New Mexico March 2026

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I started planning my trip to New Mexico back in December after making contact with a Guide out there in the Albuquerque area, that said he could take us to a few locations where we could find some pretty rocks. I let him know we were not new to rockhunting, that my crew had a lot of experience collecting rocks and even digging them from the ground and rock walls both. Every time I made contact with him again tho, it was like starting out new again, I dont think he was taking notes like I do when someone in charge of a group contacts me about going rockhounding with me here in Missouri. He did start to take me seriously the closer we got to the actual trip tho. He came highly recommended by a few friends of mine who have hounded with him, so I figured he knew what he was doing and would take care of us since we were going to pay him for his services, and so I didnt worry about it as I continued to put the trip together. 

During the few snows we had this winter, I was racking up alot of hours on my computer researching the trip…Michael, the NM Guide, sent me a photo of Dogtooth Calcites ringing a plate of blue Fluorite cubes one evening, said he might be able to take us up to this location, it was up pretty high and in the northern part of the state. I was pretty sure in my mind, that everyone in my group would be fine looking for something like this….

…but later on in the planning, he told me it was going to be impossible to get up that high due to all the snow they had received this winter, so we had to go with Plan B on the last day of collecting. 

Originally, I heard from Randy Gentry about a trip to the Red Cloud Wulfenite Mine, that had another mine nearby with Vanadinite plates, both would be tailings pile digs there. Another rockhound friend came back to Missouri from Arizona and New Mexico digs about a week later and I questioned him about the Red Cloud Mine. He and his wife camped out at the Mine one night, said the road going in there was really in bad shape in spots, due to off road vehicles driving it daily, creating deep ruts and there were sharp rocks in the road, too. He had a sharp rock flatten one of his new tires on the way in there, he told me they were only 4 ply sidewalls but he still had to replace it. He also told me that the tailings piles had been there since October and several groups had dug thru them already, so the pickins were pretty slim by February. I passed that on to Randy, who was in touch with the Mine Manager. We were looking at driving there first, staying 3 nights in the Yuma, Arizona area, hotel costs were running about $ 100 a night and gas prices there were not great either, then there were fees at the mines each day, both mines had a different fee….the temps there were also 80 to 90 per day, so we were going to have to keep a sharp eye out for rattlesnakes too.  We ultimately decided between the road in and the slim pickins, to skip it this year and maybe try for it next time around. This year we would start in Deming once again, as we had the last several trips down there. 

Early in February one evening, I was researching Desert Roses found in Southeast Arizona, near a little town called St David, which is south of Benson a few miles. The deeper I dug, the more information I came up with, but only a few sites were giving particulars on how to get to the areas where they are found…I was totally avoiding the You Tube page because there were several you tubers on there talking about going to St David and finding the Desert Roses, but they were not giving any info out on how to get there unless you paid them for the info…bad enough they are making money on their videos by their followers, but then they want even more money for the location info. Luckily there were some folks that did give out info on how to get there, and at no cost to anyone watching.

One evening I came across a guy named Rolf, who has a rock and art gallery in the St David area, and was a well known collector of Desert Roses, over a span of 40 years. I thought his name sounded familiar, and looked back at the notes and emails I had exchanged with John O, over the last ten years, and came across his notes to me about a friend of his named Rolf, who had a rock shop in the Bisbee area and knew every square inch of ground in southeast Arizona and what could be found there. I sent Rolf an email at three email addresses that were listed online, and to his wife through messenger on Facebook, but didnt hear back from him. I mentioned it to Anita Williams, who is a good friend and lives in the Silver City area…she offered to drive down there and check it out for me. 

Anita drove down there the next day and met Rolf at the Art and Rock Gallery, visited with him for a while and obtained a good email addy for me, as well as a good cell phone number for him. He showed her some of the Desert Roses he has found in that area over the last forty years….they are a Gypsum or Selenite Mineral….

He and I began talking that evening and made plans to meet up with him on Sunday morning, March 1st, which was our first day of collecting, at his Sunshine Art and Rock Gallery. Rolf wouldn`t be able to go with us to show us the way there,  but was able to describe to me where we could find some good roses and some other areas close by as well.

He told me that many of the good places, where he had collected even better roses, were now owned by corporations and fenced off, or inaccessible for other reasons. Carl and Valorie, in my personal group, stopped off in that area on their way home from the Tucson Show, and were able to find some and let me know, too.

If anyone would like to see Rolf`s photos of Desert Roses, go to this link on Mindat, he wrote many articles over the last 40 years for Mindat.   

https://www.mindat.org/gl/134557

I was also able to make contact with the new ” controlling interest ” owner of the Blanchard Mine and Mike was open to us going to the Blanchard one day while there to collect some more Fluorite and Barite, as well as some of the other beautiful minerals found there, such as Linnarite, Brochantite, and Chrysacolla. He told me that he would meet us at Bingham and lead us up to the mine, where he would have us sign a release form, and each of us would pay him $ 50 to collect there for the day. Initially he indicated that he would allow us to collect and fill one five gallon bucket during the whole day, but he relaxed that requirement when we got up there. All of us were willing to pay another fifty dollars to collect and fill another bucket, but as it was, didn`t have to do that.

  A few days later, I texted Eddie, a mine owner of several claims in the Orogrande area, who we had visited with three years ago when out there last, took him some geodes for the children that he teaches about rocks and minerals at area schools near Alamogordo each year. I had reached out to him back in December, and he was very open to taking us to a couple of different mines than we went to 3 years before. When I texted him in February tho, he was having some serious PTSD issues, they were giving him severe migraine headaches and he asked me to remind him who I was and what we had set up or talked about before. Once I did that, he was good to go and remembered what we had talked about. He offered to take us to a couple of mines closer to town and also offered to take us to one of his mines in the Bingham area, so that took care of two collecting days for the trip.

By the end of the first week of February, I had the trip lined out and all I had to do was contact NM Guide Michael again and nail down where he could take us as well, which turned out to be Nacimiento Copper Mine north of Albuqerque, and I set that up for the last day of collecting. Here is the schedule that I set up for the trip this year….

Feb 27th  — Up Early and Drive to Tucumcari, NM

Feb 28th —  Drive to Deming and stop at Belen, along the way, to look for Jasper/Agate

Mar 1st  —   Lead Group to St David, Arizona to Rolf`s Sunshine Gallery With Morning                         Hunt for Desert Roses & Then Lordburg, NM for Copper Minerals

Mar 2nd —  Orogrande Mining District With Eddie at Two New Mines All Day

Mar 3rd —   Deming Area  Fluorite Ridge Possibly Hike Up To Old Tailing Piles

Mar 4th —   Deming Area  Fluorite Ridge Again, Then Drive to Socorro

Mar 5th —  Blanchard Lead & Barite Mine in Bingham Area

Mar 6th —  Bingham Area 2 of Eddie`s Mines, Then Drive to Albuquerque

Mar 7th —  Michael NM Guide Taking Us to Nacimiento Copper Mine

Mar 8th — Head for Home

 

It was a good plan and several signed up to go, we wound up with about a dozen going, including 4 rockhounds new to my personal group, 2 were experienced rockhounds and 2 were newbie rockhounds. A few of them didn`t join up with us til the 4th due to time constraints on their part. 

What I didn`t plan for or expect to happen, was the stomach bug that I came down with the evening of the 3rd day…after collecting at St David, Arizona…I had a fever at the hotel and broke it that night, which meant I was not contagious after that, but I was not able to eat solid food nor drink much water without the need to find a bathroom fast, and we all know how tough it is to find a bathroom out in the desert.

A couple of days in and I was on the computer talking to my Nurse Practitioner by messages, and she told me to get the new Immodium tablets for Multiple Symptoms…I had already picked some up and was taking them each morning at 5 am, to get things under control as quickly as possible. Then I would go meet the crew at breakfast at the restaurant…I was able to eat scrambled eggs and buttered toast without too many issues, for energy and protein daily, and my NP suggested banana`s as well for morning meals….that worked out for me better than the eggs and light toast did. She also suggested gatorade instead of my spiked water…I spike my grape propel bottled water with 2 tablespoons of Apple Cider Vinegar and she knows that…she said that the ACV would likely upset my stomach in my present condition and make things worse for me. Valorie had extra gatorade and gave me a couple of bottles of it, and it worked well for me at Orogrande…thanks again Valorie, much appreciated. It was tough, but I got thru the week doing that day after day, putting aside the discomfort that I felt to get my crew to each location each day…sometimes like the day at Blanchard Mine, I was able to collect and dig with them all day long, other days like at Orogrande, I stayed inside my truck with Onyx much of the day and catnapped. 

