Reddit mentions: The best rocks & minerals books

I'm in the Provo area, where are you?

Keep an eye out for the 2013 Timpanogos Gem and Mineral Society show at the Spanish Fork Fair Grounds... They usually sell a small orange pamphlet with directions to some really good locations. It's part of the fund raiser so worth the $5-$7, and of course ask the guys at the booth they love chatting about rocks. Gem Fair also comes to the South Town Expo center a few times a year but that is 70% beads and fake crap.

My favorite site for locations...
http://user.xmission.com/~jbdaniel/index.htm
Lots of good detail and some not very active forums.

I like the book Rockhounding Utah , http://www.amazon.com/Rockhounding-Utah-William-A-Kappele/dp/1560444460

You can use Amazon preview and google books preview to check out the most of the sites. Also, Google the table of contents listings and you're sure to find plenty of articles about the particular site.


Personally my favorite places are as follows (google to find directions etc).

The Dugway Geode beds are excellent, get directions online, take plenty of water and a high clearance vehicle (needed for the last 1 mile or so). Drive around until you find the pits with the tractor. DO NOT dig the pit the tractor is next to, leave that for the claim owner. He is okay with rock hounds digging the other pits though.

Looking for trilobites near delta is fun, although you may want to try some of the commercial pits rather than the public one next to UDIGG. If you are spending the time and gas $ to get out there you may want pay to work to the prime areas. I've spent a lot of hours smashing rocks in the public quarry with very little luck. However, if you are in it for the adventure searching around online should lead you to some directions to some pretty decent sites.

I tumble a lot of the stuff I collect so I go after a lot of agate and jasper. There is some pretty good agate out near Wendover near the salt flats. Take the road that heads toward Silver Island Mountains (lots of directions online and in books). That road gets graded every so often and I have found some amazing stuff just sitting off the side of road in the berm. Drive slow with your widow rolled down and eyes peeled.

Last Chance Road on I-70 between Salina and Grand Junction has some really nice agate. Be warned though, the sign at the start of the road warning about washed out roads is SERIOUS. Last year it was impassable by all but the toughest 4x4's, I came upon on sorry traveler that had been stuck in the mud for 8 hours before a truck came along that was capable of pulling him out. If it's a dry year like now it's no problem with a car.

The "ghost town" area on Joy, UT in the Drum Mountains (near Delta) has some nice agate and jasper. Look for a location called Agate Hill, I find lots of red/yellow jasper further up the road closer to the hills.

Vernon and Salina wonder stone are super easy to collect and look pretty neat. It's won't polish all that well but it makes for great decorative pieces as is.

A really good place for collecting obsidian is on highway 257 between Delta and Milford. There is a turn off for a dirt road that leads to Kanosh, most directions online and in books will mention a sign that says "Kanosh 26" don't bother looking, it burned down a few years back. Keep an eye out the side of the road for black chunks of obsidian. When you start seeing a bunch of it get out and walk around. It's all over. Lots and lots of black stuff, some areas have some rather large mahogany chunks. If you climb of some of the hills you will find some very small pieces of really bright read obsidian, but all the deposits I have found are really fragmented smaller pieces.

Sounds like fun! I can't tell you much about the camping scene, but I do have some good spots in South-Central Colorado. Granted, there's can still be a lot of snow at altitude in early May, so some of the sites might be iffy at the time of your visit. I'll mark those with a star.

Trout Creek Pass pegmatites, about 20 minutes east of Buena Vista. The Clora May Mine is the easiest to access, with only a ~15 minute hike uphill. It's got some great chunks of pink feldspar, biotite and muscovite mica, and some massive (in the geology sense of the term) quartz/smoky quartz. There's a smaller amount of black tourmaline, although the quality isn't generally great IMHO. But the real prize is the uncommon rare earth minerals such as Aeschynite-(Y), Polycrase-(Y), and Xenotime. They're generally not breathtakingly beautiful, but a fantastic addition to your collection if you're a chemistry buff. Don't try and take them on the plane with you, though -- some are surprisingly radioactive.

Ruby Mountain, ~20 minutes south of BV. It's easy to find, and not bad of a hike up. Halfway up, there's a good outcropping for perlite and obsidian "Apache tears". The top is mostly rhyolite, but there are small (think millimeters, not centimeters) garnets in some pieces. More rarely, there are some funky "flower" shaped formations with tiny crystals of topaz. This site is pretty well picked over and half is on private land, but it's definitely convenient.

