ALBANY TOWNSHIP – Clyde the night watchman was nowhere to be found Thursday afternoon at the Bumpus quarry off Route 5. However, a very rare silver-haired bat and two skittish deer mice hung out there in a tunnel carved a hillside of rock.
Located about eight miles south of Bethel, the 130-foot-long, mineral-laden tunnel and two others are remnants of Maine’s feldspar mining history.
The giant tunnels and acres of mine waste that include fractured feldspar, mica, quartz, black tourmaline, garnet and other rocks are also expected to produce a gold mine of ecotourism for Maine Mineralogy Expeditions.
“There are scenes here that look like they’re right out of National Geographic,” said tour guide Seabury Lyon on Thursday.
The newly formed company is to manage the famous mine and its surrounding forest for the site’s new, conservation-minded owners, Mary McFadden and her husband, Lawrence Stifler. They have a home in Albany Township, and also live in Massachusetts.
Comprising Jim Mann, Jeff Parsons and Lyon, all of Bethel, the company is to conduct guided tours of the quarry, which operated from 1927 to 1967.
The mine became famous in the 1930s when two of the largest beryl crystals in the world were discovered there.
“They were over 20 feet long, the size of logs,” Maine Geological Survey geologist Woodrow Thompson said recently.
Mann said the quarry was also famed for its rose quartz, pinkish-hued rocks, which Lyon said were sold for their decorative value.
But the for-profit expedition venture that opened in August is more than just a place to examine and collect pretty rocks and minerals.
“The Bumpus Mine is an ideal place to teach people about the mining heritage of days gone by,” Mann said recently.
Mann, a longtime miner, rockhound and jewelry artisan, nurtured the mineralogy-expedition idea until it crystallized with the Stifler family purchase.
“He developed a relationship with them through his store, Mt. Mann Jewelers on Main Street in Bethel, and broached the subject, and they were very amenable to it, because they’re conservationists and preservationists,” Lyon said.
Not content only to shed light into the state’s mining past, the trio also educates visitors about the geologic processes and formations at the mine that helped feed Maine’s ceramic industry and others.
Additional treasures to mine include photographic opportunities, botany, ecology and wildlife.
That’s Clyde’s niche.
“Clyde is a huge bullfrog who lives outside Tunnel No. 2 in a pool. He gives kids a good show when he comes out. He is a monster,” Lyon said standing beside a large pool of water in the site’s old roadbed.
The four-hour guided tour starts not at the gated mine entrance, but at Parson’s business, Bethel Outdoor Adventures and Campground on Route 2.
There, the trio has assembled a showcase of rocks and gems found at the Bumpus Quarry.
The tour resembles the one in the movie “Jurassic Park,” but without the dinosaurs.
Participants head for the mine in their own vehicles after being given a radio. During the drive and over the radios, Lyon explains the geologic processes.
“I like to get them primed about this stuff before they get here, so they can let their imaginations run wild about the natural forces involved. It’s a stunner,” he said of the forces.
Lyon’s lecture continues on-site under a new lean-to shed fronted by log seats.
Lyon showed an e-mail he received Tuesday from a recent participant in the tour. In it, Beth Mauch of Mansfield, Mass., stated that she “waited my whole life to find this type of experience.”
“I flashed right back to being a seventh-grade Earth Science student who loved learning about rocks, minerals and geology,” Mauch wrote.
That, Lyon said, is what Maine Mineralogical Expeditions is all about.
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