Crodo, Verbano-Cusio-Ossola Province, Piedmont, Italyi

Regional Level Types
Crodo	Commune
Verbano-Cusio-Ossola Province	Province
Piedmont	Region
Italy	Country

Large portions of the municipal territory of Crodo are made of orthogneisses, paragneisses, and amphibolites of the Antigorio nappe. However, the main geological feature of its territory, located to the north, is the “Verampio-Baceno window”, where crops out the Verampio metagranite (leucogranitic gneiss), the lowermost unit of the Lepontine dome exposed in the Toce domain of the Penninic realm. This metagranite is overlain by 200 meters of garnet schists, the Permo-Carboniferous Crodo-Baceno schists, and Mesozoic sediments of the Teggiolo Zone.

Gold-bearing ores are known at various sites near Crodo.
The main occurrences, situated NW of Crodo on the right of Rio Alfenza, are divided into Alfenza dykes (Alfenza mine), embedded in the Crodo-Baceno garnet micaschists, and Faella dyke, embedded in the Antigorio gneiss. The ore mineralogy of the Faella dyke is quite simple and includes quartz, pyrite, chalcopyrite, pyrrhotite, hematite, and native gold. The Alfenza dykes, four parallel dykes (up 50 cm in thickness), included in NNW-SSE oriented fractures, and a smaller one, intersecting the first two dykes, show a richer paragenesis, which includes quartz, calcite, dolomite, siderite, pyrite, arsenopyrite, chalcopyrite, bornite, native gold, galena, sphalerite, bismuthinite, cosalite, molybdenite, etc.
Minor dykes are known W of Crodo (area Viceno-Mozzio) at Rondola, Emo, and Valle d'Oro (Rio d'Oro). Other Au-bearing mineralisations have been reported NE of Crodo, on the left side of Antigorio Valley, at Balmetta, Maglioggio, and Cruppo (Jervis, 1873; Pipino, 2003). At Maglioggio traces of cosalite in association with pyrite have been also observed (Mattioli, 1979).

At Crodo an interesting mineralogical museum, inaugurated on 2 July 2006, was created by the Mineralogical Section of Centro Studio Piero Ginocchi in cooperation with the Veglia-Devero Natural Park Authority, private mineral collectors-rockhounds and their organisations. The Mineralogical Museum named after Aldo Roggiani and Angelo Bianchi, located in same building as the National Museum of Mineral Waters at the entrance of the Crodo Thermal Springs Park, offers visitors an overview of the mineralogical wealth of the Ossola territory (Mantovani, 2009). Special emphasis is placed on minerals from the Veglia-Devero Natural Park and Mount Cervandone area in particular. From this last locality, in addition to the holotype of paraniite-(Y), representative exhibits of anatase, asbecasite, beryl, cafarsite, cervandonite-(Ce), diopside, fluorite, gasparite-(Ce), hematite, quartz, rutile, synchysite-(Ce), tilasite, and xenotime-(Y) are displayed. Worthy of particular mention are also some historical specimens from the Simplon Rail Tunnel and the gold mines of Alfenza (Crodo, Antigorio Valley) and Lavanchetto (Ceppo Morelli, Anzasca Valley).

Fossils

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Other Databases

Wikipedia:	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crodo
Wikidata ID:	Q23319
GeoNames ID:	6539443

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References