Princess Sodalite Mine (previously the Princess Sodalite Quarry) is a sodalite quarry and retail shop, located near Bancroft, Ontario. The sodalite deposit was first discovered in 1892.
The mineral deposit was first found by Frank Dawson Adams in 1892.[1] Sodalite from the quarry was displayed at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. The Princess of Wales was given a gift of sodalite from the quarry in 1901 at the Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, New York. She liked it so much that she ordered a shipment to decorate Marlborough House, in London, England. Thomas Morrison, the quarry's owner at the time, named the quarry the Princess Sodalite Quarry after her visit.[2] The Quarry name continued through the 20th century[3] [4] until at least 2002.[5]
In 1999, the owners of the quarry donated a sodalite boulder to the Earth Sciences Museum at the University of Waterloo in Ontario.[6]
The quarry was owned by Paul Rasmussen and Carl Bosiac, the 8th owners, who sold it to the ninth owner Andy Christie.[7]
The quarry is located four kilometres east of Bancroft, Ontario on Ontario Highway 28.[8] It is on rock with calcite vein-dikes that intruded into nepheline gneiss rock, with nepheline prismatic crystals attached to the walls of the dikes.[9]
The quarry is the only source of sodalite in Ontario, where it was once nominated (but ultimately rejected) to be the official provincial mineral.