Tri-State Lead Zinc District, Oklahoma-Kansas-Missouri Border Area, United States
A very old specimen of galena, consisting of a single, hefty crystal on a bit of matrix. Many of the mines in the area connected underground, even across state lines, and records were rarely kept as to which exact location they came from. As such, I always label these "Tri-State District" unless I have a reliable old label-- and that is almost never the case.
Although galena continues to be produced in the Viburnum trend district (eastern Missouri), this area encompassing the western Missouri, Oklahoma and Kansas border area saw its last mine close in 1967. Some of the workings remained accessible to collecting for a while, until it finally became a superfund site and was cleaned up.