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Thanks for Visiting My Site….Contact Me For More Information…
Thanks for visiting my site, I am a rockhound in east central Missouri and I have been rockhounding for 50 years…my Mom and Dad got me started and I am glad they did, it`s a great hobby to get into and enjoy, digging and finding new treasures that God created millions of years ago can be as much fun as meeting new people that share that same love and interest, turning into long lasting friendships. I go rockhunting as much as time permits me to, sometimes in state and locally, as well as out of state trips to other locations where other great treasures can be located. I have a core group of friends that join me on many of my travels out of state and I am often asked by others if they can join me and my group. My answer is yes, as long as you meet a few requirements…I am often asked if I am willing to take others rockhunting with me and my answer is the same, yes, as long as you meet certain requirements.
My parents raised me to be a law abiding rockhound, meaning I do not trespass nor steal from others, I have great respect for others and their properties, I ask for permission before entering property of others and if denied permission, I respect that and go elsewhere. I am easy to get along with and I take my dog with me often on my rockhunting trips…if you don`t like dogs, then do not ask me to leave my dog at home, he is a big part of my life and a joy to be around much of the time. Many of my core group of friends are hard rock miners, we put in long hours at locations, digging and breaking rock to find the goodies, we practice safety in doing so…some of my group of friends are more surface collectors…we all wear the appropriate safety gear no matter what role we are in at the locations, basics are hard hats, gloves, steel toed boots, and safety glasses, not all are required at each location, but each person comes prepared just in case.
Some of the locations I go to, are open to other rockhounds, some at no charge and some charge a dig fee, some require rockhounds to wear safety gear and practice safety while rockhunting there, staying off the high walls, behind berms, and following local rules and regulations to avoid injuries. If you are the type of person that can abide by rules and regulations, then you are the type of person I can take rockhunting or provide information to.
Some locations are privately owned and I cannot take anyone else there, nor provide information on them…. some where I did the legwork to gain not only access to that location but the trust of the owner, and I will not provide that information to anyone else at the request of the owner.
I am a big believer in keeping my word, and I have seen the end result when one does not keep their word on other locations…I have seen many locations once accessible to other rockhounds, lost because someone failed to keep their word and gave out the information to rockhounds who had no respect for the property of others, damaging the property in their pursuit of pretty rocks and minerals.
In my fifty years of rockhounding, mainly in the last twenty years, I have seen and experienced many of these different types of people, mostly good people and some bad, some I never care to meet or deal with again…I`m a pretty good judge of character but sometimes I have to rely on the word of others til I find out differently about someone…been there and done that too. I do screen folks I have never met or heard of too…there are many tools available these days to do just that. I have worked in law enforcement and the fire service for many years, and worn other hats as well.
So if you believe in good ethics, following rules and regulations, practice safety, and can meet my simple requirements as a good rockhound, then I would be happy to take you rockhounding, provide you with information on available locations, or add you to my core group of friends. For more information and to get started, give me a shout at jwjphoto7@gmail.com and tell me about yourself and we can go from there. My name is James…Onyx and I look forward to hearing from you…
Protected: MFQ and Park Hills Show 2016
Waterhole Pocket End of May
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Well I am now officially four stories behind…thats what I get for traveling so much I guess, going to have to take off more time to catch up after I return I guess.
I decided to return to the secret spot and see if I could find more of the dogtooth crystals, so I drove down one evening mid week and took a look around. After examining the pocket more closely, I was only able to pull a few more out and decided to leave the embedded ones for Docia to chip out, cause she is better at chipping those little crystals out than I am. I scratched around the surface on either side of the pocket to see if I could locate a back way in, but had no luck. I also attempted to drain the waterhole above the pocket since it seemed to drain well into the second and third waterhole, so I expanded the little trench to do so…felt like a kid again, playing in the water….
…I found a few small pockets down below the dogtooth pocket but nothing to write home about……
….I felt the big waterhole calling to me so I went up to explore it further and after scratching around and finding potential calcite, I decided to do some tamping around a bit on the dome rock…. it sounded hollow so I decided to dig and explore as much as I could…
…and so I dug in and pretty soon the bottom dropped out and this hole appeared….
I decided if this wound up being a pocket, I sure didnt want to flood it, so I backed off and dammed off the waterhole so it wouldnt flood it…..
…after I got that done, I started working on exploring the hole more…
…and let me tell you, everytime something fell down into that hole, it sounded deep, could hear water below and the rocks were splashing so I figured it must be a deep pocket of something, which didnt surprise me since the dome of rock to my left side sounded hollow. I started removing some thick plates of druse and pretty soon had the pocket expanded to this….
…I pulled about six plates out as I was expanding the pocket and several poker chip crystals from the bottom…all too soon, the sun started setting on me, and Missy and I decided to wrap up what I had collected and head home….