The Rock Doc. Awesome rock and mineral store in the same area as the above. You can also pick up supplies, books, and local intel on collecting sites.

Also not a site as such, but the National Mining Hall of Fame in Leadville has a fantastic collection. The Rock Hut mineral store in town has good specimens, but a bit pricey for my taste.

Mount Antero. The aquamarine is legendary, but this is definitely not a casual collecting spot. Inaccessible most of the year, lots of active claims, bad afternoon lightning storms. Wouldn't recommend unless you happen to plan ahead with an experienced local as a guide.

There are a few quarries, mines, and collecting sites around and behind Salida. Midway Springs has some cool Aragonite features -- you can find bright red-and-white chunks that look like miniature caves, including speleothems. There's good Magnetite and Actinolite specimens from the Calumet Mine, but it's not always open to collecting. I've never found anything worth writing home about in this area, but there's many sites I haven't seen.

Browns Canyon. The old fluorite mine on the way down has a bit of botryoidal white/clear fluorite on the dumps, but as above -- nothing to write home about. Cool igneous rocks further down the road, and I've found hydrothermal deposits of the uncommon tennis-ball green Vanadium mineral Volborthite.

There's stuff up towards the ghost town of St Elmo, but it's a bit hard to get to (especially before June/July) and there are active claims.

Go to the Bayou Salado Trading Post in Hartsel. The owners hold claims on nearby land for blue and yellow Barite, and you can dig for a nominal fee of like ~$5. It's very hot in the summer, but the crystals are abundant and just lie scattered in the red mud. They actually get more blue with sunlight exposure, unlike most minerals! There are some bigger clusters buried, if you're willing to dig.

Bonanza is an old mining town (pop. 16) further south in Saguache County. Not a lot to find without local help and 4WD, but I have found tiny crystals of Sylvanite, one of Colorado's famous Telluride minerals.

Westcliffe / Silver Cliff, previously a silver mining region. I've only been down this way once, but there are lots of digsites on public land north of town. My best find from that day was Rhyolite with Liesegang Rings. The Sangre de Cristo Gallery and Rockshop in town had great prices, in my experience.

Pinnacle Mine, across Monarch Pass. It's an active uranium mine and closed to collecting, but I thought I'd mention it because the front gate (covered in "No Trespassing" and "Danger -- Radioactivity" signs) is an awesome place for a selfie.

You might also check your library for copies of Voynick's Colorado Rockhounding, Kapelle's Rockhounding Colorado, and especially Mitchell's Gem Trails of Colorado, as they all have detailed site reports.

Oh, and you might also take a look at the Peak to Peak guide to CO sites, GatorGirl's pages for Colorado and Utah, and the Mindat pages for both states.

I can see this will not end based on what I say, so literature is probably the best way to resolve this. I would read this one. There are basic images of the different varieties. Google images actually does a great job of showing you the different types as well.

https://www.amazon.com/Superior-Agates-Minerals-Identification-Guides/dp/1591932823/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1467952203&sr=8-4&keywords=lake+superior+agate

I have the damn things in my hand, I feel like I have an advantage on ID'ing them. I am going to take more pictures, to make you feel more comfortable so that one day people like me can post in peace. I don't expect an apology from you because I don't think you are the type of person to give one when your wrong. Knowing you're wrong though does ease the pain.

Do carnelian agates form in MN? Who knows, depends on how you define them. They are found in many places around the world, MN is not known to be a hotspot for them. I personally was under the impression they were mostly found in OR. Can you find Red Chalcedony in MN...yes. Could some rock hound from OR have dropped a carnelian agate off in MN? Yes it has probably happened. I would say if you have banded red chalcedony found in glacial till from the lake superior region it's safe to say its a lake superior agate. Going out on a limb with that one. I would even go as far as saying if you have banded chalcedony of many varieties and colors from glacial till from the lake superior region you more than likely have a lake superior agate.

-1. Rock hammer

• Either get a pick type, if you go for hard rock hand samples,
  
  or a chisel type, if you want soft rocks and fossil beds.
  
  
• Either way if you have the $$ go Estwing, else whatever you can find at Home Depot.
  
  -2. Hand lens
  
  
• 10x is classic, sometimes 14x is nice for tricky mineral identification.
  
• LED lights are fun, but typically found on lower quality optics
  
• Best you can get? Bausch & Lomb Hastings Triplet 10x - $35. Probably can get something cheapo from China on Amazon for a few bucks.
  
