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Parent Post: Hose Water
dickie
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6/6/2026, 9:04:25 AM
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# Cooper Spring  This is my drinking water. It comes from a small roadside pipe on Mt. Mica Road, a few miles outside Buckfield, where people quietly line up with jugs and bottles. The town of Buckfield owns the spring and maintains public access. A small parking area sits in front of the pipe. Flat stones set into the bank let you lean in to fill a jug. At first glance, it's just a pipe coming out of a hillside. But the hill it comes out of is Mount Mica — the site of the first reported occurrence of gem tourmaline in the United States, one of the most documented pegmatite localities in North American mineralogy, and a place that has been drawing people into the rock for over 200 years. --- ## The 1820 discovery In autumn 1820, Elijah Hamlin and Ezekiel Holmes — students with an interest in mineralogy — were descending Mount Mica when a flash of green caught Hamlin's attention near the roots of an uprooted tree. The crystal they recovered was later identified as tourmaline by Yale professor Benjamin Silliman after specimens were sent for examination. That account comes from Augustus Choate Hamlin, son of Elijah, in his 1895 book *History of Mount Mica*. The crystal from that first find was later set in a gold band and became known as "Primus."  The Hamlin Necklace — a gold chain holding eighteen removable gem pendants, primarily tourmalines from Mount Mica, totaling 228.12 carats — now resides in the Mineralogical and Geological Museum at Harvard University. --- ## Watermelon tourmaline country Mount Mica sits inside the broader western Maine pegmatite belt that made the state famous for tourmaline in every form: green elbaite, pink and red crystals, blue gems, and the type most associated with Maine — watermelon tourmaline, crystals with a red or pink core and a green outer rim.  Watermelon tourmaline was first discovered at the Dunton Quarry in Newry in 1902. The name came later: it was coined by George Robeley Howe of Norway, Maine, and first appeared in a Lewiston newspaper account in 1910 describing specimens from the Havey Quarry in Poland, Maine. The name entered an international publication — *Mineral Resources of the United States* — in 1911. --- ## Frank Perham Frank Perham was born in 1934 and raised in West Paris in a family steeped in the mineral trade. He studied geology at Bates College and spent decades mining across western Maine's pegmatites. He is most closely associated with the 1972 discovery at Plumbago Mountain in Newry — where, as contract miner for Plumbago Mining Corporation, he drilled into pockets that produced over a ton of gem watermelon tourmaline. He worked at Mount Mica as well, alongside many other Oxford County sites. A phosphate mineral first found in Maine was later named perhamite in his honor. He died in January 2023 at age 88. --- ## The water My measured sample from the pipe: | Parameter | Value | |-----------|-------| | pH | 7.0 | | TDS | ~27 ppm | Other visitors have measured TDS as low as 10–11 ppm. Spring output varies by season and flow rate. Either reading puts it well below the FDA threshold of 250 ppm for water classified as "mineral water." It is soft, neutral, and cold from the source. The low TDS makes sense given the substrate. Granite pegmatite is slow to weather and slow to dissolve. Water moving through it does not pick up much. The chemistry reflects the rock. Cooper Spring sits between Mount Mica and Bennett Quarry — two of the most mineralogically significant sites in the Oxford County pegmatite field. That's not coincidence. It's geography. --- ## Why I keep filling bottles here Cooper Spring is easy to miss. It's just a pipe on the side of the road. But it comes out of a landscape defined by a very specific geology: LCT-class granite pegmatites, lithium-bearing mineral systems, documented tourmaline pockets going back to 1820, and a collector tradition that put Maine on the global mineral map. Sun Journal columnist Mark LaFlamme has written that nearly all of his drinking water has come from Cooper Spring for about 15 years, and that switching sources left him convinced something was missing. [He called it magical, possibly placebo, possibly elf-assisted.](https://archive.md/004FF) I'll leave the elves out of it. But the water is measurably clean, soft, and cold, and it comes out of the base of a hill that has been drawing people back into the rock for over two centuries. That's enough for me.
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j.k.harwood2
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6/6/2026, 10:31:19 AM
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Tourmaline is a very cool crystal. I learned about it after moving here to Colorado, but I never knew there were so many other kinds. The watermelon is outstanding. We have a nice spring here too, but our well is deep, and the water is good from it, so it's good enough not to drive to the spring. Very cool you have such an awesome resource near you. 
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j.k.harwood2
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6/6/2026, 10:33:13 AM
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