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 March
Newsletter   HERE

 The Next BMC Meeting

BMC Meeting Announcement
Tuesday, 4 March, 2014

Program: History and Minerals of the

Quarries at White Rocks

Presented by: Harold (Fritz) Moritz

 At last December’s meeting Harold (Fritz) Moritz gave an interesting and informative presentation on history and mineralogy of the Fillow Quarry at Branchville, CT. For this year's March meeting I have invited Fritz back to give a presentation about another classic Connecticut mineral district, the White Rocks Quarry District in Middletown, CT.

Fritz is a geologist, mineral specimen collector and photographer. As a native of Connecticut, he has been collecting and researching the history of minerals from there since the mid-1970s, starting at the age of 14. In the early 1990s, he became a founding member of the Sterling Hill Mining Museum and has been collecting in and learning about the magnificent Franklin-Ogdensburg, New Jersey, USA zinc deposits ever since. His collection numbers about 3300 specimens mostly from these two areas. He is very active in several Connecticut mineral/gem clubs. After 24 years as an environmental consultant, he now works part time as a contract photographer for MineralMovies.com and Stonetrust.com and is photographing his collection. He has provided the following introduction to his presentation:

“This presentation provides a historic look at this huge pegmatite quarrying district as well as details of the many minerals found there. It also examines why it was the best area for pegmatite quarrying but was relatively late to develop and takes a systematic look at how quarrying and later reclamation/redevelopment progressed and gives details of how the ore was processed. Numerous photos are provided of the wide variety of pegmatite minerals found there, including elbaite, lepidolite, monazite, columbite, fluorapatite, beryl and the best molybdenite crystals from Connecticut.”

To complement the presentation BMC members are encouraged to bring in their favorite specimens from Connecticut pegmatite localities. The BMC display case will be available to display and protect your specimens. Please note that the Harvard Mineralogical Museum will be open to us from 7 to 8 PM as usual and refreshments will be provided during the meeting. The meeting will conclude with our traditional mineral raffle. Also please remember that guests are always welcome at all of our meetings and should be invited to attend this one as well.  

- Nate Martin, BMC President

 We Welcome Visitors & New Members!