Description Magnet Cove is an alkali intrusive consisting of a rim of nepheline syenite and a less weather resistant core of carbonatite and syenite pegmatite. Stanley Shale contacts the cove and is the native country rock that the cove body was injected through. It is believed that the intrusion was initiated by continental rifting when the North American continent pulled away from Pangea during the Cretaceous. Minerals and Collecting Magnet Cove is a locality that used to include several mines, pits and outcrops in which to collect. Reclamation and protective landowners has limited collecting to the Cove Creek bridge and creek bed.
Carbonatite intrusions outcrop on the road just northwest of the bridge.
The outcrop is heavily picked over and yields very few decent mineral specimens. Fractured calcite is not worth the chiseling and hammering, in my humble opinion. Panning up the creek bed or screening the top soil may be much more rewarding. Washed and screened, it has yielded finer specimens of most of the local minerals than anything I ever collected in the carbonatite. For descriptions of extinct or inaccessible locations within the cove click here.