The quartz mine was located on lot eight in the ninth concession of Lansdowne (near Black Rapids on Red Horse Lake).
The first mine was dug by Arza Sherman in 1897, who mined quartz and attempted to sell it in the United States. The mine was essentially a hole in the ground with wooden ladders to descend. Sherman sold the property to John Moorehead in 1901.

In 1938, Loris McElroy picked up samples from the site, showed them to a chance acquaintance named George Moroughan, who in turn showed them to Jack Steele, the owner of a mica mine near Sydenham.
In July 1942, the three men signed an agreement to create the Red Horse Lake Mining Syndicate, dividing profits from the mine equally. They also mined quartz, because of its utility in technologies such as radio frequency control and bomb sights (and worth a reported $3000 per ton due to the war effort).

In 1943, the Red Horse Lake Mining Syndicate gave way to the Rare Minerals Prospecting Syndicate which conducted considerable exploration, before giving way in turn to Quartz-Crystals Mining Corporation of Canada Limited. Both the syndicates and the Mining Corporation sold quartz to the Canadian government. The Mining Corporation operated the mine until it went bankrupt in 1950.

In 1951, a new company funded by the federal government, Quartz Crystals Mines Limited, mined the quartz crystals, employing six to seven men until the government announced in 1954 that stockpiles were sufficient and closed the mine.