NEWRY – A plan to develop the state’s first mineral park – a 100-acre site that included the famed Dunton tourmaline mine – has collapsed.

Organizers were within $145,000 of their $225,000 goal to buy the land in June. Donors were led by the Land for Maine’s Future program, which pledged $50,000 toward the project.

But earlier this month, the land’s owner, Hancock Timber Resource Group, sold the property out from under the mineral park proponents.

The Maine Geological Survey, an agency of the state Department of Conservation, stated on its Web site “that recent developments have forced us to terminate plans to acquire the Newry Mines for a state mineral collecting park and education site. The 100-acre parcel proposed for the park has been sold by the owner, and then quickly re-sold as part of a much larger tract of land.”

Robert Marvinney, the state geologist; Woody Thompson, a Maine Geological Survey physical geologist based in Augusta; and Ron Lovaglio, former state conservation commissioner, were the primary forces behind the mineral park.

Besides the Dunton mine, the park site would have included five nearby quarries: the Nevel, Bell, Martin, Crooker and Kinglet quarries. All are on the south side of a spur of Plumbago Mountain, accessed from Route 5 in Rumford.

Unfortunate turn’

Thompson said park planners were disappointed that the deal fell through, but powerless to do anything about it.

Hancock sold the land to a Canadian-based paper-making company, he said, which in turn reconfigured some of its area holdings into much larger parcels and resold the site that included the proposed mineral park.

“It’s an unfortunate turn of events,” Thompson said.

The park “offered a golden opportunity for science class field trips” in addition to the chance for rockhounds to seek out gem-quality minerals in the region.

“It would have been a multiple-use site,” he added, with hiking as a side attraction.

Thompson said he and others are looking at alternate sites to possibly develop a mineral park, but suggested they’d be hard-put to find an area as well suited as the Plumbago quarries.

As of the end of June, 49 donors and mineral clubs in 14 states had contributed $30,015 toward the park’s purchase. Hancock had originally offered the 100 acres for the park for $300,000, but later dropped the price to $225,000.

It wasn’t immediately known how much the parcel sold for.

Thompson said donors to the mineral park project will be given the option of letting their money rest in a pot for future use at an alternate site, or having it returned.