The Pigmon Ranch, located between Balmorhea and Toyah, is Open NOW!
Teri Smith Rockhunts is pleased to announce the opening of the Pigmon Ranch for rockhunting. This ranch is located between Balmorhea and Toyah, on rolling hills and flats, where you can find agate, jasper, petrified wood, flint, and chert. There is quite a bit of blue agate on the ranch, and some of it has black, grey, or white plumes in it. There’s also lots of other types of agate, such as fortification agates, tube agates, water-level agates, seam agates, banded agates, and saginitic agates. And there is petrified wood, flint, and chert in great colors and patterns.
I hope to get photos and a description up on my website in the next day or so. The agates are so beautiful and varied that it will take lots of photos to give you an idea of what you can find there.
The Pigmon Ranch is about 70 miles from Alpine. It will be easy to access, as a paved county road goes right through the ranch!
Cost for the hunt is $50 per adult per day. Children are free. Rollin’ Rock Club membership is required ($10 for a single membership, or $16 for a dual membership.) Contact Teri Smith at agatehunter@sbcglobal.net, or text or call (432) 386-3431.
Schedule created on 10/7/2024. If the schedule changes, a new post will be created with the new schedule.
Maybe there will be some pieces like this red and black plume agate from the South Larremore Ranch in the box(es) I send you!
The spring rockhunting season has been quite good, with many lovely cutting agate pieces found on all 3 ranches I lead trips on. The most surprising finds have been fortification agates with unusual colors from the Ritchie Ranch. With just a couple of exceptions, I’m finished with leading field trips for the spring. It’s been warm to hot on the ranches, and of course the farther south you go the hotter it gets. Even if it’s too hot for rockhunting out in West Texas, you can still buy great rough agate from me to cut and polish all summer in your ocean-front condo, air-conditioned treehouse, houseboat on the lake, or the back porch and garage.
I’m still selling some of the best agates from my collection in the ½ bucket size, or approx. 2.5 gallons. This is enough agate to completely fill a USPS large sized priority box. It should weigh between 25 and 35 pounds, depending upon the sizes and shapes of the stones included.
These boxes of agate will contain all cutting and tumbling pieces, with the specimen pieces removed. You can specify tumbling or cutting and I’ll try to get you the right sizes for your projects. Quantities are limited, so order now. I’ll be leaving for California in mid-May, so if you haven’t ordered by then, you won’t get your rocks til Fall.
Walker Ranch $150 plus $25 shipping. May contain the following types of agate: red plume, black plume, flower garden, peanut, moss, fortification banded, tube, lace, and mixtures of those types. The agate occurs in many different bright colors, from red and yellow to purple and green. The Walker Ranch has been closed to hunting for many years now. I gather the material for each bucket and half-bucket when it’s ordered, so it may take a few days for me to fill your request. Eventually I’ll run out of the good stuff, and after that there will be no more available.
Singleton Ranch $150 plus $25 shipping. May contain the following types of agate: bouquet (plume agate in pastel colors), black plume, moss, water-level banded, fortification banded, brecciated opal (common, opaque opal in beiges, pinks and oranges, in a translucent background of black, blue, or white agate), and mixtures of those types. The agate occurs in many different pastel colors, from pink and yellow to white and green. The Singleton Ranch has been closed to hunting for many years now.
South Larremore Ranch $110 plus $25 shipping. May contain the following types of agate: plume in various colors, moss, peanut, tube, flower garden, fortification (some with bands so close together that they can exhibit an iris effect when sliced thin), and petrified wood. The agate occurs in many bright colors and some pastel colors as well. The South Larremore Ranch is currently open for guided rockhunts that I lead in the Fall and Spring.
East Needle Peak $110 plus $25 shipping. May contain the following types of agate: PomPom (a rare pseudomorph of agate after aragonite), moss, peanut, fortification, banded, tube, lace, and agatized petrified wood. The agate occurs in many colors, but much of it is red, orange, or yellow, occasionally with areas of green. East Needle Peak is currently open for guided rockhunts that I lead in the Fall and Spring.
Ritchie Ranch $60 plus $25 shipping. May contain the following types of agate: Moss, banded, fortification, tube, plume, translucent chalcedony, and a lovely unnamed type of agate that has irregular blobs of opaque agate in a translucent background. The agate grew in two different occurrences, each with its characteristic color sets: translucent chalcedony in blues, greys, and carnelian, and a more opaque, complexly patterned agate and jasper in bright red, orange, and yellow. The Ritchie Ranch is currently open for guided rockhunts that I lead in the Fall and Spring.