  -3. Simon & Schuster's Guide to Rocks & Minerals Nuff said.
  
  -4. Got some cash to burn? A handheld GPS is pretty nifty.
  
  -5. Small bottle of hydrocloric acid. Can be handy for quick IDing of carbonates, but often not worth the hassle. Alternative: learn your mineralogy, bring a pocket knife.
  
  -6. Sharpies, pens, masking tape, and a field book. Keep notes! Label rocks so you can track your finds.
  
  -7. Camera!
  
  -8. Sample bags - anything tough but soft should do. Pros often use canvas.
  
  If you're feeling ambitious, raid your garden shed for anything good at moving earth. I've had a lot of luck recently with Estwing's prybars, chisels, and crack hammers with popping sediment beds out, but there's no need to go for name brands for these items. It's all about what you're going after...
  
  Happy hunting!

Well, the way I learned how was by getting yelled at by our field instructor until we knew what we were doing...Something that has a reasonable way to look up cleavages, colour, hardness, and lustre is just about what you need. The DK one seems reasonable enough, beyond most of that information, it's just practice, practice, practice.

http://www.amazon.com/Field-Guide-Minerals-Peterson-Guides/dp/039591096X < I thiiiink this may be the one we had, but I honestly don't remember. I kept my optical mineralogy text because it's also has good hand sample descriptions, but I think I sold my pretty field guide because I needed to buy next year's texts...

Since we usually got a preamble before any trip, we got pretty lazy and didn't need it that much. We were usually only differentiating between 4-5 minerals, it stayed in our bag most of the time. (Great students, I know. Fact is that if you can ID quartz, the feldspars, pyroxene, and amphibole, you're pretty well off. XD)

Obviously, as an enthusiast, you don't have the 'luxury' of an old furry man yelling at you, but the fact remains that books will only go so far, and you just need to practice seeing cleavage, lustre, and all that. Getting an eye takes time, but it's a lot of fun. :D

I strongly recommend checking out the Black Rock hot springs just north of Taos.. If you're an avid bike rider, the Santa Fe area has some great trails. Dale Ball and the Santa Fe rail trail are pretty awesome. There's tons of cool places to check out if you're the outdoorsy type. Like Nambe Falls, Sandia Peak, Diablo Canyon, Santa Fe Baldy, and a bunch more. If you're interested in going rockhoudning, pick up a copy of Gem Trails of New Mexico... As far as good eats, I strongly recomend stopping at the Cowgirl at least once for dinner, the Santa Fe Baking Company at least once for breakfast, and the Aztec Cafe at least 42 times for coffee. If you're the artsy type, there is a shit ton of Frida Kahlo, Georgia O'Keefe and more silver and turquise than one could possibly shake a stick at. However, if you're looking for something a little different, check out the Chuck Jones Gallery... Also, if you don't wanna stick out like a flaming tourist, say it like it's one word "Sannuh-fey" not "Santa Fay" Putting the accent of the Fe and making it sound like Fay is a dead giveaway... And when you're out ordering a burrito and you're asked whether you'd like red or green chile sauce, if you wish to have a little of both, just say "Christmas"...

Here is a nice website if you're looking for anything in particular or just want to know more in your area. I'm from the east side of OR so I'm a bit jelly you're on the coast, agates are my favorite to collect. One book I highly recommend is this. If you're like me and have no idea where to go it's a great guide. I am also new to the rock collecting scene and have started tumbling too, it's great fun and I hope you keep finding awesome stuff!

For opals, you are going to want to go to Virgin Valley which is in the NW corner of Nevada, so definitely more than two hours away, but worth it. The House Range in Utah is Famous for its trilobites, and IIRC that's probably less than two hours from Great Basin. The Battle Mountain area is known for turquoise. Probably want to pick up a guidebook like this one. Have fun, Great Basin is an awesome park!

http://www.amazon.com/Cairns-Messengers-David-B-Williams/dp/1594856818/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452535859&sr=8-1&keywords=cairns

Geology, ecology, hiking. It doesn't take place exclusively in the PNW but it is written by an author from Seattle. It is really good, as you can guess by the rare amazon 5 star rating. If you like learning about how small impacts by man can affect ecology through history it's a great read.

