NEW MEXICO FIELD TRIP REPORT

2005

 

 

Faye and I joined up with the Roving Rockhounds on their second week of the group's annual winter trip to the Southwest. The RR's first week was spent in Arizona. You can find Jim Flora's report of that week (and more) on the Georgia Mineral Society's web site under "Special Interest, Tucson 2005."

 

The Roving Rockhounds are a group who persisted in maintaining a traditional annual Southwestern dig. A few years back when the Lordsburg, NM Chamber of Commerce decided the annual "Rock-a-Mania" didn't warrant their continued support, this group formed their own organization. Members are from all over the country. The bond among them is simply the love of rockhounding. Jim Flora has been on these safaris a couple of years now and it was Jim who suggested this might be our avenue to doing the "westward ho" bit.

 

We left our home near Gatlinburg, TN on Tuesday, the 15th of February. We arrived at the Lordsburg KOA campground Sunday afternoon after leaving the Davis Mountains in Texas that morning. By then we had collected marcasite from Eppes, Alabama and chalcedony "free forms" from the Davis Mountains. These we collected to help calm our excitement about what we might get into out further west!

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Monday morning we met the members of the RR at the Border Rock Shop in Lordsburg and learned of the plans for the day. Our caravan of 8-10 cars and trucks headed out for the Polly Anna mine east of Duncan, AZ. On the way we stopped at a road cut and with chisel and hammer broke out some orange and white common opal. We filled our 5-gallon bucket after an hour or so, then the group went on to the Polly Anna. This old fluorite mine still produces for those with the energy to dig. Highly fluorescent purple and green varieties were just beneath the surface along one of the open pits. With mattock and pry bar we took out some chunks that made us feel that it was a most satisfying first day.

 

Tuesday, we went with the group toward Duncan again. First, from a tributary of the Gila River, we collected a banded serpentine rock called ricolite. It was said that this material was washed downstream from private land above the collecting area. With all the rain in the area, many sizable pieces were found. After a time here, we went on to a nearby ranch. The group had gained permission to collect fluorite there. Some nice translucent green fluorite pieces were broken out of large boulders that lay scattered about from earlier mining efforts. We found massive fine-grained purple fluorite by breaking open rocks in a nearby draw.

 

Wednesday, everyone headed west out I-10 from Lordsburg to a couple of mine sites close to the Arizona border. The turn of the century had seen a lot of activity here, and an old stage coach station and other stone structures are still evidence of busier days. The Johnny Bull mine provided us with pieces of turquoise and chrysocolla from the dumps, and massive yellow calcite from a vein above the mine's adit. We busted rocks from the dumps of a second mine nearby, the Silver Queen, to find tiny embedded galena crystals.

 

Because of the wet weather, particularly in Arizona, we moved our base east to Deming, NM, Thursday morning. Still, the rain that day proved too much for any digging activities.

 

The weather cleared by Friday morning and we took off for some old mine sites north of Hatch, NM. The first was a barite mine that proved to be rich with that mineral and its associates. Faye and I dug in a cavity started sometime earlier by others and succeeded in freeing up a great quantity of massive barite laced with quartz crystal-lined vugs. Some of the smaller crystals were amethyst. Some of these vugs contained barite crystals coated with quartz crystals. At a second site, we collected small pieces of dark gray and black psilomelane from the dumps.

 

Saturday, we drove on past Hatch near Radium Springs, NM to collect calcite onyx. Some good size pieces could be found in the spoils and more by breaking out chunks from large boulders pushed out of the way during mining operations. I found some beautiful black and white calcite in one of those boulders at a second location. A relief of wine-colored rhombohedral crystals stood up out of the massive black calcite. A layer of white calcite in the same boulder showed an entirely different formation with a sandwiching of opposing dogtooth crystals.

 

The next day we again drove toward Hatch and dug some massive calcite from a road cut. The chunks I dug had a bright yellow yolk within a white translucent surround. That afternoon, we drove into the Florida Mountains south of Demming to find some "thunder eggs." The nests began just below the surface. Most of those we dug were small, but one was close to seven inches in diameter and had a quartz crystal-lined hollow center. Most had solid chalcedony centers with maybe a hint of crystallization. All of the chalcedony fluoresces green. That night, we followed those with black lights around in the same area to see what might show up. We saw much green, some fiery orange, blue, and spots of red.

 

Monday, we drove the ninety miles southeast to Kilbourne Hole. At our first stop, it looked as though pickin's might be slim, but then we moved on to a second location. Here, the peridot bombs had been eroded out virtually everywhere. Faye and I collected all we could carry back up the sides of the crater. Most bombs had at least a broken surface to show us they had true peridot centers.

 

We decided not to go with the group to another onyx location on Tuesday. Instead, we went back to the barite mine north of Hatch. We dug in the spot that we had on the previous Friday. This time around, digging wasn't so easy. We did manage to find some more amethyst, not in a vug, but in a tight vein which seemed to resist all efforts of extraction! I finally won out, but not with as much intact as I would have liked. We also brought back some barite plates with a white botryiodal calcite frosting.

 

Our last day of digging in New Mexico was spent in the Cookes Mountains just north of Deming. The first stop was in a small canyon which the group referred to as the Rock Candy location. The reference was to the rhyolite there...very popular with those who had saws and polishing equipment. On up from the canyon was an old fluorite mine. We found some purple crystals pieces there, although most was quite weathered. Still further up, we collected pieces of an orange jasper scattered about the slope. After spending the morning there, the group moved on to other mine locations. Faye and I joined two other four-wheel vehicles and drove a tortuous two-mile road up to Fluorite Ridge. The heavy rains had cut the narrow road to pieces and it was a "hold your breath" drive coming and going. Our reward was a great view from the top of the ridge, and getting into a fluorite vein in the road cut above the mine. We three men took turns pounding away with hammers and chisels and collected much massive green material, all of which fluoresces a deep purple.

 

We headed back into Texas the next morning, but not until we had a new water pump installed. We shudder to think of events if the water pump had suddenly gone out while we were up on Fluorite Ridge. I confess we did smell antifreeze while up there, the dripping was evident, and the overflow bottle had gone dry. In fact, we sacrificed our drinking water, thinking maybe it would provide enough additional coolant to get us back down. It was enough, and it got us all the way back to Deming. We had already suffered a cracked windshield, so while we brought home the goods, I'd have to say the price per pound was pretty steep. Still, we'd do it again...and plan to...next time around.

 

NOTE: This report is part of our website TOUCHMARKS.COM