Rock collecting

Help the pebble puppies | Where to find rocks | Mother nature at her best. | Wearing Mother Nature | What to wear and what personal items to take: | Naomi's first try at tumbling rocks. | Some Great rock information | The worlds most beautiful stones | Rock hounding in Central Oregon | Fossils | Can Diamonds come from this? | Rock stuff on Amazon | Twitter Search | Rock Talk | Great Stuff on CafePress | Tumblers & More




PLAY THE, WHO AM I? ROCK GAME

Spring is coming and you know what that means?

Time to get ready for digging.

We can't wait.

The pebble puppies would like to thank you for all of your support.
You can help the little pebble puppies.

It depends a lot upon the weather and where you are going to be hunting.
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If you are going to walk in a river bed, on river banks, cuts, gullies, or other slippery surfaces, you wear tennis shoes or other shoes that will grip well when wet.

If you are going to be climbing hills or mountains, wear hiking boots with good tread and ankle support. If there is danger of a mashed toe, wear steel toed boots if possible.

I recommend wearing full length pants and shirt sleeves. Limit your exposure to the sun, insect bites and stings, toxic plants, abrasions, and other mishaps. Wear something that is tough such as denim pants and shirts. Do not wear something that can be easily ruined-as it probably will be.

Always bring a hat and a bandanna. This will protect your face, ears, eyes, and neck from the sun, dust, and sometimes rain.

Carry a canteen or pack with water and sport drinks (to replace electrolytes in your system. Sweating (perspiring by ladies) is common on field trips, and you don't want to become dehydrated.

Carry the newer more powerful type of insect repellant and sun protection cream with a rating of at least SPF#15 or higher.

JellyBelly delivers the freshest, sweetest candy directly to your doorstep, Rockhounds and pebble puppies alike love JellyBelly's. We take them on all our rockhounding trips.



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The best collecting sites. Quarries, road cuts or natural cliffs, and outcrops. Open fields and level country are poor places to find rock exposures. Hills and steep slopes are better sites.Almost any exposure of rock provides some collection opportunities, but fresh, unweathered outcrops or manmade excavations offer the best locations. If possible, visit several exposures of the same rock to be sure a representative sample is selected.

This necklace was made from one of Naomi's first rocks that she tumbled. She wants to get into making necklaces and ear rings.





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The thunderegg is Oregon's state rock.
It can be collected at free sites or purchased at various sites throughout Central Oregon. Unimpressive on the outside, these spherical rocks contain colorful silicic material that when sliced and polished make very unique and beautiful collector's items. A wide variety of rocks, minerals and semi-precious gemstones can be collected on public land in Oregon. Most Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and U.S. Forest Service (USFS) lands are open to rock collecting by the public.


Select areas, such as Glass Buttes Obsidian Area. Located approximately 80 miles (129 kilometers) east of Bend off Highway 20 in the BLM Lakeview District, has been specifically set aside for this purpose. Glass Buttes is a unique source of obsidian which is a natural glass that was originally molten magma associated with a volcano. Various colors of obsidian can be found at Glass Buttes ranging from black and red to green and the rare rainbow, along with other variations. Baseball-size pieces are abundant and can be collected without digging and large pieces (up to several hundred pounds), can be collected with considerable digging. Glass Buttes are remote, and roads are rough, but are accessible by automobile, and primitive camping is available.

Some of the sites where you can collect rocks for a fee in the Jefferson County Crooked River Ranch area include the following:

Richardson's Rock Ranch. Located 11 miles (18 kilometers) north of Madras on Highway 97, is a family-owned and operated cattle ranch, and an excellent place for the rockhound. There are six egg beds varying from easy to moderate digging to those requiring hard or expert digging. It has a rock shop offering thundereggs, moss agate, jasper, jasper-agate, Oregon sunset, rainbow agate, and other rocks from all over the world.
Friend Ranch Located adjacent to Richardson's Rock Ranch, is usually open only twice per year usually during the Madras Pow-Wow and the Ashwood Rock Stock. The beds are well maintained and are regularly excavated for more digging opportunities, and there is an entire hillside of petrified wood for selective digging.

Nartz Ranch Home of the Chief Paulina agate bed and and other agate ledges are worth exploring. Nartz Ranch agate comes in colors ranging from blue and clear/white to brown polka-dot and sugary-white agate.

Marston Ranch. Offers unusual petrified wood that has been completely replaced with agate, and multi-colored agate in red, green, orange, and yellow is visible. An ocasional purple and red flow jasper will also be found.

McDonald Ranch. offers thundereggs, petrified wood, and various agates. "Herringbone" wood which has an unique pattern is available and easy to dig in the soft deposits.

Ochs Ranch. Located approximately 15 miles (24 kilometers) northeast of Madras (adjacent to Priday Ranch), offer thundereggs, agate and petrified wood. The Dolly Parton thunderegg bed was named because twin eggs are sometimes found on the site.

Priday Polka-Dot Mine. Located approximately 15 miles (24 kilometers) northeast of Madras, is open sporadically between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Agate, and red and brown jasper are accessible at this site, but hard digging is required.

Please note that there are some restrictions and a permit may be required, depending on the amount of material collected, how collected, where collected, and whether the material will be used commercially. Learn more about rockhounding from the Oregon Department of Geology & Mineral Industries
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The Fossil beds near Fossil Oregon.

In order to tell the age of most layered rocks, scientists study the fossils these rocks contain. Fossils provide important information to help us determine what happened in Earth's history and when it happened.





The Earth is always changing, nothing on its surface is truly permanent. Rocks that are now on top of a mountain may once have been at the bottom of the sea.


Most of the rocks exposed at the Earth's surface are sedimentary, formed from particles of older rocks that have been broken apart by water or wind. The gravel, sand, and mud settle to the bottom in rivers, lakes, and oceans. These sedimentary particles may bury living and dead animals and plants on the lake or sea bottom. With the passage of time and the accumulation of more particles, and often with chemical changes, the sediments at the bottom of the pile become rock. Gravel becomes a rock called conglomerate, sand becomes sandstone, mud becomes mudstone or shale, and the animal skeletons and plant pieces can become fossils.



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