Labradorite from the Walker Ranch. This labradorite is not like the specimens you see where the background of blue and grey has a chatoyance or cat’s-eye effect. At its best, Walker Ranch labradorite is bright yellow and almost transparent. It’s great for faceting and makes cool specimens. I’m selling it in 100 gram parcels for $25.00. Not all of the pieces are the same size, however, and those who order earlier will get the parcels with the bigger pieces in them. Shipping is $10, which seems awfully expensive, but you can ship several parcels in one small flat-rate box.
I will still also have full buckets for sale, and a few additional categories of cutting agate and specimens. I will be keeping my website current as to what’s available. You can find that information at http://terismithrockhunts.com/rocks-for-sale/.
You can order from me via phone, email or text. I will take checks, PayPal and Zelle for distance payments, and cash also for purchases when you’re here in Alpine. Twice a year I drive from Texas to California and back, so if you’re near I-10 in West Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and parts of California, I can possibly deliver rocks to you if it works with your schedule.
October has brought some cooler weather to the Big Bend of
Texas, so it’s time to come out and join rockhunts to have fun and find some
beautiful agate, jasper, amethyst, quartz crystals, and other specimens.
I am leading rockhunting field trips on The Ritchie Ranch,
the South Larremore Ranch and East Needle Peak, and Aaron Thomas is leading
them on the 06 Ranch. There are enough different
locations for you to go for five days in a row and not be at any one place for
more than a day.
Below is the schedule of rockhunts, and some information
about costs and meeting locations. For
further information on the ranches I lead rockhunts on, and what you’ll need to
do to prepare, follow this link: http://terismithrockhunts.com/for-rockhunters/ To sign up for one of my rockhunts, send me
an email at agatehunter@sbcglobal.net. The only requirement for my hunts in addition
to the fees stated below is that you need to join the Rollin’. Rock Club. This club costs $10 per year for a single
membership ($16 dual membership), and provides insurance that protects the
landowner from any damage we may accidentally cause.
For information about Aaron’s
hunts, search for him on Facebook, or email or text him at aaronthomasrockhunts@gmail.com, or (432) 538-2399.
I also still
have lots of wonderful agate for sale.
I’ll give you more details on that in a separate email which should come
out in the next few days.
My apologies to everyone for not emailing you sooner concerning rockhunts this fall and winter. I’ve been working on several projects, which are, of course, proceeding more slowly than I had planned. For the last few months I’ve been waiting for an appointment that will finally happen at the end of this month. After that there will need to be more appointments, each with a number of variables which can go wrong, thus pushing back schedules even farther.
I was going to wait to send this email until I had something solid to tell you about my rockhunt schedule, and what I have is a lot of conjecture and an inability to plan a schedule for fall and winter.
So the only thing ‘solid’ in my schedule is that I won’t be leading rockhunts this fall, and probably not this winter, either. Unless things change materially, however, I will be leading rockhunts next March and April.
Aaron Thomas and Jean Larremore are leading hunts in the Big Bend region this Fall and winter. You can get ahold of them through the Facebook group “Texas Rockhounds” (https://www.facebook.com/groups/775245782823113). You can PM them on Facebook and get an answer fairly quickly. I recommend them highly. You’ll have a great time and find great rocks whenever you go with them.
I miss seeing y’all back there, and I hope to see a lot of you when I’m there in the Spring. As I’ve done in the past few years, I’ll be holding my hunts Thursdays, Fridays, and Mondays, which are usually the days when neither Aaron nor Jean has another hunt. That way you can have a longer set of hunts and not have to choose between two ranches on any given day.
I’ll still be leading hunts to the Ritchie Ranch, the South Larremore Ranch, and East Needle Peak.
I’ll also have buckets of agate for sale. I’ve got about 400 buckets left, so there ought to be something you’d like to have in that selection. Since I’m not in Texas, I don’t have access to the buckets right now to show you photos or sell you something. I can, however, update my online inventory, and I hope to do that in the next week or so.
Be safe, y’all and have a great holiday season! I’ll let you know pretty soon what my schedule for the spring will be (probably as soon as I know Aaron’s & Jean’s schedules for the spring).
