Where is Bentonite proper, found?
Bentonite minerals occur as seams or lenses containing up to 50% moisture. Because deposits are rocklike in nature they are usually extracted by quarrying (opencast mining). We are informed that most high-grade, commercial, Sodium Bentonite mined in the United States, comes from the area between the Black Hills of South Dakota and the Big Horn Basin of Montana. A great website for the geography of other such locations is: http://www.mindat.org/min-9141.html (This author found only one ambiguous entry, i.e., while the holotype referenced therein evidently came from Wyoming and is referred to as a Fort Benton Shale, one should not infer that Fort Benton is also in Wyoming, but rather recognize that it is in fact in Montana, as previously set forth herein.) Thus, we see Bentonite as a rather common mineral complex occurring all over the world and at many locations in each of States within the continental USA. Calcium Bentonite is supposedly even more common than the Sodium Bentonite varie
