Deposit

Ponte Vedra

Ponte Vedra is a site with recorded past production in Florida, recorded in the USGS USMIN rare earth element occurrence database (ver. 4.0, June 2019).

Facts on this page last re-verified Aug 12, 2026 — the oldest verification date among its current claims. How we verify.

Location: Florida, United States (30.224, -81.373 approx.)

Commodities: ilmenite; rutile; zircon; rare earth elements (in monazite)

Deposit model: coastal heavy-mineral sands

Geology

Those parts of the dunes containing the most h.m. and all the storm-placers in the foredune area having an average concentration of 20 wt. % h.m. were being mined. (Elsner (1997))

Recorded production

Ponte Vedra, Mineral City: produced 0.9 metric tons of monazite, containing about 0.9 metric tons monazite, 1925–1925 (Staatz and others (1980), Page 4)

Exploration and site history

Active — Production - First commercial production of monazite concentrate in Florida, 1925 (Elsner (1997))
Active — Operated by Buckman & Pritchard, Inc.; Products were ilmenite, rutile, zircon, and monazite, 1916–1929 (Elsner (1997))

Record imported from USGS USMIN ver. 4.0 (June 2019). Developments after that date appear on facility records, not here; see the methodology.

Sources

U.S. Geological Survey · published Jun 1, 2019 · retrieved Aug 12, 2026 · archive unavailable: Wayback snapshot 20260427015518 of the ScienceBase item exists but the archive service returned 503 on verification 2026-08-12; recheck on a weekly pass