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A Nice Three Day Weekend, Part 2….
Sunday afternoon, after another photo shoot, Missy and I loaded up and headed back to the secret spot to see if we could work on those other potential areas I found late the day before…this time we got a late start and arrived about 2 pm…..
knowing I only had a few hours of light, I quickly started working the first area with my hand rake…..
and pretty soon I was seeing signs of calcite, always a good sign of potential pockets nearby….
and pretty soon I had a few nice crystals dug out of the beginnings of a pocket…
and pretty soon I was finding one pocket after another, usually one leading to the other by way of a narrow trench filled with crystals and small druse plates. Just as you would think the pocket was going to open up into a bigger pocket, you would come up against a wall of rock and nothing more from the pocket, an abrupt end to the pocket. Then I would move a few inches over and find yet another pocket forming and more crystals…here is what it looked like after the first thirty minutes of raking and digging….
and I had the same problem as the day before, piling my crystals up in the wrong place…of course today, it wouldn`t have mattered where I piled them up…the pockets expanded in every direction and I wouldn`t have been safe anywhere with them….after hitting a dead end quickly on the left hand pocket above, I moved over and started digging out the pocket on the right….
I cleaned it out and moved more to the right where I found even more small pockets….this area just kept expanding with one pocket after another….
and here is the pile of crystals that just keeps growing….
and I kept moving to the right and digging down and finding even more pockets with crystals coming out right and left….
this one pretty much came to an abrupt end when I came up against a solid wall of curved rock on the far end of the right side…but if you look under that pile of crystals, which by now I have moved back three times, you`ll see the makings of more pockets under those little bluff walls, and yes, you guessed it, I had to move the crystals once again to explore under those plates…plates of druse as it turned out….
so I took a few moments and high graded the crystals and plates, moved the rejects back about two feet and piled the rest over on the right side of the solid rock wall and started working those druse plates, til I found yet another pocket ….
here are the druse plates and crystals that I took out to get to this point….
and here is the pocket up close, and you can see a few crystals inside it….I dug those out fairly easily and reached back a little further and pulled even more out…
as I was digging this one out to enable me to get my hand in there further, the top of the pocket came down and this druse and poker chip combo plate came down with the dirt….
I took as many crystals out as I could and then took a break and wrapped up the nicer crystals and druse plates and carried them to the truck…I had about 45 minutes left and decided to check out one more area, where I had raked around earlier on a break and while raking, a hole opened up, that appeared to be quite deep….\
found this hole about twenty feet from the original pocket from Saturday and closer to the truck actually. While raking, I came across an area of calcite that really looked promising and then I pulled a chunk of druse out that was hanging upside down and this hole opened up underneath it…..
I really need to start taking my flashlight with me so I can look into them and see if they bear exploring further…this one just appealed to me though, it seemed to me that it was deep and might contain another cavern and boy did it….
I pulled these druse plates out and the hole opened up even more…
however, even though I could get my hand down in the hole and started pulling some beautiful crystal singles and twins out, the opening wasn`t large enough to get some bigger ones out, so I pounded on a large chunk of druse to enlarge the opening more and this nice druse chunk with poker chips is what came out….
there are some neat looking hematite balls all over the druse on that chunk too. The next photo shows the enlarged opening of the pocket…
about a foot wide at this point and the next one shows better how deep the pocket is…or at least how deep it appeared at this point…
after a few more minutes of pulling one crystal after another, out of this pocket, including a few plates of druse with poker chips attached, and twins and triples, I sat back and shot this photo and it shows a nice few poker chips attached to druse on the ceiling of the pocket near the opening….
and this also shows the pile of crystals growing on the left side…you cant tell here but the pile is about fifteen inches tall, mostly singles here, as I put the more delicate crystals and plates on the right out of view of the camera here…the next photo shows that nice ceiling plate still in the pocket….
I ran out of light soon after and wrapped what I could quickly and then packed everything away in my truck. The sun was setting rather nicely again, as Missy and I started up the hill….
and then at the top of the hill as we headed home….
stay tuned for part three….
Welcome to JWJ Rock Hunting blog
Welcome to my new site, jwjrocks.com
People always ask me, what types of rocks and minerals do you look for and collect ? I always tell them, pretty rocks.
I started collecting rocks around the age of ten, thanks to some friends of my parents, who worked at the local Pea Ridge Iron Ore Mine south of Sullivan, they were able to bring me some pretty quartz crystals, calcite crystals, hematite and magnetite specimens covered in pyrite and marcasite, often found in goodie pockets or pretty pockets deep down in the mine. Hence my quest and journey began for pretty rocks and minerals.
