The Patriot Lithium Project in Gunnison County, Colorado encompasses an area that the USGS surveyed and mapped with more than 1,800 individual pegmatite bodies intruded into Precambrian rocks with meta-quartzites, arkoses, and conglomerates. Numerous pegmatite dykes’ sampled quartz, lepidolite, cleavelandite and spodumene.
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Geological Overview
At the Patriot Project area the USGS mapped more than 1,800 individual pegmatite bodies that are intruded into Precambrian rocks meta- quartzites, arkoses and conglomerates. These rocks are surrounded by and may be roof pendants within hornblende gneiss and tonalite. The hornblende gneiss and tonalite have the same composition and differ only in texture. The older hornblende gneiss has a well-marked foliation and lineations, whereas the younger tonalite is equigranular. A large body of quartz monzonite intruded along the northern boundary while a younger, coarse-grained granite intruded in the southern part of the area. The last stage of igneous activity in the pre-Cambrian is marked by the intrusion of a large number of pegmatitic intrusions.
In addition to quartz, albite (cleavelandite) and K-feldspar, accessory minerals include lepidolite, tourmaline-elbaite, spodumene, topaz, columbite-tantalite, beryl, monazite, microlite-betafite, gahnite, samarskite, amblygonite, and lithiophyllite-triphyllite.