Note: For details about attending one of these incredible hunts, see the note at the end of this post.
The hunt at the 06 was amazing. We drove north of Alpine on 118 for a ways, out onto the flat valley. We turned right into a dirt road, and drove east on dirt roads for about half an hour. We stopped at a huge valley with a pipe-and-wire corral in the middle of a lovely set of mountains. This was a new place Aaron and James had only hunted once before. The hills were similar in height to the bluffs at the Walker Ranch, and of course steeper in some places than others. There were outcroppings of basalt here and there.
There were 9 or so rockhunters on the trip (I believe 10 is the limit) and we were pointed to a hillside about half a mile long. We could fan out enough that we would have not been able to see each another. Aaron & James handed each of us a walkie-talkie to use, and since it’s deer season, we were loaned bright fluorescent vests to wear.
At the bottom of the hills, there was a field of rocks about grapefruit to football size. There were agate and quartz crystal pieces in those fields, partly buried in many cases. As you went up the hills, they got rockier, and in some places there was grass stubble between the rocks. Now and then you’d find a patch that had several good sized agates on the surface, and more partially buried. In between those patches were smaller sized agate and quartz crystal pieces and some small nodules that were interestingly colored and otherwise marked on the outside. There were lots of worked pieces and evidence of a native American campsite. We had been advised to go around the campsites when we found them, and although the one I saw was full of broken agate and jasper pieces, there was enough good stuff all over the hills to make it easy to bypass the camp sites.
Some of the agate and jasper there looked
like material from the Ritchie. The dominant agate was
yellow/gold/brown moss in a background of cream, white, or blue
chalcedony.
The moss patterns varied from filaments of gold in lacy patterns, to
larger patches and islands of moss, to patterns as dense as the flower
garden moss from the Walker Ranch. There was enough of it on the surface
of the part of that hillside where I was hunting to fill up the beds
of several pickups. And the gold moss was ubiquitous: you would go
into and out of areas with other types of agate, but you never got far
away from the moss agate.
Along
with the gold moss on that hillside there was red moss, black plume in
cream and blue backgrounds, occasional pieces of red and gold moss, and
some really neat stuff that they call “crayola”. It looks like the
opalized agate that we found on the Ritchie, with much smaller opalized
bits in a chalcedony background, often in a regular pattern. There were
small and big pieces of that, some partly buried and a lot on the
surface. Many had surface pits that were in a regular pattern, as if
there had been filaments of aragonite or another material in the cavity
as the agate formed. Some of the prettiest colors were lavender, maroon
and mauve. I didn’t seen any ‘rind’ on any of the pieces, so they
probably came from a large seam somewhere up the mountain.
We had 3 hours there and I probably picked up 100 lbs of what I thought
was good material. Aaron wandered around collecting full bags and
buckets, which he carried back down to the cars for us. Since I don’t
carry a rock hammer, he helped me get a couple of large pieces of the
‘crayola’ agate out of the ground, then carried them down for me. On
the way back down to the cars, I followed Aaron to another part of the
hill, which was covered with beautiful quartz crystal specimens. I
picked up some individual crystals that were at least 3” long, by far
the biggest I’ve found on any of the ranches. There were lovely crystal
on agate specimens sticking out of the ground everywhere! This was one
place where I didn’t mind picking up gold moss agate!
I didn’t get to see what everyone else found, so I have no idea what was
on the rest of the hill. We got back to the car a bit late, with Aaron
carrying all sorts of nice things for me. Everyone else on the trip
were people I had taken on fieldtrips, and everyone was excited by what
they had found. Some of them were making their second special trip to
Alpine from Houston, Schertz and San Antonio to hunt for one exciting
day.
Then we drove back the way we’d come for a
while, and took a different branch of one of the roads. In about 20
minutes we were at an area that was the other side of the mountain we
had hunted before. The valley we were in now was not very wide, and
there was supposed to be good agate basically everywhere.
There was a dry creek in the bottom of the valley, and since I was
looking for the ladies’ room, I wandered into the brush in the
creekbed. There were a lot of large pieces of blue chalcedony, some
quite vivid, with gold moss or plume in them. There were different
colors of blue and grey in fortification patterns or bands, and one had a
red coating inside, all over the botryoidal surface, but only on the
surface. I found several nice pieces of tube agate: one was blue with
blue quartz crystals on the outside of the tubes, another was blue with
black and grey fortification lines at the ends of tubes and then around
several tubes. That one had gold moss that looked like it was in the
middle of the tubes on one side that was broken obliquely to the
pattern. There were also several small pieces that were spectacular!