Onyx and I got up early on Friday Feb 27th and we were on the road by 4:45 am headed west to Tucumcari, New Mexico, having packed much of the truck the evening before.  Randy Gentry and Mike Mangrum let me know that they were going to drive to Tucumcari and spend the night there, too. In years past on the other trips out there, I had always driven to Tucumcari and spent the night at a renovated motel called Budget Inn in the downtown area on the main drag west side of the strip. The new owners had done a great job remodeling it and everything was cozy inside the rooms, lots of spacious parking area and quiet on that side of town, too. This year, I tried several times and was not able to contact anyone there, by phone or email, so I looked for another hotel and found one online called the Desert Inn, their rooms looked great and the prices were only like $ 60 a night, so I booked my room for the 27th there.

Randy and Mike decided to stay there too, and shortly after I arrived, I spotted David Hodge`s white pickup parked there too. Randy and Mike were an hour or two out yet and had stopped along the way for dinner, so David and I drove down to Del`s Diner, a very popular eating spot in Tucumcari, for dinner. This place had been owned by a well known local guy named Del, for many years but we found out after we arrived, that it was now under new ownership, and we discovered soon after, that the new owner knew how to cook food well, too. 

The next morning, after breakfast at Del`s Diner and fueling up near the hotel, the four of us headed west on I-40 to Albuquerque, then south on I-25 to Belen. I had stopped off on my second trip to New Mexico, at this location, just southwest of the Belen Airport, pulling off the main road on to a four wheeler trail about a hundred yards, and started finding Agates and Jaspers all over the Desert Floor as soon as I got out of my truck. Within 30 minutes I had half a five gallon bucket of Agates and Jaspers. The washes out there were hot spots for them and the further west you drove down Marble Quarry Road, the more you could find…the area looking kind of like the Badlands…the locals called it a canyon…way down there is a river, Rio Puerco I believe it is called, and on the other side of the river, you are on Indian Reservation land and cannot collect there without a written permit.

After about 90 minutes of collecting, we headed on south on I-25 to Hatch, and then southwest on Hwy 26 over to Deming. Most of us were staying at the La Quinta Inn and Suites on the east side of Deming, and we drove down there to get checked in. After cleaning up and getting Onyx settled in, the four of us headed to La Fonda`s Mexican Restaurant for dinner. We discovered this place 3 years ago when last there, due to the Si` Senor Mexican Restaurant having problems with their cooks…I could relate to that problem, because at that same time, the Mexican Restaurant that I go to frequently here in Sullivan, was having problems with their cooks, they finally fired them once they located 3 new ones that could step in and take over operations in the kitchen. At any rate, we found out the cooks at La Fonda knew what they were doing food wise.

We met for breakfast the next morning at 7 am at Denny`s and then left from there at 8 am driving to St David, Arizona. Traffic was light and we drove through a unique rest area between Willcox and Benson Arizona on I-10, climbing up from the desert floor to a huge rock escarpment that made one think you were in Fred Flintstone country for a brief few minutes. The State of New Mexico had the forethought somewhere along the way, to install and build a rest area on both sides of the interstate there, too, called Texas Canyon Rest Area….

 

We arrived about 10:30 am, stopping off at Sunshine Art and Rock Gallery just a few miles south of Benson on Hwy 80 at milepost 296…about 50 yards off the road on the west side of the highway. I had let Rolf know what time we would be arriving and that we would have a few vehicles, he assured me that everyone would be able to park there. David Bruce and his friend Lawrence were already there when we arrived, having driven in from Red Cloud Mine. After introductions and a few minutes of small talk, we went inside his Gallery and spent a few minutes looking at his vast collection of minerals and crystals inside. He had some nice Elmwood Mine plates in one of the windows….

He then took us outside again to the west side and showed us many piles of native Arizona minerals and crystals, as well as some from New Mexico. Valorie and I purchased a few of the larger Desert Roses that he had inside the Gallery, just in case we didn’t find anything comparable at the collecting spot. Rolf provided us with specific directions to the main collecting spot and we took off soon after, turning right off Hwy 80 on to South Apache Powder Road, and driving a few miles down that road, passing by the Power Plant entrance, to West Desert Rose Lane. We turned right again, this road is a lot more narrow than it looks on the maps and rough, too, it passes by a few small farms and then comes to a ninety degree turn to the right…we proceeded straight at this intersection and stayed to the right at the Y, this trail took us to a Pipeline access road and we turned left. Rolf told us that the roses could be found anywhere in this area, but he advised one would need permission from property owners if we strayed to the right off the access road. Many of the places that he rockhounded the past forty years are now inaccessible due to private ownership, subdivisions, roads washed away, gates and fences installed, and permission revoked….likely revoked due to folks not respecting the property of others. We have encountered problems like that everywhere we go rockhounding at, in Missouri and out of state as well. 

From there, I drove per the instructions Rolf had provided me and we soon wound up at the parking spot…I had been told by a few others that once we arrived at that spot, that we would see sparkling selenite all around us…and they were right about that. We spread out and started looking for the Desert Roses, and within twenty minutes, a few of my rockhounds found some by digging down into the sand/dirt floor….

We started at the base of the hill and worked out way up…..

…and pretty soon after that, we were finding a lot of Desert Roses all over the place. David Hodge even managed to find a big plate of Selenite, pulling it right out of the ground….

 

…while Randy Gentry watched him dig it up and pull it out of the dirt…..

 

David Bruce dug into the hillside and got down to a green layer of dirt/sand, where he found several Desert Roses cuddled up together…this is what that layer looked like and you can see a red layer below the green layer….

….he turned it over to his friend Lawrence who worked it for a little while then. 

A few folks left early, headed to Lordsburg, as the plan for the day was to leave around noon or 1 pm and go collect copper secondaries there at the old copper mines. Most of us didnt make the second part of the dig, we left about 3 pm and headed back to Deming instead. One of my rockhounds, Kirk, had driven to Lordsburg and was waiting for us about 1 pm, I texted him directions to the copper mines and let him know what he could find there and where to look. 

 

 

To Be Continued….Still Working On Photos, nearly done….

 

 

 

 

 

Update April 2026

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Well, as you can see from my page, I am staying quite busy again this past year with the Rock Guide work in southeast Missouri. I currently have about ten locations I can take groups of rockhounds to collect at on a bucket fee basis, $ 30 per five gallon bucket a rockhound fills to take home, paid to the landowner. I have a guide fee of five dollars, payable to me by donation only, and many tip me as well for my Guide Services…I will take you to areas where you can surface collect pretty rocks, or dig out pretty rocks, and I will even help you dig if requested, or show you how to use your tools to dig without damaging the pretty rocks. However I don`t  lift filled buckets into transport Utility Vehicles like Side by Sides, or Razors…most of the Landowners will do that for you and transport you back to your vehicle as well.

I hurt my lower back on a Rescue Call many years ago one snowy night when only 8 firefighters showed up to look for two young men lost on the river. We had to slide the steel rescue boat and motor down a hillside to the waters edge to launch it, and then afterward, pull it back up the hillside and put it back up on the trailer. Pretty sure all of us hurt our backs that night.

I did manage to drive out to New Mexico this year and several in my personal group of rockhound friends went with me again, with a few new folks joining us this year including 2 newbies to rockhounding. Somehow, still not sure how, but I picked up a stomach bug on the second day out there, was able to shake the fever that night, so I wasn`t contagious at least, but the side symptoms stayed with me til the evening before I headed home. I wasn`t able to eat any solid foods til that evening. I also wasn`t drinking enough water to stay hydrated, gatorade was about the only thing I was taking in during the day and maybe a banana or two each day. I was able to take my crew out each morning, and sometimes able to collect with them, a few days I stayed in the truck with Onyx and catnapped. Managed to make it back home the last day of the trip with a 14 hour drive and brought back about 600 lbs of crystals and minerals. Blanchard Mine was once again the highlight of the trip. I will post a separate story on it later today complete with photos.

Next trip will likely be the Central Kentucky trip, if it doesn`t get scrubbed or replaced, in early September.

The Missouri Trip which is normally this first week of April, has been rescheduled for October this year.

The Arkansas trip scheduled for the 2nd week of November, is still on and should be pretty good, have information that we will likely be able to go to a new claim that has blue and green wavellite and a privately owned quartz mine or two, might have to make it a 3 day weekend of collecting opportunities. Hope to have more info on it by end of July.

