Seaman Mineral Museum

Mineral collectors, artists, and many tourists may well be dazzled by the sumptuous patterns and colors of this very large, artfully displayed collection of minerals from around the world. The collection, one of the best in the U.S., was developed as a teaching tool of MTU's geology department. Historically, geology had been a key component of this onetime mining college. In 1990 an act of the state legislature made the Seaman Museum the official mineralogical museum of Michigan.
Of great interest to confirmed rock hounds is the museum's outstanding systematic collection of world minerals. The museum has become generally understandable by anyone with a high school education.

In 2011 the Seaman Museum moved to a transitional home at 1404 Sharon Avenue, past the football stadium, assuming you're coming from the main campus and U.S. 41. Two galleries will be open in July 2011, then more, and more, until May 2012, when the entire museum will be open again. The gift shop (see below) will be open right away.

Kids who like rocks should definitely check out familiar, eye-catching quartz and other silicates. Composed of silicon and oxygen, the most abundant elements in the earth's crust, they are the most plentiful and easily collected minerals.

Current popular highlights of the Seaman Museum's extensive collection include:
♦ the world's finest collection of specimens from the mineral-rich Keweenaw Peninsula
♦ dramatically illuminated fluorescent minerals under black light. (Be sure to press the button to make them light up.)
♦ the Lake Superior gemstones exhibit including datolites, Thompsonites, agates, and greenstones.
♦ the Michigan Mineralogy section featuring some of the state's most spectacular specimens, including native copper and rare naturally occurring silver crystals from the nearby Kearsarge Lode.

Color-coded backgrounds indicate Keweenaw copper (blue green), the iron districts (mauve), and the interesting array of industrial minerals quarried in Lower Michigan and the Eastern Upper Peninsula (gray), all explained in terms of geology, economic use, and specimen location.

Here too are interpretive exhibits on the state gemstone (greenstone), stone (Petoskey stone), the history of copper mining, and a three-minute narrated computer animation on the geological process of copper formation.

The museum and its helpful staff are a good starting place for Keweenaw rock-collecting trips. By appointment, the staff will identify minerals people bring in. The large, reasonably priced gift shop is worth a trip in itself. It sells many interesting specimens from 50˘ to $1,000 and up, including inexpensive agate slices, fossil fish, copper and half-breeds (copper and silver in the same rock), agates, slabs of iron ore, and more. Handsome sliced agate bookends (under $25 and $35) make beautiful, useful gifts. Other nifty gift ideas: jewelry, rock refrigerator magnets, crystalline amethyst semi-spheres and "cathedrals," and cool and inexpensive acrylic stands for displaying specimens.

Geology professor and museum administrator Ted Bornhorst is also the gift shop manager and buyer, so you can be sure he knows the field and chooses excellent books and specimens.

"There are very few mineral museums left in universities today," says Tech geology professor Bill Rose. "Geology is not so central. The only university geology museum today that's clearly better than ours is Harvard's." At Tech, geology, though no longer key to the institution's mission, remains important.

Many avid amateur mineralogists and copper-collectors either live in the area or come here on collecting expeditions. The Copper Country Mineral Retreat is in early to mid August. This enthusiasm means the Seaman Museum today is in expansion mode, thanks to an increasing number of donors and friends. Many great North American mineral collectors in North America think of this as a possible future home for their vast collections.

Now at 1404 Sharon Ave. just west of the football stadium. From U.S. 41, take MacInness up the hill at the light. It becomes Sharon. Free parking. (906) 487-2572. May thru Dec open Mon-Sat 9-5. Jan thru April open Wed-Sat 10-5. 2012 admission being decided. Wheelchair accessible.
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