Rockhounding New England: A Guide To 100 Of The Region's Best Rockhounding Sites (Rockhounding Series) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0762783656/ref=cm_sw_r_other_awd_6X26wb5VVT2AP

Rockhounding New York: A Guide To The State's Best Rockhounding Sites (Rockhounding Series) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0762779004/ref=cm_sw_r_other_awd_KY26wbYF584VV

Roadside Geology of New York (Roadside Geology Series) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0878421807/ref=cm_sw_r_other_awd_dZ26wbRZZCT7B

The Collector's Guide to the Minerals of New York State (Schiffer Earth Science Monograph) https://www.amazon.com/dp/0764343343/ref=cm_sw_r_other_awd_DZ26wbH96TSC2

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I've found rockhounding books usually have good intros and brief explanations which is good for beginners.

I picked up the Smithsonian Rock and Gem book a while back, and ended up spending hours and hours looking through it. It has a lot of really great pictures, and tons and tons of useful information. It's perfect for someone who wants to learn more than just the basics, but also isn't a geology major or something.

This is the one, and it's fantastic!

Oh, forgot to mention. It has waaaay more than just minerals commonly used for jewelry. It has all sorts of minerals, their industrial purposes, the history behind their name, etc.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rocks-Minerals-Handbooks-Chris-Pellant/dp/1405359889/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1407925317&sr=8-1&keywords=dk+rock+and+minerals

Lots of pretty pictures for him just now, and the text will be easy enough to read by age 10(ish), maybe younger if he maintains a really big interest like I did with dinosaurs at around that age.

Utah is still a wonderful place for rockhounding and fossil hunting. Especially between Delta, UT and Tooele, UT (western border of the state).

Consider getting this book:
https://www.amazon.com/Rockhounding-Utah-William-Kappele/dp/1560444460

Talk to these folks:
http://thomasrangermtours.com

For the record, I don't get any financial gain from either of these recommendations.

Happy hounding!

Agreed. There is a great spot for some geodes less than an hour away. If anyone wants more information on rockhounding in CO, the book "Rockhounding Colorado" is a great source of information..

Check out Rockhounding Oregon: A Guide to the State's Best Rockhounding Sites. It’s a great resource for agate hotspots on the coast.

Fire up those walking sticks! Do flights of stairs and hills if possible. Start jogging. Rock climbers did very well in field camp.

Field camp is amazing. I recommend looking into UMich (I hear they've been cutting their program though), IU-Bloomington, University of Oklahoma, UH, UT, and UW-Seattle. IMO, take the longer field course if there are options within these programs.

Contour mapping, compass usage, and field techniques are important. I'd practice those now & buy the Compton book now since I've seen it sold for as much as $350 in the past. There's a cheaper, slightly less encompassing version of this book as well.

Thanks! This will be my first attempt at doing anything out in the field so I'm hugely excited about it, even if it will be slow going and clumsy. =)

Got any recommendations for field identification books? I've got the Dorling Kindersley and the Philips guides at the moment - but they seem a bit light on the details. Are there any "classic" field guides worth picking up?

I'm a professional mineralogist and I have that book at my desk, It's a pretty helpful guide sometimes. I also recommend Simon & Schuster's Guide to Rocks & Minerals and Introduction to the Rock-Forming Minerals

Learned some basic rocks/minerals as a kid - Quartz, Calcite, Tigereye, Agate, Pyrite, Malachite, Azurite, Labradorite, Granite, Conglomerate, Sandstone, Obsidian, Pumice, Fluorite, etc. I'd find some in my yard and collect them and look them up in some books I had or see them for sale in gift shops and got to know them this way.

Learned some more when I took Mineralogy and Petrology courses throughout my degree.

Learned even more by lurking this sub, seeing examples, and googling more info about ones I don't know about.

Some good resources include Simon and Schusters Guide, NPS, Mindat, etc. and if you're really serious about learning more, MIT offers free open courseware on Intro Geology and Petrology.

this book is a good general reference on all things rocks and minerals. the layout is simple to follow and the language is easy to understand (specialised knowledge not required).

Rocks and Minerals

it is a general guide so it probably wont cover every possible example but it is a good starting place.

I would imagine there are books like this one...https://www.amazon.com/Rockhounding-New-York-Guide-States/dp/0762779004
I own the one for Oregon and it has given me some great info to start with. Also, take a look at local rock clubs.

I can't emphasize enough on getting decent safety glasses (even if you already wear glasses). I use my Estwing (a 13 lb-er I think) for geode cracking and the shards did like to aim for your eyes.

