Photo of a specimen of hectorite fresh from the mine. It has a soft, greasy texture, and feals like modeling clay when squeezed between the fingers. As clays go, it is one of the more expensive clays, due to it's unique thixotropic properties, and it sells for over $2,000 per ton. Major uses of hectorite are cosmetics, chemical, and industrial material production. The hector mine site was the epicenter of a magnitude 6.5 earthquake in 1999, but the mine suffered little damage, and continued production, in spite of the plethora of geologists roaming the fissures studying the strata opened by the quake.

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