I remember my parents taking several trips each year and would always work in a rock collecting adventure along the way whenever possible, or at least a rockshop visit in the area.
I had to make a decision when I turned eighteen, my parents told me to choose between collecting rocks and photography. I chose photography at that time, having started photographing fire calls at the age of 14 for the fire department as a volunteer firefighter, and also enjoyed shooting sunsets, scenery, weather, and steam trains.
After college and a few years in law enforcement dispatch and police work, I opened my own photo finishing store and portrait studio and operated it for several years, and continued my journey through the fire service, my vacations often consisting of working as a firefighter at the Missouri State Fair in August each year, and photo shoots in pretty places.
Through the 1980`s and early 90`s, I became the Training Coordinator for my local Fire Department, setting up all of the training for our firefighters and coordinating all of the classes and outdoor hands on training as well, which took up a lot of my free time apart from my business. I was also in charge of the umpires and ground crews for the local Little League Baseball Organization in Sullivan for about 15 years.
After twenty years in business for myself, I returned to emergency dispatch work for Union Pacific Railroad Police for five years at the Response Management Communications Center for UPRR in St Louis, where we handled calls from all over a 27 state jurisdiction and dispatched UP personnel by phone to emergency locations, after first notifying local first responders. We also handled all state and federal notifications required by each state agency. I had great bosses and supervisors there, it was truly one of the best workplaces and environments I have ever worked at. Had they stayed in St Louis, instead of moving the operation to Omaha, I likely would have stayed with them.
UP decided to build a new building in Omaha, and move the RMCC operation there in 2002, so I then took a job offer at East Central Dispatch Center in Richmond Heights, for police and fire dispatch work of 8 cities in the St Louis County area. This included answering non emergency phone calls, answering 911 calls, handling several radio frequencies including 2 police channels with 4 departments on each channel, fire frequency with all 8 departments on one channel, mutual aid channels for both police/fire agencies, and paperwork. I worked there nearly 17 years, the last ten years I worked primarily as a fire dispatcher, and with my background in the fire service, it was very enjoyable for me. It can be a stressful job at times tho, mainly due to some of the people you have to work with and deal with on a daily basis….luckily most of the time, I had good bosses and a great supervisor, but the stress took its toll eventually, and I took early retirement and returned to my first love of rock and mineral collecting.
I took early retirement from ECDC early in 2018, after spending 25 years total in dispatch and emergency communications work and had nearly 40 years as a volunteer firefighter with Sullivan Fire District. I then worked 2 years seasonal full time at Greenbriar Hills Golf Course in St Louis County, then a few months one winter stocking shelves at a local Walmart Store, before heading out to New Mexico in March for my first trip out there with my group of rockhound friends.
When I returned from the Deming area, with a truckload of pretty rocks and minerals, I began working at my current seasonal job at Wolf Hollow Golf Course, near Washington, Missouri. Again, great bosses to work for, plus working outside doing advanced yard work plus some specialized work details, and being allowed to take many short rockhounding vacations through the season, and many golfer friends, some of whom also like rocks and minerals, makes for a very enjoyable work experience.
I also do a lot of guiding work for Mineral Clubs and groups, taking them to rockhunting locations I have access to go to with permission from the owner. I have about a hundred rockhound friends now in my personal group that often travel with me on my out of state trips these days. Many also like to travel here to Missouri and spend a few days rockhounding with me locally.
Years ago I met and talked to many of my current great friends on an online rockhound board, called The McRocks, and from those initial contacts, have been able to travel to various places both locally within Missouri as well as surrounding states and find some beautiful crystals and minerals to add to my ever growing collection.
I was also part of a small group of rockhound friends, formed from the McRocks site, that traveled to an old fluorite mine in Kentucky, where we were able to help a museum Board of Directors open up areas of the old mine with machinery and manpower, so that rockhounds who later went there to dig and collect pretty fluorite could do so in a much easier fashion.We did this for about 15 years in all types of weather and enjoyed every minute of it.
People ask me all the time, what do you enjoy the most about collecting rocks and minerals..I used to think it was displaying beautiful crystals and minerals…eventually tho, I came to realize that the enjoyment is truly realized when hunting and finding the remarkable and beautiful treasures created by God, and the memories of actually digging and finding those treasures, while in the company of good friends, that make that enjoyment even sweeter.
So, I hope that as you browse through the many blog stories and photos in my new site, that you enjoy what you read and see as much as I do, and if I can assist you in any way in your journey as well, please do not hesitate to contact me at jwjphoto7@gmail.com
If you have Facebook, my personal FB page is at https://www.facebook.com/jwjphoto
and my new FB page for Rock Guiding Trips is at https://www.facebook.com/groups/322253830735906/
James W Johnson Rockhound and Guide Retired Firefighter Sullivan, Missouri