My daughter wants to go rock-hounding for a day or two for her birthday. I literally know zero about rocks/gems/geodes or how to find them. I’ve called a few rock and gem societies trying to find a “guide”, with no luck. I’m hoping for Colorado, but open to travel anywhere. I want to avoid the tourist-trap “gem digging” spots where they sell loaded buckets of dirt to sift through. Ideally I could find someone I could hire for a day to show us where to go, what to look for, and how to look, then the second day my daughter and I could try it on our own. Anyone here interested in guiding or know someone who might?
Any Rockhounds on here?
- Thread starter TheCougar
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- Thread Starter
- #3
In Fort Worth. Open to travel pretty much anywhere, however.
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I know a few Montana sites. Used to dig quite a bit. Lots of it is private and you have to get permission or be part of a club to dig.
Hauser Reservoir in Montana has a couple of dig sites for Missouri River sapphires. The rock club in Helena is who you want to talk to. They supply a bucket and a shovel, and you supply the sweat. You will get sapphires and usually a few good garnets.
Rock Creek in Montana used to have a dig site as well for DIY, but you supplied your bucket shovel and screens.
You can find Montana Picture Agate down by Bighorn Canyon in MT. Just stay out of the park.
Crystal Park in the Pioneer Mountains is good for quartz crystals. Also the national forest east of Butte toward Delmo Lake.
Just a few thoughts. Search rockhounding on the web and you'll get a bunch of sites that can point you in the right direction for a lot of states. Arizona and Colorado have a lot, I'm just not as familiar with them.
Jeremy
Hauser Reservoir in Montana has a couple of dig sites for Missouri River sapphires. The rock club in Helena is who you want to talk to. They supply a bucket and a shovel, and you supply the sweat. You will get sapphires and usually a few good garnets.
Rock Creek in Montana used to have a dig site as well for DIY, but you supplied your bucket shovel and screens.
You can find Montana Picture Agate down by Bighorn Canyon in MT. Just stay out of the park.
Crystal Park in the Pioneer Mountains is good for quartz crystals. Also the national forest east of Butte toward Delmo Lake.
Just a few thoughts. Search rockhounding on the web and you'll get a bunch of sites that can point you in the right direction for a lot of states. Arizona and Colorado have a lot, I'm just not as familiar with them.
Jeremy
Tod osier
WKR
Get the Falcon Guide books, they are pretty good. There is "Rockhounding Colorado" available along with many other western and southwestern states. Good DIY trip, can find fossils, agates, petrified wood, minerals, etc...
Tod osier
WKR
Paying to split rocks in one of the fish fossil quarries in Kemmerer, WY is pretty amazing.
Montgomery County, Arkansas. Great quartz crystal mines you can dig at. Any kid would love it.
Salt Plains National Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma for selenite crystals. An easy fun dig she would enjoy as well.
Those are the two kid appropriate ones close to you I know of. Mount Ida, Arkansas has awesome rock shops she will enjoy as well.
For a bigger adventure the Museum of Natural History in Denver has an amazing rock display. Unreal really. Hard to believe nature produces such miracles. You could then venture into the mountains and tour gold mines. I'm sure there are some open and operating for tours but don't know of any specifically. Cripple Creek had one years ago but it's a gambling town now and not worth a bucket of pee. Might still be open.
You could also coincide that trip with the Denver Gem and Mineral show. Tucson has a gem and mineral show as well that is unreal. Unreal. U of A in Tucson has a nice mineral museum as well.
Southern Arizona has incredible mines and rockhounding areas. Far more than I can cover in this post.
That's a start. Good luck.
True. That's a good one we did on our honeymoon. Easy and super interesting. The one we went to was a fee by hour, keep what you find. We still have a pile of them after giving them away for years.
Meh. That's a tough dig for a kid. Drive a little further and she can pick crystals out of tailings piles all day long.
Depends on if you want gems, stones, or fossils. Some of the best stone picking on earth is along the shores of lake superior and there are agates as well. https://mynorth.com/2019/07/michigan-rock-hunting-is-the-best-on-earth/
Prolly right for todays kids. There's prolly a gem digging app for iphone anyway.
Have you dug it? I never have. They fill everything back in every night so in the morning you have to start new. The people who find stones either get very lucky or are very motivated and experienced. Not saying it can't be done, just not really kid appropriate. And it's heavy on park officials. Not my style at all.
That's a good one. Some places just have cool rocks laying all over the ground.
Separate them by area in Ziploc bags while in the field and when you get home put them in canning jars with the date and time on the lids. Cool memories for you both.
Yeah, Colorado has the gem and mineral show in Sept. Tour the Phoenix gold mine outside Idaho Springs. There is also the mining museum in Leadville and the museum at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden. Mt Antero near Buena Vista holds a lot of gems and is featured as one of the sites on that Weather Channel show where they are digging them out of the ground. It’s a 14er and most of the gem pockets are up high so not sure how someone from Texas would fare walking a round a mountain with tools at 13,000 feet. Many of the old mining tailings piles hold various gems if you want to dig through them as the miners back in the days were focused on gold and silver unless they ran in to something substantial. Need to be careful though that you aren’t on private property or someones mining claim, you would need OnX or something similar to verify before you digging around, OnX might not show all of the current claims though so you probably want to look those up through the BLM or NFS if on public ground.
I was there when I was a kid so it's been a minute but, we had a great time. Hot as all get out middle of the summer diggin in the dirt all day kinda fun this generation knows nothing about. It was certainly not heavy on park officials when we were there, at least I dont remember that being the case.
yeah, that looks like a great place, sure to find something walking along the beaches there. Get them started on agates and whatever else looks cool.
- Thread Starter
- #18
Not funny. My wife does that to my vehicles if I don't stop her. Still fills the passenger door pockets up no matter what. I've got bags an boxes of mystery rocks all over. Good thing I love her.
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