I no longer have my red Tacoma four door pickup…it served me well for the past ten and a half years, I managed to put about 309,432 miles on it during that time of driving it. It had 80,000 miles on it when I purchased it in 2015. I drove it up to an Indianapolis suburb end of November 2025 to look at a 2019 Tacoma TRD Pro pickup at a Toyota dealership on a very cold day, turned out to be their Black Friday sales day, but they were going to receive a foot of snow a few days later. Onyx went with me, as they are a dog friendly dealership, and we were up there nearly all day, but I drove home with it that evening…it is blue in color, Toyota calls it Voodoo Blue. 🙂

Updates Early 2025

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I decided not to go to New Mexico this year, due to planning problems and I kept in touch with my group by email, so they are aware of what happened. The brutal winter weather broke about a week from the end of February and enabled me to create some dig events in Washington County here locally, once again.

My local team and I have been busy scouting some new private properties as well lately, we looked at one in the Tiff Community area last week and it looks promising, has alot of beautiful bubble Druse Quartz in many colors, saw a lot of red, blue, yellow, and root beer colors, and a lot of spider holes, or tiff cuts as the locals like to call them…the miners came up with the term spider holes, but they are the shallow holes that the tiff miners dug out by hand, looking for tiff to collect and sell to the mills. We found some normal Barite there, most of it combined with some stunning blue Quartz on one side of the property. The owner plans to do some burning of leaves soon and then I will start taking groups there.

We looked at another private farm right after that one, at a location on the north side of Ebo, off Hwy 185, smaller place with 140 acres, but they have 3 creeks running thru the property and 2 of them are chock full of beautiful Druse Quartz…we found a little bit of Barite here and there as well, most of it attached to the Quartz and in the Pudding form. There were also a lot of big boulders of Coral there, especially in the creekbed that was further back, we plan to help them do some burning back there on a day with a lot less wind than we have been experiencing lately, and maybe some more Coral and Druse will be exposed. We are returning there this afternoon to look at the 3rd creek that runs thru the front of the property.

Today we will also be scouting a thousand acre farm north of Potosi, the owner has spotted Druse Quartz there, but doesn`t know if he has anything else there or not. Next week we will be looking at another private farm in the Cadet area that shows alot of promise so far, going by what the locals have told us about the property. I am also waiting for word from a landowner with a large old mine on his land in the Tiff Community area, too.

Also have a large cattle farm near Bonne Terre to look at soon, we were set to go check it out 3 times in the past 2 months and each time we approached the date, old man winter returned and prevented us from doing so. Now we are just waiting for the contact person to get a day off so we can go down there and walk the property, she told us that one hillside is sparkle city.

We looked at a few smaller places last fall, but they were thick with layers of leaves, making it nearly impossible to find any Druse and the owners did not want to do any burning, most likely due to concern of the fire getting over on their neighbor`s property.

I will post some photos soon of what each property has to offer rockhounds.

Password Protected Stories….

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Many have noticed I have some stories that are password protected…if you are interested in reading them, email me at jwjphoto7@gmail.com and let me know your name, your location, club if you are with one, and any other information about you that I should know.

My protected stories have some info that I prefer not to share with the general public in most cases, because I have found out that some in the general public of rockhounding, do not follow the same safety rules / policies / advice, as the rest of us do. Some have no respect for the property of others, either.  I have lost access to a few locations because of this erosion of respect by others, so I take precautions these days to protect those sites and those landowners.

I get some strange requests sometimes and have found out the hard way about some people using the info in my stories, in the wrong manner, such as trespassing to obtain pretty rocks and then dropping my name,  saying they had my permission to go collect there. That type of behavior will only land you in hot water if you try to do that, as I am on good footing with many mine owners, especially out west, and they can call or text me anytime to verify situations like that, anytime of the day or night. They also know I will not give anyone permission to go to their claim or mine, that is not how I operate, it is all about mutual respect and keeping my word.

I tell the mine owners I know well, that I will contact them first to find out if a friend of mine can come to their location, I will not just send someone to a location or give them directions how to get there, without first checking with the land or mine owner. I also do not give out the mine owner`s name or contact info to someone I don`t know myself, so do not expect that to happen. And if I don`t know the person asking me for this information, do expect me to verify your identity and vet you as well.

 

 

Arkansas Quartz 2024

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I made contact with my buddy Mark Lebow this summer and let him know my group and I would like to either return to his Double Phantom Mine on Gardner Mountain or go to his newest mine north of Mount Ida. He told me it would likely be better for us to go to his newest mine as it was likely we would be much happier with what we found there. He also had some alternative areas close by that we could walk to, and dig at, if the weather did not cooperate with our trip schedule. Mark sent me these photos and they basically just whet our appetites….

By the time we were a few weeks out from our November trip, I let him know that due to other circumstances surrounding other mines in the area, we would just like to dig and collect at his newest mine all four days that we planned to be in the area,  and he was fine with that. He calls his mine there, the Rubie Mine and despite it being wet and muddy the entire four days we were there, we found alot of pretty crystals there, including alot of phantoms in single points and clusters, too.

this was the first morning there, it had rained before we got there a day or two, so it was quite muddy in the lowest pit, which is closer to Mark`s red truck in the photo above, and this is the secondary area here in the foreground. Colby and Gabriella are digging on the right side, Ryan Shaffer is below them on the right…he is halfway to the lower pit, and the guy in the yellow shirt is one of Mark`s friends….I think Patty had gone back to her truck to get more tools or buckets or both.

You cannot see the lower pit in the photo above either, for one thing that big knob of rock and dirt is in the way, and the dirt and mud had the water covered over, sliding back down in and covering it from all the rain before we arrived. It was prob 2 feet deep in mud so we never did get to dig into the lower pit at all, while we were there. Here is how it looked in May tho….

One thing the rain was good for while we were there, was how it washed off many of the crystals that were either laying on top of the dirt, or to where you could see a window of the crystal and know to dig in and get it…..

…like this one….and many others…some were working on hammering off plates and clusters from the huge rocks that ringed the parking area….I know Mike and Randy were over there working the boulders, Julie Harris and her daughter were working down near the pit, where you had to really be careful where you put your feet down on each step, because it was super muddy and gooey down there. Valerie and Carl were working the berms trying to find some crystals and yard rocks, and Kirk was working boulders off to my left at the upper end of the parking area…he left around noon, headed down to Atlanta for the night, was driving on down to Florida the next day to play in a baseball tournament there.

And some were surface collecting, while a very few dug in to locate the pockets and pull some beautiful phantom clusters out. Ryan found a really nice big cluster in an area that some other folks had worked long before we arrived.

After awhile the first day, I decided to walk over to an area Mark told me about, where he had located crystals laying all over the ground…it was about a quarter of a mile walk away from the Rubie Mine, and once there, while I didnt see too many crystals on the ground, I did locate some just below ground level in the dirt. Ryan and a few others came over and we dug several places and did pretty good. Here is one that Ryan pulled out of the dirt in one of the holes that a few of us were digging into…

The next morning, right after we arrived, I decided to walk over and check out another area of woods…Mark had told me about a spot that his grandfather dug into and found a lot of nice clusters…one of them wound up in the Smithsonian Museum back then…took Randy and I a little while to find that spot, and we couldn`t get close to it, but even 50 feet away, I started digging down under the leaves and just barely into the dirt, and located some nice crystals…this was the first find in the dirt that morning…

…so I stayed right in that area and dug around some more, filled my bucket about a third full with what I found over there.I also found a few big boulders that were covered with crystals too, in another area on the property….

 

Think it was the third day that it started raining again, so some headed home and some of us sat the morning out at the hotels…when it finally stopped raining, I drove up to Mt Ida to visit with Bill and Faith, at Blue Moon Crystals and Jewelry shop…it is located at their home just east of the turnoff to Mountain Harbor Lake Resort. I hadn`t seen them in a few years so stopped by to visit with them and bought a few crystals from them too, like this big phantom cluster that they had picked up from someone, who found it at an old mine, that used to be called Warden Mine, or something like that…and that mine is now part of Wegner`s Crystal Ranch, but it was collected long ago, prob in the 1950`s or sixties….

…it is one of the nicest big ones I have ever seen that came out of that mine…my group and I have collected a few times at that mine in the last ten years, under Wegner`s management of it, and I have seen some doosies that were mined there by his personnel about five years ago that were quite nice, but looked nothing like this one nor were they as big as this one. Bill and Faith had some other crystal clusters that they were cleaning up, I took a few photos of them…

After that, I drove over to the Rubie to see if anyone was there, and found a few in my group there and we mainly surface collected, but didn`t stay long because there was more rain coming on radar.