Although there was supposed to be agate up on both hillsides of the
little valley, I never got very far up the hills. I stayed in the creek
bed for a while, then ventured only a little ways up each hillside. On
one hillside I found several large nodules (the size of one of Johnny’s
croissant sandwiches) that were orange or yellow chalcedony throughout
and really big compared to the ones I found at the Ritchie and the
Walker. I also found some pieces off a large seam agate that had a
dense pattern that included red, blue, black grey and gold, and appears
to have some plume in it.
It was there that I came across the only annoyance of the day, in the
form of an individual bee that wanted me to turn around and leave. The
bee hovered around my face and hands for several minutes until I got the
hint. Since I’m really allergic to bee stings, I took his advice and
wandered away from there. Full grown human: 0, Bee: 1.
The other hillside had some blue botryoidal pieces with crystals, a
couple of nice red moss pieces, and my trip rock: a long, narrow nodule
of tube agate with the edges broken off in several places. The
chalcedony at the outer edge of the nodule was stained yellow and
orange., and only part of the nodule was filled in around the tubes. In
the lower part of the nodule, which was solid, there were filaments of
pink that went to maroon and gold. The other end of the nodule was
quartz crystal covered tubes.
We hunted there for another 3 hours, got back to the cars at 5 p.m., and
the rocks were weighed up. I had 153 lbs., which included a very large
piece of gold moss that was covered on one side with quartz crystals.
If it weren’t for the help of Aaron and James in carrying my rocks back
to the vehicle, I wouldn’t have gotten a third as much.
Today as I was washing the rocks and sorting them, I’ve found about 10
lbs. that, in retrospect, I should have left there. But first thing in
the morning you don’t know what you’ll find later, and when you’re
finding good stuff and having it carried back to the car for you, you
don’t take much time to high grade.
My total adventure cost $213: $60 entrance fee and $153 for rocks. Was
it worth it? Oh yes! It was exhilarating, hunting on ground that had
not been hunted much before. It will be years before that particular
hill runs out of large pieces, and there are hundreds and hundreds of
hills on that ranch. Aaron and James and the other guys that were there
to help dig and carry were helpful and nice. Aaron explained a bit of
the geology to us before we started in the morning, and told us where we
should find better material. I’ll admit I didn’t understand much of
the geological information he was telling us, but his advice on where to
find the good stuff was similar to what we had been practicing on the
Walker, Singleton and other ranches. And the good stuff was indeed
there. I’ve been on a lot of field trips (over 1000 when I quit
counting), and this is one I’ll remember for many years. I’m going back
again in 2 weeks.
Regards,
Teri
Note: The rockhunts on the 06 Ranch are being led by Aaron Thomas and
James Winn VI. They begin at the Tri-La-Bite food trucks in Alpine.
They currently happen only on Sundays, and are limited to 10 rockhounds
per hunt. As of publication time, all hunts scheduled through 1/31/21
are full, and a new schedule for the Spring will be published in
February. Once that schedule is published, I will try to schedule my
rockhunts to other ranches (if indeed I am leading any) around the 06
hunts so you can come out to the Big Bend and go on hunts ion 4
different ranches in 4 days. If you have any questions about the hunts,
you can reach Aaron Thomas at noraathomas@msn.com or
roadcutgeology@yahoo.com
It’s time
again to start considering what to give your favorite rockhounds for the
holidays. Obviously, the answer is not just ‘rocks’, or
even ‘great rocks’, but ‘large
quantities of great rocks’. To make your
rock shopping easier, I’ve gathered more Walker Ranch cutting agates, and
dropped the price on some other categories of rocks. And, if you order soon, I can pack them and ship them to you before
the holiday rush. Or, you can come out
for rockhunts and pick them up yourself.
Here’s what I’m featuring:
Walker Ranch
cutting agate, $250 per bucket.
Walker Ranch
and Big Bend Crystal and Botryoidal Specimens, $100 per bucket.
Ritchie
Ranch agate, $100 per bucket.
