The White Elephant pegmatite mine is visible on the side of the mountain east of the highway. The White Elephant has long been the source of high-quality feldspars used for making porcelain. When ground to a powder, coated on a metal substrate and fused at high temperature in a furnace, a highly durable porcelain finish for sinks and bathroom fixtures results. The photograph at left shows two nearly-vertical pegmatite dikes in the roadcut. Another pegmatite intrusion east of highway.
Pegmatites are igneous intrusive rocks containing extremely coarse-grained crystals.
They commonly form dikes. The reason for large crystal size in pegmatites probably has to do with the presence of water in the magma from which they formed. Water allows ions in the magma to be extremely mobile and to form crystals quickly. Thus, even though a pegmatite may cool relatively rapidly, water allows crystals to grow much larger than would be otherwise possible. 5.4 Beecher Rock - east of road.