I went back on Sunday morning and spent a few hours surface collecting, by that time, most in my group, had headed home, we lost a few each day due to the weather mainly….and this morning, Carl and Valerie were still there and we did a pretty good job finding some great stuff on the surface or slightly under the surface in the muck piles that Mark had dug up out of the pit and placed up near the parking area for us to comb thru…his son in law, Andy, was there and helped us find some great stuff as well. here are some of my finds Sunday morning….

..and some of these Mark dug out with his pry bar and handed them to me, so I should say here are some that I took home with me instead. He knows how to sling that pointed McGrew bar really well and dig into pockets whether they be shallow pockets or deep pockets…I on the other hand, have no clue how to do that.

I took off about 10:30 am, headed up to Scott County where my Mom and Dad were both raised on farms, not far from the Oklahoma state line and a few miles west of Waldron. The farmhouse where Mom was raised is still there and my cousins own it now, they host a family reunion, with dinner at noon there,  each year on the first Sunday of Firearms Deer Season. So Onyx and I drove up to have dinner with several of my cousins, and my Aunt Dorcas, Aunt Raye, and Uncle Harold were there too. We were missing quite a few…. in years past, it was no surprise to get there and find about 200 in attendance. I took this photo of the farm back in 2009, on my way there, coming up Ross Creek Road from Hwy 71….

 

…that black spot in the photo above is a big crow that was flying across as I fired off about five camera shots in a row…he wound up in everyone of them. 🙂  Here is a different angle from down by my Uncle Joe`s barn in the pasture across the road….

..and the gathering there in 2010….

…after a few hours of visiting with my kinfolk, Onyx and I headed up to Fort Smith for the night…prob the worst hotel stay at a La Quinta hotel no less…their fire alarm sounded about 3 am…that system rolled everyone right out of their rooms, let me tell ya…many of us outside in the cold air with our dogs on leashes…and we were out there a good thirty minutes…the desk clerk unable to figure out how to shut the noisy thing off. This hotel sits in a residential area and you could see house lights coming on all around us…bet they were as ticked off as we were. Found out the next morning from the morning clerk, that little fiasco had been happening a few times a week lately and management didn`t seem to care about it, they were not notifying the alarm company to come fix it. I wrote a nice little review on it after I got home, after they contacted me and asked me write one, and I was contacted the next day by La Quinta Corporation and advised that the Manager at the Fort Smith LQ had read my review and contacted the Alarm Company to come and fix it ASAP. No worries I told them, I did not plan to stay at that LQ hotel, ever again.

Drove over to visit with my buddy Adam Lageveen near Sallisaw, shortly after we checked out and had breakfast at the IHOP, a few blocks east on Rogers Avenue. He showed me the rest of his crystal collection, has decided to sell it so he can make more room for his knapping material. After visiting with him for about 90 minutes, Onyx and I hit the road and headed home, another good trip in the books.

 

 

Geode Fest Sept 2024

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I feel like I am so far behind on my stories that I cant remember them, and certainly the details of them, gonna have to do a better job of keeping up on the stories here.

After missing out on Geode Fest last year, due to being too busy, I decided to take a few days off and make the trip there this year. Ryan Shaffer was going as well and spent the weekend digging with me at Josh and Jennifer`s Railroad Creek Farm. I stayed at the Super 8 Motel again and not sure I will next time around, as they invented some new charges this time, fees that were not explained at the time of booking, either. That type of business does not set well with me, there are definitely other hotels up there to stay at. Ryan booked his hotel late and wound up staying in Fort Madison, 15 minute drive to the north. I think the only other problem we had was finding a place to eat at on Saturday evening, Keokuk High School was having their prom that night and the restaurants were booked pretty solid, think we wound up eating  at PIzza Hut.

I remember getting up there to Keokuk to the venue about 2 pm Thursday, and saw that Charity and Jamie had their booth tent set up, so I visited with them a bit and then walked over to where Ken Vaisivil was set up with his geode booth…I purchased a few from him and admired several, this was one that I admired, he was selling it out of his personal collection….

…a frosted calcite attached to the front of this basketball sized geode half…I didn`t buy this one but he had a good price on it, and it was gone by the next morning. I have purchased several similar geodes from him in the past few years, some with poker chip shaped calcites inside the geodes. He also had this neat pair for sale, only fifty dollars for the pair, with a big yellow barite crystal inside…

 

I bought several smaller ones from him and we visited a bit, then I walked up and talked to Greg Coleman, who was setting up his tables for his Haunted Ridge booth…he was working the booth alone this year, and then after that I drove over to the Super 8 and got checked in, and made sure Onyx was comfy and settled in before I headed back. Ryan was at the venue by the time I got back and I introduced him to everyone I knew there…even Mike Messer and Dennis Kossow were there by that time. Mike is the President of the Fairfield, Iowa Club and some other clubs as well, and Dennis is a semi retired Stonemason in the Fairfield area, who stays quite busy in his retirement years, but also finds time to rockhound in certain select areas, like Hallelujah Junction for smokey quartz scepters and crystals. He always has some nice crystal specimens from out west that I like to add to my collection, this year it was an azurite specimen that was very gemmy. Also talked to Marv, who is either the President or Past President of the Cedar Rapids Club, he was setting up his booth next to Dennis and Mike, and has those beautiful Mexican Troya geodes that I like…. and I have met all of these guys thru my buddy, John Oostenryk, who as usual, was late getting to the venue, and I think it was either late that night or early the next morning, before he arrived.

I think Ryan and I stuck around there til about 4:30 pm and then headed down to the Italian Restaurant Angelini`s Ristorante on Main Street for dinner. Great atmosphere and food there, love their lasagne and spaghetti both.

After that, we returned to the venue to get registered for Geode Fest, so we didn`t have to do that the next morning. While waiting for registraton to open, I had Jamie show Ryan the huge geode he found at Cooper`s Fox River location last year….

There were no long lines at pre-registration, because most of the folks there early, were next door at the Orientation for Geode Fest, usually Kirk, the Director of Tourism welcomes everyone and then turns the microphone over to Marv, who tells everyone how the Keokuk Geodes formed and what the many variations of them there are in that area.

Afterward, Ryan headed to his hotel to check in, and I stopped by Dairy Queen to get a blizzard and a pup cup for Onyx, then back to the Super 8 for the evening. The next morning, Ryan and I got to the venue fairly early and he was able to briefly, and I mean briefly, meet John O, as we all call him…we might have talked to him for five minutes, maybe less, and that was the extent of our conversation with him all weekend…for whatever reason…and I am just going to leave it at that. We drove over to Josh and Jennifer`s farm…was told that Jennifer`s son Payton, would be there helping this weekend. We saw his truck, but didn`t see him til later in the day.

We gathered a bucket and tools and walked to the creek, and I showed Ryan the creek in the area of the bank where we pulled some geodes out two years ago that were believed to have purple irridescence and then walked down to the dirt bank on the point of the hillside and began digging in. We found a few geodes there, but not as many as two years before when Pete Hahn and I were digging there. Here is one that Ryan found, cannonball sized….

…and then he popped it open….

…he was pretty happy with that pair…liked the multiple chambers on the left side….

…after digging a few hours, I had to get up and stretch my legs…found this one not far behind us in the leaves on the ground…

…and Payton came walking up the trail soon after and stopped to talk…he had no clue we were down there, let him know we arrived earlier than the group and were good friends of Jennifer and Josh, had dug at that spot two years ago too and did well.

Before the afternoon group arrived, we moved to the bank where the purple irridescent geodes are located and began digging in…soon found them to be in a certain layer there…Payton showed us a couple of broken halves, that a guy dug there that morning, and they had purple inside them, so he joined us for a few minutes and dug into the bank where the guy told him he dug those from….

There was a good crowd there on Friday, both morning and afternoon groups were pretty good sized. Josh always rents a mini trackhoe for Geode Fest and does a lot of digging with it, digs into the creek banks to make it easier for rockhounds to find geodes to take home…he has done this 3 years in a row now and his site gains in popularity each year. Dan, one of John O`s buddies, he is a retired steelworker, and in my personal rockhounding group, he is usually John`s chauffeur as well on my trips…he was there this year to operate the mini trackhoe for Josh, during Geode Fest. 

