the mine now known as Yellow Cat (William Spence 2014).

The name for the mine was misspelled as "Junilla Mine" in a mineral magazine article and consequently many older labels have this spelling variant for the mine name (Charles "Chuck" Trantham, 2016).

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References