As you may recall,
I ran out of buckets of Walker Ranch cutting agate last spring. However, I’ve figured out a way to gather Walker
Ranch agate from a number of different types of buckets (Walker Ranch
specimens, Misc. Agate, Misc. Rocks, Cut Ends, agate sorted by color, agate nodules,
etc.) That idea is working well. I’ve gone through different buckets to find
the Walker Ranch agate, and I now have 2 buckets of Walker Ranch agate to
sell. I believe I’ll have perhaps 10 more by the
time I’m done. Although these buckets
are not ‘unsearched’, they are full of great stuff! I’m not holding out any cutting material that
I find in the other buckets or anything like that.
Because the
Walker Ranch specimen buckets have been raided for Walker Ranch cutting agate,
I can’t say they’re ‘unsearched’ anymore, so I’m selling the Walker Ranch ‘searched’ specimen buckets, and many other buckets of
crystal and botryoidal specimens, at $100 per bucket.
I’ve also
reduced the price on the Ritchie Ranch buckets to $100 each, through the end of
the year.
Shipping
cost is $50 per bucket. I take checks, PayPal,
and cash.
Regards,
Teri
P.S. I’ve had people ask me for details of the new
ranch Aaron Thomas is beginning to lead fieldtrips on. I really know nothing about it, except that
it’s just north and east of Alpine, and Aaron has shown me photos of wonderful
agates that came from there. If you would like further information, please
email Aaron at noraathomas@msn.com, or
roadcutgeology@yahoo.com.
There have been a couple of changes to the schedule for
rockhunts this winter and spring. First,
the Stieg Ranch will not be hosting rockhunts this spring, due to damage to the
roads that can’t be repaired quickly. So
the weekend hunts to the Stieg Ranch will be changed to the Woodward’s Needle Peak
site or the South Larremore Ranch.
Secondly, Aaron and his family have determined that he needs
to receive something for his time spent on the rockhunts so that he can keep
leading trips every weekend. We’ve decided to add a $15 charge for his services
as a guide added to each of his field trips, starting this Saturday, February
15th. That means that his
hunts to the Woodward’s Needle Peak and the South Larremore Ranch will cost $65
per person. That will enable him to keep the hunts small and
focus on sharing his knowledge of the geography and mineralogy with y’all so
you can find better rocks!
There are no changes to my fieldtrips for this spring. I look forward to seeing y’all out here on
Spring Break and throughout April!
Regards,
Teri & Aaron
P.S. I now have my
whole rock collection inventoried and available for purchase. Right now the listing is on my website, at http://terismithrockhunts.com/rocks-for-sale/. However, I intend to publish it as an email
in the next few days. It’s first come,
first served, so take a look and let me know what you want!
Aaron Thomas and I are happy to present the Big Bend
rockhunt schedule for Winter and Spring, 2020.
Aaron has added a new ranch:
The Stieg Ranch, near Balmorhea. The Stieg Ranch is an alluvial fan, which
is relatively flat terrain, with a creek bed running through it. Both the alluvial fan and the creek bed have
every type of agate that eroded out of the surrounding hills. You can find the Balmorhea Blue agate, banded
agate, jasper, petrified wood, chert and artifacts. The fee will be $50 per person, and that will
entitle you to a 5-gallon bucket full of collectible rocks.
Aaron will be leading field trips every weekend from January
4th through the end of April. I will be gone for January, February,
and the beginning of March, and will begin my weekday hunts on Monday, March
16. I’ll have hunts every weekday during
the two weeks that constitute spring break for most Texas schools, so there
will be hunts each day from Saturday, March 14 through Sunday, March 29. Then there will be rockhunts Thursdays
through Mondays for the next several weeks until Monday, April 27. This will give y’all the longest possible
time for rockhunting on your trip out to the Big Bend, and you can pick and
choose which days you’d like to hunt.
You can sign up for Aaron’s field trips the same way you sign up for
mine: send me an email with the days you
wish to attend, and make sure to include the phone number for a cell phone
you’ll have with you. Both Aaron and I
will be leading trips to the South Larremore Ranch. All of Aaron’s field trips will be limited
to 12 people, and there’s still no limit to the number than can attend my field
trips.
All field trips this year will begin at Tri-la-Bite, which
is at the corner of Holland Avenue and Garnett Street in Alpine. It’s on the left side of the street, across
from the Sonic Drive-In.
So here’s the schedule.
Be sure to look at the start time for your field trip because they vary
depending upon the ranch. I love y’all, but I’m tired of getting emails and
calls for questions that are answered in this email, and available on my
website.