Ryan and I headed back to the venue after digging for several hours Friday, and there was a guy lined up at Charity and Jamie`s booth to get a big geode popped open with one of their hydraulic soil pipe cutters. He had been to one of the Amish farms on the Fox River, and had this extra one, much smaller, that he had found with one foot when he stumbled into it…it was full of mud, sand, and silt, but when I looked down into the opening, it was lavendar colored crystals……

We had dinner at Angelini`s again, this time I had the spaghetti and it was just as good as the lagagna there, followed by another trip to Dairy Queen afterward.

The next morning we again grabbed some donuts for breakfast, and then drove over to Josh and Jennifer`s farm, but set up at the purple irridescence bank and began digging in. There were some folks that joined us when they arrived in the morning group and began digging upstream along the bank, then moved down closer to us. Ryan and I were pulling alot of geodes out of the bank where we had started the day before. Mike Maher called me to figure out where we were digging at today, he and his son Ryan…. both in my personal group of rockhound friends…. were on the way over in the first group as well, and had a young lady with them named Chandler, it was her first geode rockhounding trip, and her Mom was along too. She came pretty well prepared for it, wearing safety glasses and tall rubber boots, and gloves on…she was ready for anything and she had a great attitude, too.

The group that morning, again, included a huge number of rockhounds….

This was the area of creek right below us.

Mike, Ryan, and Chandler made their way over to where we were at by the big tree and I allowed Ryan M to take over my digging spot next to  Ryan S, digging into the bank…and did quite well there, accidentally broke the top half of this geode as he was digging it out of the bank,  which was gorgeous inside….

…and the pieces above are what was left of the top of it….I don`t think Chandler was given that one, but she cleaned up pretty nicely with several other nice geodes handed to her….

…and Mike stayed pretty busy finding fossils and geode halves in the creek bed for her….

Ryan found another multiple chambered geode in the bank there by the big tree….

Saturday evening, we had to settle for Pizza Hut for dinner as every restaurant, including our favorite one, were booked solid with Prom Goers. Hopefully next year, they give us some notice on that if it`s going to happen again.

Sunday morning, I didn`t do much digging, went back to Josh and Jennifer`s farm, but was pretty tired and sore from the previous two days of digging, so I took it easy, but we started out at the purple irridescent spot again. I wound up helping a young man named Jax, who was there with his grandmother and her friends, and he was trying to find some nice geodes to take home. I had some druse quartz and Washco Q material with me, and gave him some of those to take home with him too. His grandmother asked if she could take a photo of Jax and I….

 

Rock Guiding in Southeast Missouri Now….

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Back in November of 2023 I was laid off for the winter from my golf course job, and like they say, one door closes and another one opens…I began taking groups of rockhounds to privately owned farms and locations in Washington County, Missouri, to collect druse quartz, barite, and galena, for the most part.

Most of the locations have those basic minerals and crystals because most of them are former mines with extra farmland surrounding the mines and mining areas. Some of the locations have a wide variety of material to be collected there and some just have one or two that can be collected….all of them have druse quartz, at least. Here is a list of the places available now in Washington County, that I helped become operational in the last few years and recently, in order. Each one is categorized as public or private, the private mines are the ones I now take groups of rockhounds to collect at. The privately owned farm  locations are only available to collect at through me, at the request of the landowners, and they include West Druse Farm, Lance`s Mine Site, Mary`s Lake Site, Coral Ridge, and Marty`s Mine Site.

I have a few other locations that are privately owned, and have assisted the landowners in making their locations available to rockhounds on a private basis as well. Currently, those landowners are making adjustments and improvements to their sites and at this time they are unavailable until those improvements are completed.

I also take groups to Bluff View Farm, which is owned by Todd and open to the public, I helped Todd get started a few years ago as well and he has made great strides in improving his location to make it easier for rockhounds to access good collecting areas.

 

HAUNTED RIDGE DRUSE FARM

A friend of mine was retiring from Rock Guiding and asked me to contact a resident of Washington County, who he had talked to a few weeks back, said he had a gold mine of a farm with beautiful druse quartz all over it.

I met with Greg Coleman and his wife Judy about 4 years ago,  in December after a large club outing at his farm, the very first group there,  and Greg gave me the nickel tour of his 200 acre farm. We then talked about the basics he needed to get started, I helped him with the release forms and helped him set up the groundwork for his collecting operation, now called Haunted Ridge. Once he had everything ready to go, I set up dig events at his farm and began leading clubs and groups of rockhounds there for about six months….until he and Judy became familiar with the operation and opened it to the public on a daily basis. Initially, they had several family members involved in the operation and now have been able to add some friends in as well. He and some of his staff members even go to some local rock shows in and out of state, to sell druse quartz from his farm…including the outdoor venue at Geode Fest in recent years.

He and Judy set the bar on Customer Service so high that very few collecting places anywhere across the USA can come close to meeting the services they run every day there.

Greg has lots of druse quartz in many colors, small to boulder size….like this yard rock my buddy Randy Gentry is showing off, he found it that day in December in the pond bank behind Greg`s house….

…and here are a few nice sized druse`s that my buddy Patty found that day, making her four hour drive from southern Illinois very worthwhile….

….he has a few forms of iron covering some druse including hematite and limonite, and he has a lot of Missouri Lace Agate there as well. Greg and his staff operate side by side UTV`s and can transport rockhounds and their buckets/tools, from the time of their arrival and filling out the paperwork, to any spot on the farm, as well as pick them back up to return them to their vehicle, or take them to another collecting spot on the farm. They will do all the heavy lifting of your filled buckets as well. Greg also has at least one porta pottie on site…during the first year of operation he was placing a porta pottie at each of the popular spots on his farm and thru the summertime, he was placing large foam coolers at each spot, filling them with ice and bottled water, to keep the rockhounds hydrated. Greg hosts events each year there and at times, had an ATM machine on site. He quickly outgrew the small parking lot behind his house, so he then built a huge parking area under the canopy of trees back behind his lake, located 100 yards behind his house and smaller parking lot, and created a road leading to it from the main road leading to his house. That road is lined with huge boulders of druse quartz in every color and form imagineable.

About a year ago, Greg acquired a medium sized trackhoe and began digging on his farm, discovering a whole hillside of root beer druse quartz, he dug out several pits to make it easier on rockhounds to reach the plates of root beer and several large plates have been dug out from those pits now. I remember telling Greg that one day his place would become so popular that he would have to retire from his dayjob of managing a truck company…he thought I was joking, but found out I was right. Haunted Ridge has become their full time daily job now, and that is how they run it, with the help of family and friends, too. You can find them on Facebook with their own page now…Haunted Ridge Rocks.

WEST DRUSE FARM NEAR POTOSI, MISSOURI

That door closed and another one opened…the same retired Guide that asked me to help Greg get going, and then asked me to take over his guiding services, then told me about another Washington County farmer who had druse quartz on his property and was interested in having rockhounds come to his farm to collect. I contacted him and drove out to meet him…after taking a nickel tour of his farm, I saw that he had about 50 acres of druse quartz there, but nothing else. I told him the surface would be clean of any quartz after one or two groups…he wasn`t open to digging to reveal new material nor doing anything that would help rockhounds find more material at all. He did put me in touch with another nearby farm owner tho, so I left his place and drove a few miles to meet Chris, who turned out to be very nice, and open to digging and making things easier for rockhounds.

At that time, Chris had about 400 acres and a working cattle farm, one of three…he has since added another 60 acres to his main farm. Back in the early 1900`s to about 1970, the Arnault Lead and Barium Mine was in operation there on most of his farmland. There was also a milling operation there and when he purchased the land, a large spring fed lake came with it, as well as a major creek running through his property. This is how his lakeside property looked in 2021 when I began helping him get set up…

He showed me the boundaries, completely fenced in and we walked the barren field by the big lake….see photos above… which was pretty much covered in multiple colors, shapes, and sizes of pristine and clean druse quartz…..colors found here include golden brown, honey, white, yellow, green, red, orange, and blue….as well as black, smokey, pink, and purple….for those interested in making jewelry, can find a lot of druse quartz buttons here in many sizes as well as some sugar druse pieces….

Some of the quartz had turtleback barite attached to it….

…..some had cockscomb barite attached to it…..

….some had crystalline barite attached to it…..

…..the two above are one and the same, dirty out of the ground first and all cleaned up second. Later on, we found a little bladed barite on the west side of the property and then discovered the rare, blue barite on the property….

…the first photo above shows how the blue barite looks in the field, right out of the ground, and the second photo shows it cleaned up. So far we have only found a few pieces of druse with bladed barite attached, here is one I found early on just above the new pond in a wash….

….in a honey root beer color of druse no less.

