Mineral and Lapidary Museum

The Mineral and Lapidary Museum of Henderson County is a non-profit, volunteer-run museum in Hendersonville, North Carolina, United States, founded in 1997 at 400 North Main Street in the middle of the city's Historic District.[1]

Exhibits

Items on display
Henderson Augen Gneiss in the museum

The AAA boasts that the petrology and natural history museum features a variety of "gems, minerals, geodes and fossils from around the world."[2] The regional exhibits include dozens of stone and mineral specimens from North Carolina, and a long wall of local Henderson Augen Gneiss.

A six-foot-tall purple amethyst geode from Brazil is the largest geode on display.[3] Another exhibit features more than two dozen pairs of colorful quartz and calcite geodes from Mexico. A mineralology exhibit presents three dozen fluorescent minerals, such as fluorite, opal, willemite, calcite, ruby and sodalite. Among the gemstones exhibited are four replica versions of the Hope Diamond, including a reproduction of the large 18th-century French Blue Diamond.

Chunks of the 1901 Hendersonville iron-nickel meteorite are on display. The museum also displays local Native American archeological artifacts.

The Mineral and Lapidary Museum has a replica Tyrannosaurus rex skull as well as a skull of a Smilodon, the big sabre-tooth cat.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Source is museum's staff and publications as of December 1, 2011. Also, Mineral & Lapidary Museum official website News page Archived 2010-08-13 at the Wayback Machine. Accessed December 1, 2011. Mineral & Lapidary Museum official website Events page Archived 2010-09-02 at the Wayback Machine. Accessed December 1, 2011. Historic Hendersonville website page on Mineral & Lapidary Museum of Henderson County. Accessed December 1, 2011.
  2. ↑ American Automobile Association (2006), Georgia, North Carolina & South Carolina Tourbook, AAA Publishing, Heathrow, Florida, p. 155.
  3. ↑ Barnes, Judy (2001). Coasting the Mountains: A Guide to Western North Carolina. Pelican. p. 234. ISBN 978-1565548299.

35°19′01″N 82°27′35″W / 35.3169°N 82.4598°W / 35.3169; -82.4598

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