Boston Mineral Club

Welcome to the Boston Mineral Club website! If you have suggestions, questions or comments about the site, please use the Contact page.

You do not need a college degree in earth sciences to join the club! We are open to all. We welcome and encourage new members to join the club. Membership 

What We Do

The Boston Mineral Club (BMC) was founded in 1936 to "promote the study and collecting of rocks and minerals, to encourage friendly cooperation among mineralogists and collectors, [and] to promote the study of mineralogy and related arts and sciences coming within the purview of earth sciences..."

In the pursuit of these goals, the BMC offers educational programs at club meetings, mineral collecting field trips, a newsletter, and access to our mineralogical reference library.

The Boston Mineral Club is a member of the American Federation of Mineral Societies and the Eastern Federation of Mineral and Lapidary Societies.

Field Trips

The Boston Mineral Club is proud of its long tradition of conducting field trips to collecting localities throughout the New England area. Information about trips planned for the current year is published in our newsletters which can be found in the members only area of the website. 

The club also organizes occasional trips to localities outside of New England. Previous destinations have included Nova Scotia, Kentucky, Georgia and Arizona. You can view photos of our 2009 trip to Nova Scotia here: recent trip to Nova Scotia.

Regular Meetings

Information about the regular monthly meetings of the club can be found on the meetings page. 



Members can Download the April
Newsletter   HERE

 The Next BMC Meeting

The April meeting of the Boston Mineral Club will feature a presentation by Les Tyrala on his experiences working as a mineral exploration geologist.

Les graduated from the College of Mines, University of Arizona, with a major in economic geology and worked for several years in the Southwest United States exploring for Cu, Mo, Pb and Zn for Freeport Sulphur (now Freeport-McMoran Gold and Copper).  His relocation to Houston, Texas had him pursuing a graduate degree in remote sensing, and then working significant amounts of the time in Mexico, Canada, Middle and Far East, and Western Europe (four years living and running the London office) for the National Lead Company. Les relocated to Boston from London in 1980, worked as a contracting geologist for several years with projects in Brazil, Yukon Territory and British Columbia, and then for Boston-based Stone & Webster Engineering with noteworthy projects in Turkey, Ghana and the Azores Islands. He has worked in more than 25 countries, and is now mostly retired.

Here is the description he provided for his presentation:

The role of the economic (aka, minerals exploration) geologist requires broad-based skills in general geology as well as recognizing the potential environment for a range of minerals in diverse settings. Depending on the location of the target area (selected from an initial, detailed research) for the target mineral(s), a fair bit independence may be required to manage the logistics beyond a durable field vehicle (float plane, helicopter, horses, camping, staking crew), carrying out field geological traverses, geochemical sampling, and geophysical surveys. The results of these preliminary field efforts, if promising, may lead to second round of field investigations culminating in a drilling program.  A final report to management will lead to more exploration, a detailed feasibility study, or termination of the project.

A portion of the presentation will deal with his discovery of a barite deposit in Belgium that resulted in the development of a new mining operation there. All BMC members are invited to bring in and display any barite specimens they have in their collections from any locality. The BMC display case will be available to display your specimens.

The mineral hall of the Harvard Geological and Mineral Museum should be available to us from 7 to 8 PM and we will gather in Haller Hall for refreshments and socializing beginning around 7:30 PM. At 8 PM we will have a brief business meeting followed by the presentation. The evening will conclude with our traditional mineral raffle. Please plan to come and invite a friend to come with you. Our meetings are open to everyone!

- Nate Martin, BMC President

 We Welcome Visitors & New Members!