Missouri Lace Agate is also found here in beautiful colors, we found some galena cubes early on in a wash near the field by the big lake, but nothing since. We also find some barite plates with hematite nails, nailheads, and rods embedded in the plates…some of the rods were as big as huge drill bits, even…..

Here are a few photos of a Cockscomb Barite Plate I found on the back side of the new pond dam, with both short nails and nailheads embedded in the barite of the plate…

It didn`t take long to get Chris up and running with his operation and soon I was taking groups to his farm as well, a few groups numbered 50 to 60 rockhounds initially. Chris and his sons provide transportation with their Razor UTV`s and do the lifting on buckets and yard rocks as well, provide rides from one side of the property to the other, too. He also has his bobcat available if you find a landscape rock and need help lifting it into your vehicle.

Chris ran into some problems with the access road from the back of the property line about a year in, so we sat it out a year while he tried to regain the access legally, and then he was able to purchase some additional property that allowed him access to the back of the property once again…one needs another way in when the creek gets six feet high and you cant get across to check on your cattle.

He cut and cleared a road down the hill on the back of the property, then rocked it with limestone road material, and smoothed it out with his bobcat machine. Until the road gets tightly packed down from all the late spring rains and storms we had this year, four wheel drive and all wheel drive are pretty much needed to get back up the hill and out the back gate. Some vehicles with front wheel drive have made it up the hill fine, while others struggled to get through some soft spots. For those that do not have front, four, or all wheel drive vehicles, your vehicles can be locked and parked on top of the hill, and rides can be arranged down to the valley floor for you with your tools and buckets.

The depth of the druse quartz here is at least 30 to 40 feet in most places, there is a pit in the middle of the field next to the big lake, that is at least 40 feet deep and druse was found all the way to the bottom of it before it was filled in four years ago.

I named Chris`s farm West Druse Farm and it remains open for privately arranged group digs through me only,  at his request. Clubs can contact me by PM for more info.

Check out my new FB page and hit the join button, to go with us on group digs to the West Druse Farm and other privately owned locations to collect pretty rocks, dig events are found in the Events Tab at the top of my new FB page at

https://www.facebook.com/groups/322253830735906/

 

BLUFF VIEW FARM ROCKS, POTOSI, MISSOURI

This winter while I was laid off from the golf course for the second year in a row, I met another rockhounder who asked me to help him get a friend of his in operation, and he introduced me to Todd, who owns Bluff View Farm north of Potosi on Hwy 185. Todd wanted to start out open to appointment only but soon opened his farm to the public as well.

Todd showed me his property, 300 acres in size, and there are a couple of hillsides on the back of the property line, that are completely dotted with spiderholes…which is what the miners called the hand dug and machine dug holes where the miners explored for galena lead. Around the sides of these holes, one can find calcite crystals, some of them in dogtooth form, some in plates, some in poker chip form, as well as druse quartz in mutiple colors, sometimes 2 and 3 colors combined, galena lead, barite, and hematite nails. Here are some photos of material I have collected at Bluff View….1st two are barite on druse, third is druse, fourth is galena lead on druse and matrix….last one is the farm on west side of the property line…

 

for more information, take a look at Todd`s Facebook page under Bluff View Farm Rocks,  https://www.facebook.com/BVFROCKS  and give him a shout there, be sure to check out the photos of material recently found there, too. He has several areas to collect in and he does provide transportation of rockhounds and their filled buckets / tools with his Side by Side UTV.

You can also check out my new FB page for photos of druse and other minerals found at Todd`s Bluff View Farm at https://www.facebook.com/groups/322253830735906/

 

LANCE`S MINE SITE NEAR CADET, MISSOURI

After working for a very short time at another location where some of my closest local rockhound friends assisted me with many hours of scout time, and I only wound up taking 2 groups to, resulting in a bad experience there,  I stopped taking groups there,  chalking it up to a learning experience and moved on.

Soon after, thanks to another rockhounding friend,  I was able to make contact with a well respected family in the Tiff area of Washington County, and I have been able to help them as well as friends and members of their extended family in the area.

My buddy Sam Linton was with me when I first met Lance, and he took us to a better place to collect at, instead of the smaller location we met him at. The better place turned out to basically be the supply house for the smaller first location, and the site of an old barite mining operation that dated back to the early 1900`s when National Lead Company started mining there, for their Barium Division. This mine covered hundreds of acres…as far as we know, galena has never been found there, only barite and in a few forms as well.

Lance has burned the leaves off several acres of wooded areas where druse quartz in many colors, including pinks, purples, and blues, are found, small to large in size. He has also cleared out many cedar trees and created alot of walking trails in the popular collecting areas of his property.

 

…the last photo above was the top of a small boulder that Sam removed with his sledge hammer and took home with him. We were there mid February and it began raining, then quickly changed over to snow and then sleet as the temps dropped…Sam and I were the last to leave….Mary and Dee wisely took off before the snow started falling….we left when the second round of sleet hit and got out of there just in time as the roads were starting to get bad. Four wheel drive doesn`t work on ice, but the roads were only slushy so it worked just fine all the way home.

I took the first group in there two weeks later on March 2nd, and it was much warmer that day, and many nice and pretty rocks were taken home that day by many satisfied rockhounds…

…and a lot of barite was found in many forms there too….my retired firefighter friend Gary Jones found a beautiful and unique plate of crystalline barite with huge fingers on it on top of a pile of dirt that contains barites, at the 2nd collecting spot known as the Shack Spot…

At the same time Gary was pulling that one out of tall grass, Tonya discovered some knobs of crystalline barite sticking up out of the dirt on top of the pile…

…and a few minutes later, Gary and Tonya found two nice plates…here they are showing them to me, Gary`s on the right….

..while others were finding some that were much bigger, like clusters of hand grenade barites…

…and then some of the crystalline plates were found mixed with druse quartz…

…and Curtis found a really nice plate of crystalline barite there…

Sam decided to return two weeks later and help me do some more scouting there, as we had not covered but about a quarter of the entire property yet…he brought a new rockhound friend with him on this trip, it was actually Marco`s first field trip in Missouri. While they were checking one area, Onyx and I were checking a series of berms down the hill below the Shack, aka the second collecting spot there…and I came upon this nice plate of soda straws…

and we discovered some of the berms were chock full of clusters of hand grenades and pineapple bladed barites….

Lance`s Mine Site is also known for the many huge piles of Missouri Lace Agates…like this one my buddy Tony found there in May….

…and on the scout trip in February Dee found other nice colors there too…

My buddy Bob Steele located some nice boulders in an area down near the Shack as well, that were covered by what the miners called Tongue Depressors, in clusters….

Lance has brought in machinery and turned over the old piles of rock to make it easier to find pretty druse and barite. In the first collecting area, there are clay dirt piles near a pond that are full of druse quartz in smoky, blue, and green colors and barite in forms of hand grenades, pineapples, crystalline, bladed, and combos…..

Lance`s Mine Site remains open for privately arranged group digs through me only,  at his request. Clubs can contact me by PM for more info.

Check out my new FB page and hit the join button, then once approved, check the Events Tab  at the top of the page to see when we are going next. In order to go with us, all you have to do is click on the event, read the info, make note of the meeting spot and time to be there by, and click Going.

My new FB page is at https://www.facebook.com/groups/322253830735906/

 

RICHWOODS MINE SITE NEAR RICHWOODS, MISSOURI

Another good friend told me about a couple of guys with 400 acres of land in the northern part of Washington County, said it was a former mine site and abounded with bladed barite and druse quartz, especially blue druse quartz. He put me in touch with them and after a few weeks, when their schedule lightened up, I was able to drive down and meet Jesse and Chris at their farm.

( NOTE — As of 2025, this farm is unavailable to rockhounds for collecting, until sometime in 2027 per the landowners. )

It turned out to be part of a huge mining complex called The Big Four that operated in that area for many years, encompassing over ten thousand acres at one time, where two galena mines and two barite mines were in operation within close proximity of each other. This one was one of the barite mines and it had a quarry on the west side of the property at one time as well. The quarry, while no longer there, produced hundreds of piles of rock, which are scattered all over the 400 acres, and contain an enormous amount of druse quartz, from crushed small sizes to big boulders of it, and when the sun is bright and shining on those piles of rock, it becomes Glitter City there.

They took me for a ride around their property, showing me the outside boundaries and then showed me the west side of the property where the quarry had been located, and I was able to take a closer look at many of the piles there, and blue druse quartz was definitely in abundance there, as well as other colors too. The blue here comes in a light blue, medium blue, and dark blue and sometimes bladed barite is attached as well.

