The stones are tumbled, cleaned, sent overseas to be processed and, in the end, only "a few handfuls" are used in jewelry. There are no special machines and all mining is done by hand with a hammer and screwdriver to minimize potential damage to the six-sided crystals.Ĭavano said approximately one ton of amethyst leaves the mine each year and produces around 50 pounds of gemstones. Blank said he plans to work in the mine "until I can't do it no more." The couple is so passionate about their work they named their daughter Amethyst. "It's my life, it's who I am, it's what I do," he said.
"My grandparents - they collected gems and minerals so I was just naturally drawn to them," Blank told ABC15. They spend roughly half the year, week on and week off, working eight hours per day inside the mine and living in a small, solar-powered home near its entrance. Mike Blank and his wife, Ty, are the site's only two miners. It's small and difficult to reach, only accessible by helicopter or a grueling three- to four-hour hike. The amethyst leaving Four Peaks has other trace elements including manganese and chromium. It takes "millions of years" for the stones to be formed, Cavano said, requiring natural deposits of silica, iron and hot water. The type coming out of the Arizona mine is known as "Siberian Red Amethyst" and, as you can probably guess, the only other place it's known to be found is in Siberia. There is speculation that amethyst from the mine was used in the Spanish crown.Īmethyst is quartz that contains other elements and is created through a natural process that gives it a purple color. Cavano said the site is believed to have been first discovered during the 18th century by Spanish settlers. Pointer to a Read structure.With its distinctive deep purple color, Kurt Cavano knows the stones coming out of his mine are "really, really special." He holds the claim to the Four Peaks Amethyst Mine, nestled in an area around 7,000 feet between the third and fourth peaks.ĪBC15 was invited to tour the mine with a small group and learn more about its history. On successful completion, the read_reading() and fread_reading() functions return a Typedef uint_2 TRACE /* for trace heights */ typedef struct Read RETURN VALUES Otherwise the function is identical to the read_reading() function. Used for setting the trace_name field of the resulting structure, and for error messages. The format field of the structure can then be used to determineįread_reading() reads a trace from the specified file pointer. To automatically detect the corret format type by analysing the trace file for magic TT_SCF, TT_ABI, TT_ALF, TT_PLN, TT_EXPand TT_ANY. Read_reading() reads a trace from the specified filename and format. The functions allocate a Read structure which is returned.
The orig_trace field of the Read structure will then contain the pointer to theĮxperiment file structure and the orig_trace_format field will be set to TT_EXP. The QL, QR (left and right quality clips), SL and SR (left and right vector clips)Īre taken from the Experiment file to produce the cutoff information held within the Read When reading an experiment file the trace file referenced by the LN and LT line types is The temporary file is then read and removed.
Decompression is performed using either gzip -d or uncompress and is written to a Staden format files and Experiment files is included. Is used as part of the Staden Package.) Additionally, support for reading the plain (old) (Note that the first two are only supported when the library These functions read trace files into a Read structure. SYNOPSIS #include Read *read_reading( char *filename, int format) Read *fread_reading( FILE *fp, char *filename, int format) DESCRIPTION NAME read_reading, fread_reading - Read a trace file into a Read structure.
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