PLEASE NOTE: THIS WONDERFUL MUSEUM IS NOW CLOSED, DUE TO STATE FISCAL PROBLEMS AND MISGUIDED DECISIONS.
 
   Here's just a sampler of what awaits you at the Arizona Mining and Mineral Museum in downtown Phoenix, Arizona.  This "banquet of rocks" looks like a delicious array, but the offerings are a little old, since they've been around for a few million years.
   Seriously though, this museum houses one of the finest mineral collections anywhere, and it's a place where you can spend hours looking at world class mineral specimens, fossils, gemstones, and meteorites.  The Museum also has a stunning "black light" room where you can view lots of pretty rocks, all radiating beautiful colors into the darkness.
   Tracing its origin all the way back to 1884, the collection here has been growing ever since.  As Arizona is known as the Copper State, the displays include a particularly rich assortment of copper minerals -- turquoise, malachite, azurite, and chrysocolla among them.  Arizona is the number one mining state in the USA, producing the largest value of non-fuel minerals.
   Return to the map of "Rock Art in the Valley of the Sun" for more view locations.
   You can also send this as an E-Postcard to your friends!