I was able to get them started by the first week of April and the first dig event  there numbered about 55 rockhounds. I took my personal rockhounding group in there at 8 am, and then drove over to the meeting spot and picked up about 35 rockhounds from my new FB page group, and led them to the dig event at 9 am. The landowners had several of their friends there to help them with the crowd of rockhounds, several Side by Side UTV`s and Razor UTV`s available to assist with rides and transporting filled buckets back to their vehicles all day long. They also brought a skidsteer with them and were actually using it to make additional parking space as I arrived with my personal group of rockhound friends. It was also put to good use later in the day when a couple of rockhounds found some large landscape rocks to take home with them. Here are some of the finds from that first day there…

Not eight days later, I took a second group there to join up with members of the Nashville, Tennessee Mineral Club,  and many more goodies were located and taken home by more happy rockhounds….

…followed by a third outing with members of the Fairfield, Iowa Club and rockhounds from my FB page group….

In addition to the transport and rides available at this site, a porta pottie is also located on site as well as assistance with landscape rocks.

Richwoods Mine Site is open for privately arranged group digs through me only,  at the request of the property owners. Clubs can contact me by PM for more info.

Check out my new FB page and hit the join button, then once approved, check the Events Tab  at the top of the page to see when we are going next. In order to go with us, all you have to do is click on the event, read the info, make note of the meeting spot and time to be there by, and click Going.

My new FB page is at https://www.facebook.com/groups/322253830735906/

 

DRESSER MINE SITE, NEAR TIFF, MISSOURI

In May, Lance told me about one of his cousins, who has a large lake on his property and told me that an old mining operation covered much of his cousin`s land at one time. I made contact with Daniel and drove down to take a look at his place soon after, asked two of my local rockhound friends Mary Chris and Tony to join me there and help me scout it out.

We started at the creek just inside the entrance and below the lake…Daniel and his family members dug the lake out to create a fishing and recreational lake, so it wasn`t a tailings lake like some mine sites have. The dirt they dug out tho, was chock full of beautiful druse quartz and barite in a few interesting forms…like hundreds of soda straw plates with the straws reaching 2 inches in length, many in colors of a vivid blue and purple, yellows, and some were coated with hematite black coloring, some with metal tips extending out the tips of the straws….

The soda straw plates in the photos above, came out of the creek below the lake…I call it Spillway Creek and it carves thru a section of Daniel`s property that is loaded with this material and more…each time it rains, more material is exposed for collecting. I believe this area will last for collecting purposes for quite some time to come…..

Turns out the Dresser Mining Company operated there and in the surrounding area as well, in search of barite, and judging from what I saw that day, the barite they found there was very plentiful, laying all around the property in various forms, including bladed barite, hand grenades, pineapples, and crystalline bladed barite. Many of the pineapples and hand grenades were seen in clusters of them…some of them very large clusters.

One of the very first things Tony found that morning, as we were beginning our search and scout of the property, was several plates with Hematite blades in Rosettes,  on them…they had a yellow coating on them, which led me to believe they were Limonite blades, but Sam believes they are Hematite blades instead, just with a yellow coating on them possibly from weathering. He is probably right as I have never seen Limonite blades that big…..

and this is another one that he gave to Mary….

and some of the soda straw plates Tony found that day there too….

…the second photo above are three that I collected.

I took the first group in there a week later and everyone did very well with their finds…many of the soda straw plates have been found in two locations, Spillway Creek and a large dirt area at the foot of the lake dam, farther down the road past the creek…that collecting area is probably a hundred feet long and 60 feet wide with a couple of shallow washes running through it that provide alot of beautiful material including the plates and some barites too….

you can see the outline of one of the washes in the photo above, about middle of the photo…it runs left to right across the photo, that is the main wash with all the soda straw plates in it. Everyone started collecting over there that morning, it was a little muddy and thankfully, many wore their rubber boots or they might still be there stuck knee deep in the muck. It rained the night before and it was a bit gooey but much easier to pull stuff out of it, too. I got tickled at my retired firefighter friend Gary, who didn`t take a bucket out there with him, so he just piled his finds up on the rear bumper of his truck instead….

and Tonya found a really nice green plate of quartz there….

I walked up to the upper end of Spillway Creek to check out the ground up there and discovered a small pocket of smokey druse quartz plates just under the surface of the creek water….

…and here are some finds that others sent me photos of….a barite by Michael James….

…bubble druse plate and barites from Curtis….


…the three photos above are Mary Chris` finds….so everyone did very well that day too. When Sam was here hounding last week, the creek had run dry of water due to a drought trying to return and it was full of even more barites…

….Daniel is preparing to do some more clearing of the brush around the creek as well as brush hogging the lake dam to make things easier for rockhounds to locate the nicer druse and barites. He plans to create some trails free of brush into the wooded and brushy areas that lead to more mining areas for us as well.

Dresser Mine Site remains open for privately arranged group digs through me only, at Daniel`s request. Clubs can send me a PM for more info.

Check out my new FB page and hit the join button, then once approved, check the Events Tab  at the top of the page to see when we are going next. In order to go with us, all you have to do is click on the event, read the info, make note of the meeting spot and time to be there by, and click Going.

My new FB page is at https://www.facebook.com/groups/322253830735906/

 

MARY`S LAKE SITE, TIFF, MISSOURI

I was tipped off to Mary`s Lake Site by Lance a few weeks back, when Mary and her kids stopped by during a dig event at Lance`s Mine Site and I gave her one of Sam`s books at that time. She let me know that mining occurred on her property as well and said she would think it over. Recently she contacted me and told me that I could bring rockhounds to her place as well, and within a week I had it all set up for her. Mary Chris and I scouted the property two days in early May, but we didnt enter the rugged area of the woods, due to the annoying and high pitched cicada`s in that area…they were louder down there than my own county and area. Mary Chris and I discovered alot of druse quartz there with large points on them….

…we also found a few areas with purple druse sitting around….

We walked to the other side of the lake and discovered the road over there was laced with yellow druse quartz, an area about 100 feet long and every bit of 50 feet wide at least, and again, big points on the druse there. There was also a high wall bank that Tony checked out on our second trip there…

…this high bank is what you first see when you cross the dam of the lake to the other side, to get to the road with the yellow druse, you pass by this bank and keep going up the road…there are areas to the left up in the woods and down closer to the bank of the lake where druse is found as well.

The first dig event there was a week later and I combined it with Dresser Mine Site first, then to Mary`s, and last to Lance`s Site…everyone did well but it made for a long day and we had to leave Lance`s sooner than expected, due to a fast moving thunderstorm line that popped up on radar pretty fast with a line of hail embedded in it. The second dig there was June 9th and everyone did quite well there that day…while they were all out hunting and collecting, I did a little extra scouting on the hillside above the lake dam and found a road full of druse and barite both up there…found hand grenades and pretty druse all over the place…

Sam traveled back down from Virginia to do some hounding and I took him to Mary`s Lake Site to check it out on the 21st of June…Tony went with us, enabling us to do some more scouting in areas that we had not been able to check yet. We discovered some beautiful crystalline bladed barite in a couple of areas there that we had previously overlooked…areas that Sam noted, made you think ” WHOA ” when you came upon them and recognized everything in front of you…

Tony and I expanded that search a few days later when I took another group to Mary`s Lake Site and discovered an even broader area for the crystalline bladed barites, which should make it much easier for others to find some now as well. On the most recent trip to Mary`s, a young rockhound named Bo, rode down with his sister Maddie and his Mom Amy, to do some collecting on their 2nd rockhounding trip and they had a great time. Bo and I hit it off pretty quickly and he followed me through the woods as I was trying to help everyone find some great stuff to take back home with them. We started down near the parking area where berms with barites can be found, then moved up to a little mining area with a shallow and dry pit, as well as a few berms surrounding the pit are found…there are a couple of seams of quartz that run thru the pit with colors of green, yellow, and sometimes blue druse found in the seams. Tony was down one of the steep hillsides finding both druse and barite, so Bo and I checked out a few of the washes and then started seeing pile of rocks others had found and then left behind…we rounded one tree and stopped suddenly in our tracks, with a nice big bubble of root beer druse right in front of us…I took a picture of Bo after he picked it up, pretty happy with a shirt tail full of good finds…

They drove down from Central Iowa, where there are no pretty rocks to be found, and left here with 4 or 5 full buckets of beautiful druse and barites, as did many others that morning. The heat ramped up mid morning and most were gone by noon, leaving two gals with Tony and I, so we helped them find some pretty barites before they too decided to head for home. Tony and I scouted another hour before calling it quits ourselves…here are some of the barites we found in that hour…

 

Mary`s Lake Site is privately owned and remains open to collecting by groups through me only, at Mary`s request. Clubs can send me a PM for more info.

