July 9, 2007
Money pit | Gary Freeman blasts into Mount Mica in search of shiny, pretty things
By Sara Donnelly
Gary Freeman's fascination with rocks has cost him about $1 million since July 2003. He's spent that hard-earned money on a side project, digging for gems in the oldest tourmaline mine in the country ˆ Mount Mica on Paris Hill in South Paris.
Freeman, a Florida resident, splits his time between Awareness Technology, the Palm City lab supplies company he and his wife, Mary Freeman, founded in 1982, and the little mound of earth in western Maine he and Mary bought four years ago. Mount Mica is a quiet spot at the end of a wooded dirt road at the crest of Paris Hill. Piles of parchment-colored earth and shards of silvery mica surround the rock face. The entrance is a gaping hole just big enough to fit a golf cart, or a mini-bulldozer in this case.
With his headlamp and dirty sweats on, Freeman, 59, looks like a suburban tourist trapped unwittingly in an Indiana Jones film. He employs one miner, a 50-something former explosives worker named Richard Edwards. The two spend up to eight hours a day blowing up rock, carving out pockets of earth and digging around in the mud inside the shallow Mount Mica cavern. Occasionally Mary Freeman flies up from Florida to dig, too.
Freeman says Awareness Tech, where he is CFO, is his "cash cow." Mount Mica is his "labor of love." "I like being active," says Freeman. "In my other job I operate a desk. And in this job it's a lot more physical and it's a lot dirtier. There are a lot of things we have to deal with but the challenges of all kinds are not nearly as complicated as those in my other job."
Freeman jokes that he's so obsessed with money at Awareness Tech (with its 135 employees, roughly $19 million in annual revenue and satellite office in Dubai) he tells employees lunch breaks are for the weak. But at Mount Mica he's perfectly happy spending hundreds of thousands on a bulldozer, crawl truck and excavator, and $20,000 a year on dynamite. Last year, Freeman says, he made about $40,000 on gems sold from Mount Mica. It was the first year he put any of his findings up for sale, and he says his dealer has a stockpile of inventory worth $375,000 more.
Some of the best stuff Freeman keeps for himself, often because the pieces are so nice no one wants them. Freeman's biggest Mount Mica finds to date ˆ pink quartz, tourmaline and lepidolite mica pieces each worth about $150,000 ˆ haven't sold because he hasn't been able to find a collector willing to pay that much for rocks. So the gems sit in Freeman's safety deposit box along with other Mount Mica prizes. The mine costs Freeman roughly $200,000 annually to operate and he says he'd break even every year if he could sell all the stones he pulls out of the mine. "I don't sell it all, but it still has value," he explains.
Heigh-ho
Gems mined in 2004 in Maine, the most recent year available from the U.S. Geological Survey, were valued at $268,000, putting Maine 12th in the country in gemstone production. Of the hundreds of gem mines in the state, only a handful are being worked, according to Maine State Geologist Robert Marvinney. Of those few, he says, Mount Mica is the one to watch.
The first state evaluation of mineral resources in Maine occurred in 1836. By 1850, farmers doubling as gem miners were making decent side money digging for feldspar (to make porcelain) and mica (for silver sheen), mostly in western Maine. Mount Mica's reputation as a hot spot began more than a decade earlier, when in 1822 the first tourmaline in the country was discovered there. Mount Mica has consistently offered up tourmaline since then, though not in one dramatic flourish.
In 1972, drama instead happened at the Dunton Quarry 30 miles north in Newry when miners discovered what remains the biggest gem find in the state ˆ a massive tourmaline pocket worth over $1 million at the time. Tourmaline remains the most sought-after Maine stone, both for its rainbow-brilliant colors and its gem quality. And it's tourmaline, particularly the green kind Freeman compares to beer-bottle glass, that interests Mount Mica's owner most. Maine gem mining enthusiasts say the blasting and digging Freeman is doing at his mine is by far the most promising work in gem mining currently happening in the state.
"Mount Mica is the story of the present," says Carl Francis, curator of the Mineralogical Museum at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. "Gary has spent more money moving rock, so he's been able to find these things previous owners haven't."