To OP; I would hit up any recent rock hounding books on your area on amazon. I have both [Gem Trails] (http://www.amazon.com/Trails-Northern-California-James-Mitchell/dp/1889786284/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1372461605&sr=8-1&keywords=gem+trails+of+northern+california) and [Rock Hounding in California] (http://www.amazon.com/Rockhounding-California-2nd-Guide-States/dp/0762771410/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1372461690&sr=1-1&keywords=rock+hounding+california) in my collection for when I visit eventually.

http://www.amazon.com/Simon-Schusters-Guide-Rocks-Minerals/dp/0671244175/ref=zg_bs_290105_7

My favorite handbook. Some essential rockhound tools would be a rock hammer, chisel, hand loupe, etc.

I would recommend looking into local rockhounding groups for your area. Here's is a book on California rockhounding. Here is also a list of musems and geological sites to visit in Cali. I'm not American but this is how my parents helped me when they found i was into the subject and now i'm doing it at University! :)

The end-all mineral book. Not ideal for field identification, but amazing for the information it does contain. It's the one reference book that I have kept around and used throughout my academic and professional career.

I bought this and it was used A LOT during Min. It's pretty cheap and totally worth it!

Check out all the books in this series:

Geological Society of London Handbook Series

Also Compton is probably the best. You can find older versions for much cheaper usually.

http://www.herkimerdiamond.com is the only western-ish NY fee dig I'm aware of. This book has a list of rockhounding sites with appropriate maps/directions: https://www.amazon.com/Rockhounding-New-York-Guide-States/dp/0762779004?ie=UTF8&adid=02XDNXCXNHT0QN810XCY

here's another link that might help? http://albanykid.com/2010/05/24/rockhounding-new-york/

These are the two favorites of the ones I have.
http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Minerals-Gemstones-Walter-Schumann/dp/0395511372
http://www.amazon.com/Simon-Schusters-Guide-Rocks-Minerals/dp/0671244175

So you live in Cali, eh? I worked south of V-town for a while and took a few trips through Napa. Nice area. Lots of grapes and expensive cars and shit. Take a trip over to the Petrified Forest and see if you can talk to the shop owners, I bet they'd know where you can go locally.

There's lots of stuff in Cali to find. You might have to take a few long drives for the good stuff, though. Get you a copy of the book "Gem Trails of California" and read up.

Apparently they revised Mitchell's original 1992 California Gem Trails book and split it into Northern Cali and Southern Cali.

I'd explore a few book stores to see if they have a copy of either, that way you can flip through the book to make sure you get the right one for your area.

> I had a friend get busted and had to go to court for this.

Your friend could have been claim jumping. Many mineral locals have claims on them, and they can be transient in nature. So even though it seems that it is on public lands, and is ok, someone could have come along and filed a claim over that particular area.

In defense of the claim holder, it takes a lot of expense, time, and energy to dig a hole in the ground. And the claim holder needs to see a return on that money. In defense of the collector, some claim holders should not be filing claims on things that they should not, such as designated public collecting areas. There is one such jerk in my area that may want to haul my butt into court, which at that time we could discuss the validity of his claims in the first place.

That's the short version. What you need to do is buy a recent collecting guide such as this, that will get you started. Then, after that if you have a concern, you go to your local BLM office and ask for information about what claims have been filed in the area you plan on collecting in.

Edit: Also, I should mention that collecting is illegal in National Parks, and also on private property. But I have a hard time thinking that someone would get more than just a trespass citation aka misdemeanor and not hauled into court. Though digging on private property might be considered vandalism. You can ask your friend which of these it was. I don't try to collect in these areas, so maybe someone can chime in on this.

Edit2: If you destroy property in State Parks, then this also might happen.

So this is the general idea.

https://www.amazon.com/Rockhounding-New-York-Guide-States/dp/0762779004/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=fossil+guide+new+york&qid=1569523747&s=gateway&sr=8-3 Each state has its own guide...might want to try this

They are minerals Marie!

Ce vrei tu e un ghid pentru identificarea de minerale nu de pietre. Rocile sunt agregate de minerale, simplist vorbind.

Asta arata decent. Sunt multe carti cu multe poze colorate prin comert, dar sunt pline de info vagi sau pur si simplu gresite. Stai departe de cele in Romana, sunt traduse prost.

Daca te pasioneaza, si vrei sa stii mai mult de atat, recomand orice manual de mineralogie.

How about gem and mineral specimens?

one more

https://www.amazon.com/Rockhounding-Nevada-Guide-States-Sites/dp/0762771429