Where to Find Barite in Missouri

Missouri was once the largest barite producer in the United States, and Washington County ("Old Mines") is the historic core of that industry. Surface and shallow workings around Potosi and Old Mines yielded tabular blue, white, and yellow barite blades up to 15 centimeters across, often grown on bedded dolomite with quartz druse coatings. The Viburnum Trend mines further south add smaller honey-colored barite with the calcite-galena-sphalerite assemblage. Many old Washington County diggings are abandoned and reverted to private timberland; specimens still turn up in road and creek cuts. Field barite is heavy, brittle, and cleaves into three good planes.