Rock hounds
Freeman fell in love with rocks, as he calls them, as a teenager digging for bits of gold and diamond in mines in Venezuela and Brazil, where his father was doing technical support for a subsidiary of a U.S. steel company. Freeman's passion for rocks was reenergized in 1997 when he and his wife found aquamarine crystals along a trail on East Baldpate Mountain in western Oxford County. "That kind of let the genie out of the bottle," he says.
Mount Mica is the first mine Freeman has owned. In March he bought the Orchard Pit mine in Buckfield for an undisclosed price. Freeman operates the two under the company name Coromoto Minerals, after a mine he and his father worked in Venezuela. Freeman and Edwards have continued to mine exclusively on Mount Mica because Freeman says they don't have time to mine two locations. He says he bought Mount Mica for around $365,000, after its former owner told Freeman at the 2002 Maine Mineral Symposium that the site was for sale. Since then, he's been blasting into the side of Paris Hill in search of gem pockets.
"Until we went underground everybody else ran the mine as a quarry, as an open pit," Freeman says. "When they first found tourmaline in Mount Mica in 1820 it was right on the surface; you just had to pick it up."
Freeman says he comes across sellable gems about once a month. In early May, he sold about $12,000 in rare pin quartz crystal. His biggest sale thus far was $18,000 for pieces of tourmaline.
"There was mining going on [at Mount Mica] but nobody was foolish enough to do it on the scale that I'm doing it," says Freeman. "Mining in Maine has been part-time, weekend gem mining."
Freeman and Edwards have blasted about 100 feet into the earth since the first day of mining on July 28, 2003. Freeman also leases rights to tours of the outside of the mine to Poland Mining Camps and Western Maine Mineral Adventures, in South Paris, for "practically nothing," he says. About a dozen tourists come to the mine every summer weekend, Freeman says, to dig through the dump piles of dirt around the entrance to Freeman's gem cave.
Freeman hopes one day to turn a profit on the site, but if he doesn't, it's no big deal. It's just for fun.
Freeman says he prefers crystals, but his love of all gorgeous rocks, with pretty color and form, keeps him shoveling money into his mine.
"The village idiot will be impressed by a good crystal," he says. "Everybody agrees they're beautiful. We all like stained glass. And when you find nature's stained glass, when the sun goes through it and it lights up blue or red or green, that's just, wow. It's just beautiful."
Freeman, a Florida resident, splits his time between Awareness Technology, the Palm City lab supplies company he and his wife, Mary Freeman, founded in 1982, and the little mound of earth in western Maine he and Mary bought four years ago. Mount Mica is a quiet spot at the end of a wooded dirt road at the crest of Paris Hill. Piles of parchment-colored earth and shards of silvery mica surround the rock face. The entrance is a gaping hole just big enough to fit a golf cart, or a mini-bulldozer in this case.
With his headlamp and dirty sweats on, Freeman, 59, looks like a suburban tourist trapped unwittingly in an Indiana Jones film. He employs one miner, a 50-something former explosives worker named Richard Edwards. The two spend up to eight hours a day blowing up rock, carving out pockets of earth and digging around in the mud inside the shallow Mount Mica cavern. Occasionally Mary Freeman flies up from Florida to dig, too.
Freeman says Awareness Tech, where he is CFO, is his "cash cow." Mount Mica is his "labor of love." "I like being active," says Freeman. "In my other job I operate a desk. And in this job it's a lot more physical and it's a lot dirtier. There are a lot of things we have to deal with but the challenges of all kinds are not nearly as complicated as those in my other job."
Freeman jokes that he's so obsessed with money at Awareness Tech (with its 135 employees, roughly $19 million in annual revenue and satellite office in Dubai) he tells employees lunch breaks are for the weak. But at Mount Mica he's perfectly happy spending hundreds of thousands on a bulldozer, crawl truck and excavator, and $20,000 a year on dynamite. Last year, Freeman says, he made about $40,000 on gems sold from Mount Mica. It was the first year he put any of his findings up for sale, and he says his dealer has a stockpile of inventory worth $375,000 more.