Check out my new FB page and hit the join button, then once approved, check the Events Tab  at the top of the page to see when we are going next. In order to go with us, all you have to do is click on the event, read the info, make note of the meeting spot and time to be there by, and click Going.

My new FB page is at https://www.facebook.com/groups/322253830735906/

 

B AND G FARMS, NEAR POTOSI, MISSOURI

The most recent location I am now taking groups to, is B and G Farms near Potosi, where druse quartz is mainly found in many colors, sizes, and shapes. We have seen a few with a smattering of iron on them, but for the most part, many are iron free druse quartz. I took one small group there before the heat became an issue for many and here are some of the finds from that day and my scouting trip there…

After the scout trip, the landowner decided to name it B and G Farms and I took the first group there on the morning of June 15th….the heat ramped up and everyone left within four hours, but they all seemed content with their many finds, too….

 

The bridge above was washed out by the fall floods last year and am waiting for word from the landowner on when it will be rebuilt.

B & G Farms remains largely a privately owned site, you may contact me for further info or join my new FB page and join us there on private group digs.

Clubs can send me a PM for more info.

 

CORAL RIDGE

In the spring of 2025 I met with a young couple and their two children at their future farmhome north of Potosi near Hwy 185. They have 150 acres with three creeks running through their land, and all three creeks have beautiful Druse Quartz with some dustings of Barite and Iron as well. Gabe cut a road thru the forest between two of his creeks and scraped the dirt back to reveal areas with buttons of multiple colors of Druse Quartz everywhere !!  In June, he made another pass down the same road, taking off another few inches of dirt and several large bubble plates of Druse Quartz became visible as well as more buttons of Quartz.

This is a photo above, of one of the buttons found, and shows the back side of the button on the left, so that you know what they look like, many will be found with the back side up laying in the dirt or on top of the dirt surface. This way you know what to look for.

We also walked all of the creeks when we scouted this farm and found alot of Coral boulders in the two major creeks….

…which is why Gabe and Lauren decided to name their farm Coral Ridge. I took a few clubs there from Michigan and Oklahoma and they all loved the place, pulling several large plates of Druse with bubbles out of each creek to take home with them.

…and on the first group dig there, Darin found a few nice plates of bubbles not far from where they dropped him off, next to the creek and just inside the wooded area….

…he then walked upstream in the creek and found a huge clay bank loaded with plates of Druse….

Gabe and Lauren have a Side by Side as well as a tractor and trailer on site to help rockhounds with transport to and from the parking area. They have been on summer vacation to spend time with their children, but will have their farm available again soon for more collecting opportunities.

MARTY`S MINE SITE

Another new location that became available this spring is called Marty`s Mine Site…Marty is one of Lance`s many cousins, and his farm is located in the Tiff Community near three of the other locations I take groups to collect at. Marty has a major creek running along the north side of his property and the south side as well, there is a ridge that follows along each creek and the tops of those two ridges are loaded with multiple colors of Druse Quartz and White Barite Combos, including vivid colors of Root Beer, Blues, Purples, and Reds. He also has some forest areas that are dotted with vast areas of Druse Quartz in multiple colors, small to large plates are found there, as well as a few Xtra Large Clusters of Druse.

Marty also has transportation available for rockhounds, from a few rockhounds to a group of rockhounds, with his Side by Side and an older model Chevrolet truck. Bladed Barite and some Crystalline Barite has been found here as well.

The first six photos are what we found when we scouted Marty`s 200 acre farm site the first day of March this year, 2025….

and then began taking groups there in April, including members of my personal group when they were here the first week of April….

…we found a lot of combo`s that day and got to watch a storm come in and go all the way around us at Marty`s farm…the next group in was from the Tulip City Club in Michigan…

and Thomas Rexroad found this cute rock that resembles a Teddy Bear, while Tanya found some pretty Blue Bubble Plates behind Marty`s house that day.

Many more beauties have been found there recently, will add more photos soon. Right now, Marty`s is closed for Bow Deer Season, stay tuned to my page, MO Rock Collecting & Digs for when it re-opens.

 

Check out my new FB page and hit the join button, then once approved, check the Events Tab  at the top of the page to see where we are going next. In order to go with us, all you have to do is click on the event, read the info, make note of the meeting spot and time to be there by, and click Going.

My new FB page is at https://www.facebook.com/groups/322253830735906/

 

I will be checking out a couple of more new sites in the next few weeks hopefully, just waiting on word from the landowners.

Stay tuned for more new site info.

 

Update 2023 to 2024

Posted on by

Hey Everyone,

Onyx and I were pretty busy fall of 2023 doing a lot of rock and mineral scouting…but scouting for locations to take groups of rockhounds to collect at for a bucket fee, payable to the owner of the property. In December, I put the word out and really became busy taking groups out rockhounding, and I have my own Facebook page for that as well now…MO Rock Collecting & Digs is the name of it, here is the link to it as well if you would like to join and go on digs with us :

https://www.facebook.com/groups/322253830735906/

There are four membership questions to answer and they are really simple. At the present I am up to 3200 members of my private group on the page, but am really more interested in taking in people that truly want to go with us as a group to the collecting locations…quality is more important to me than quantity. Have had to remove a few bad eggs along the way in the past 8 months as well when some drama reared its ugly head, but things are progressing along more smoothly now and I am still going out and looking at new locations for group hunts.

Check out the Event Tab at the top of my page when you join up, and there you will find digs we are scheduled to go to in the future. Also check out the Guides Tab and you can read the rules there in the first 3 Guides and then there are 5 locations described in the next 5 Guides.

Will be adding a few stories later today to my page. I didnt get to go to New Mexico this year due to how busy I was taking groups of folks rockhounding, but some of my friends did make it out there…am still waiting to hear how they all did.

New Druse Quartz Locations Found….

Posted on by

Hey all, been super busy since the New Mexico trip this spring, and havent had a chance to update my website. Been doing a lot of scouting for druse quartz and barite at a few new locations with some of my local rockhounding friends. We also did some more scouting at the newer Mineral Point location east of Potosi, were last there in early May, just about the time the weather was starting to warm up to summer temps from spring temps. Seems like it takes longer to warm up from those chilly spring temps each year. Johnny Pettus, Pete Hahn, and Bob Steele were with me that day…we had checked out a new location for bladed barite attached to druse quartz that morning just south of Potosi, where one of the original mines was located, and where bladed barites like this were found….

However, despite an extensive search of the area, we did not locate very much pretty stuff there…it could be that information I had from a prior collector, that told me that the really good stuff there had to be dug up, was correct. There are so many leaves on the ground there, from a forest of oak trees in that area, that it makes it very difficult to find anything there. We found a few scrap pieces of druse and a few small pieces of barite too. We might go back later this fall when the temps fall again, to do a more extensive search.

From there tho, we drove to the newer Mineral Point location to do more scouting on the west side of the area, and found several smaller areas with beautiful blade barites and druse pieces….

….so there is def a lot of potential good material to be found and collected there still. To date, we have prob only scratched the surface of what is there and maybe searched only a tenth of the total acreage.

In the past couple of months, we followed up on information from a firefighter friend of mine about some areas in some other areas of Washington County, where we have found bladed barite as well as multiple colors of druse quartz. We were in some of these areas in the fall of 2022, but didn`t get a chance to return til this year in May, June, and July. Some of these areas are known to have deadly venomous snakes that can be quite aggressive toward people…going by accounts from friends who have hiked in these areas and friends who have rockhounded these areas during the summer months. Wild hogs have also been spotted in these areas and another downside of these areas, is a lack of cellphone signal, so if a person did run into trouble there, and needed help, they would not be able to call for help, hence another good reason not to go these areas alone.

One of the places my firefighter friend noticed last year during some fires, described by him as ” sparkle city “, we checked out during a few days mid July this year, and found some beautiful plates and pieces in vibrant reds, pinks, yellows, browns, and root beer colors….

I plan to return to one of the hazard areas later this fall, when temps cool way down and we don`t have to worry about the serious hazards, where I have found beautiful areas containing bladed barites and druse plates….

A couple of these areas are on private property, luckily I have been able to obtain permission to go there and collect there, and have permission to take groups there as well. Most private landowners do charge a fee these days to rockhounds and collectors, and require a waiver of liability form signed by each person as well…a small price to pay for beautiful, collectable material.