Question
What happened to the Department of Mines & Minerals files & Nyal Niemuth? Doug
Answer
Doug, good questions. The former died while the latter lives.
ADMMR went belly up in 2010-2011. The Brewer Admin shuttered the museum and handed off the mineral collection to the Arizona Historical Society. In 2016, the mineral collection and old museum (Polly Rosenbaum Building) were transferred to the Arizona Geological Survey. A year later, the collection and museum were transferred once again to Research, Discovery & Innovation team at the Univ of Arizona. Both collection and museum reside there today.
Nyal is alive and well and semi-retired in Phoenix, Arizona. After the demise of ADMMR, Nyal hired on with us at AZGS through June 2016, when he retire after 30+ years in service to the state of Arizona. In July 2016, AZGS was taken out of service as a state agency and transferred to the Univ of Arizona. We reside there today.
There you have it in a nutshell.
Mike Conway