Some of the best stuff Freeman keeps for himself, often because the pieces are so nice no one wants them. Freeman's biggest Mount Mica finds to date ˆ pink quartz, tourmaline and lepidolite mica pieces each worth about $150,000 ˆ haven't sold because he hasn't been able to find a collector willing to pay that much for rocks. So the gems sit in Freeman's safety deposit box along with other Mount Mica prizes. The mine costs Freeman roughly $200,000 annually to operate and he says he'd break even every year if he could sell all the stones he pulls out of the mine. "I don't sell it all, but it still has value," he explains.
Heigh-ho
Gems mined in 2004 in Maine, the most recent year available from the U.S. Geological Survey, were valued at $268,000, putting Maine 12th in the country in gemstone production. Of the hundreds of gem mines in the state, only a handful are being worked, according to Maine State Geologist Robert Marvinney. Of those few, he says, Mount Mica is the one to watch.
The first state evaluation of mineral resources in Maine occurred in 1836. By 1850, farmers doubling as gem miners were making decent side money digging for feldspar (to make porcelain) and mica (for silver sheen), mostly in western Maine. Mount Mica's reputation as a hot spot began more than a decade earlier, when in 1822 the first tourmaline in the country was discovered there. Mount Mica has consistently offered up tourmaline since then, though not in one dramatic flourish.
In 1972, drama instead happened at the Dunton Quarry 30 miles north in Newry when miners discovered what remains the biggest gem find in the state ˆ a massive tourmaline pocket worth over $1 million at the time. Tourmaline remains the most sought-after Maine stone, both for its rainbow-brilliant colors and its gem quality. And it's tourmaline, particularly the green kind Freeman compares to beer-bottle glass, that interests Mount Mica's owner most. Maine gem mining enthusiasts say the blasting and digging Freeman is doing at his mine is by far the most promising work in gem mining currently happening in the state.
"Mount Mica is the story of the present," says Carl Francis, curator of the Mineralogical Museum at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. "Gary has spent more money moving rock, so he's been able to find these things previous owners haven't."
Rock hounds
Freeman fell in love with rocks, as he calls them, as a teenager digging for bits of gold and diamond in mines in Venezuela and Brazil, where his father was doing technical support for a subsidiary of a U.S. steel company. Freeman's passion for rocks was reenergized in 1997 when he and his wife found aquamarine crystals along a trail on East Baldpate Mountain in western Oxford County. "That kind of let the genie out of the bottle," he says.
Mount Mica is the first mine Freeman has owned. In March he bought the Orchard Pit mine in Buckfield for an undisclosed price. Freeman operates the two under the company name Coromoto Minerals, after a mine he and his father worked in Venezuela. Freeman and Edwards have continued to mine exclusively on Mount Mica because Freeman says they don't have time to mine two locations. He says he bought Mount Mica for around $365,000, after its former owner told Freeman at the 2002 Maine Mineral Symposium that the site was for sale. Since then, he's been blasting into the side of Paris Hill in search of gem pockets.
"Until we went underground everybody else ran the mine as a quarry, as an open pit," Freeman says. "When they first found tourmaline in Mount Mica in 1820 it was right on the surface; you just had to pick it up."
Freeman says he comes across sellable gems about once a month. In early May, he sold about $12,000 in rare pin quartz crystal. His biggest sale thus far was $18,000 for pieces of tourmaline.
"There was mining going on [at Mount Mica] but nobody was foolish enough to do it on the scale that I'm doing it," says Freeman. "Mining in Maine has been part-time, weekend gem mining."
Freeman and Edwards have blasted about 100 feet into the earth since the first day of mining on July 28, 2003. Freeman also leases rights to tours of the outside of the mine to Poland Mining Camps and Western Maine Mineral Adventures, in South Paris, for "practically nothing," he says. About a dozen tourists come to the mine every summer weekend, Freeman says, to dig through the dump piles of dirt around the entrance to Freeman's gem cave.
Freeman hopes one day to turn a profit on the site, but if he doesn't, it's no big deal. It's just for fun.
Freeman says he prefers crystals, but his love of all gorgeous rocks, with pretty color and form, keeps him shoveling money into his mine.
"The village idiot will be impressed by a good crystal," he says. "Everybody agrees they're beautiful. We all like stained glass. And when you find nature's stained glass, when the sun goes through it and it lights up blue or red or green, that's just, wow. It's just beautiful."
Most Recent
Most Recent
Comments