My Adventures in Rockhounding

Brian Bondy
My usual rockhounding is northern New Mexico but this past week my rockhounding took me a little further.  Carol's made me promise to write about some rock and fossil collecting closer to home in the future.

​This trip to Chicago saw us take a more southerly route. We took 285 towards Clines Corner where we stopped at the side of the road where the embankments looked interesting. I found some interesting bubbly gray rocks that looked like they could have quartz growing in them. Not geodes, but septarian nodules perhaps. I look forward to cutting them open to see if anything is inside.

The first actual rock destination was Crater of Diamonds state park in Murfreesboro Arkansas. I did not find anything. I did have a great time though and there were a lot of hard-core folks there searching for a prize. Crater of Diamonds really does contain diamonds, just not enough to be commercially viable. For people like me though, it’s a perfect outing. If you are seriously looking, you will spend the day collecting gravel and sieving it through mesh at one of the water trough stations that are available at the park. It was a bit muddy that day.​​

​Moving on from there I went to the Ron Coleman Quartz Mine in Jessieville Arkansas. If you didn’t know, Arkansas is home to some of the best quartz crystal mines in the world. Several of the mines offer the opportunity to find your own crystals by digging through dump truck piles of dirt they bring up from the mine. Some of the mines have special offers where you can dig in a quartz crystal pocket in the mine itself. That’s quite a bit more expensive.

I had a great time digging through the piles and found some beautiful crystals. We were pressed for time and I probably only looked for about 90 minutes. Next time I’ll spend the day.
Ron Coleman’s mine is fantastic, but there is also a Jim Coleman. They have a fantastic rock shop at the turnoff for the mine. I went on their website later and bought a half bushel of mine material from them. I just received the 2 very heavy boxes from them about 10 minutes ago, so I’ll write about that experience next week.

​Google Quartz Crystal Mining in Arkansas - 
You will get several options for digging for your own crystals. I highly recommend it if you have the means.

Part 2, next week