Florida has agate

[fossilbrain]

This doesn't include Mom's "white & fire" coral I'll get back to in days...
It's so funny when people say FL has no lap-worthy rocks.
I brought about 125 lbs. of black, glassy agate-containing rocks home from Honeymoon Island. My camera went dead before I could get the BIG boulder I could barely lift (I'm 220 lbs. & pretty strong). Much of it includes a little chert and much limestone... plus holes (uselessly tiny drusy unless you use a microscope, plus just pesky fossil holes) -- BUT one palm-sized piece is translucent, mossy, plumy. Worth the trip in and of itself. I'll dally no further and cab a bit to show (in the sanding stage tonight)... I can't believe it! The best piece was laying in the waves on the shoreline, where waves wash off the algae. I've slabbed that piece (on my mere WF) and it's great but does, indeed, constitute only about 1/200 of my haul.
Amazed,
Jeff
The best piece of rough yet (those things that look like charcoal holes on the right are not -- they're suspended in slick, clear):

Lots like this:

and this:

All but the boulder:

[LCARS]

Nice rock haul, that wood looks especially nice and solid.

See LadyB, there is still hope for you to find some truly worthy rocks in Florida yet.

[fossilbrain]

Heck yeah. If I shot off a 3-stage model rocket with a flare payload from my house right now she'd see it, she's so close to me
(but that would be technically illegal, heh).

[texaswoodie]

Nice haul! I just knew there had to be agate somewhere. I have Tampa Bay coral that is beautifully agatized, so there has to be other agates. Just a matter of finding them.

Curt

[Tonyterner]

Jeff you make me sick. LOL ;D Real nice haul. If I ever get down to visit my mother-in-law's snowbird home I will have to hook up with you for a little trip.

[Lady B]

I have been to Honeymoon Island and found a few Tampa Bay agates. I just would never attempt to slab, cab, or polish them because I think they are perfect just as I found them.

I also found these two specimen pieces that I treasure. The first is coralized Tampa Bay Agate. You can see the gorgeous little corals that had been growing on the surface before some destructive force tore this piece away from its moorings.

The second is a piece of fossiliferous limestone. I love shells as much as I love rocks so this is a keepsake piece for me.

What saddens me about the Florida agates is that they are becoming harder and harder to find. Tampa Bay agates were once abundant but it is now illegal to mine for them in their typical setting and only commercial developers have access to the deposits in the Bay by FLorida Legislative decree.

Millions of fossils--bone, plant, animal remains, shells, are no longer accessable to the common person. Litigation has closed thousands of acres of fossil rich soils and commercial development has paved over countless more.

I know of one man, living between my home and Fossilman's who has 7-10' mounds of Tampa Bay agates covering a good portion of his backyard. He has no idea what to do with all of it but won't share it either because he found it and it's his. Neat mentality, hmmm?

One of the greatest sources of Florida's fossil history--the Leisey Shell Pit--was discovered by an amateur, Frank Garcia. The Leisey Shell Pit is no more...you can buy an overpriced townhome where it used to be.

So yes, Curt, Florida does have agates. And up until very recently an ordinary rock hound could have found enough to last a lifetime (witness the man I mentioned above). Honeymoon Island is just a little spit of a barrier island--and a very young one at that--under the protection of the FLorida State Parks Sysytem. A 1/2 mile portion of the gulf-side beach is currently closed and off-limits while the conservationists try to salvage the shoreline. One good tropical storm could wipe it out.

I stand by my recurrent proclamation...Florida has no real rocks other than the occasional washed ashore agate, coquina rock (which is a conglomerate of shells and marine accretions), and the tons of rocks that are imported into the state to "beautify" it.

When the rest of the United States was undergoing tumultuous volcanic and earthquake-related upheavals, Florida was underwater. Where rocks were forming and reforming elsewhere, Florida was coming up for air and sinking again. Our "bedrock" is cavernous limestone...on any given day sinkholes can change the surface of the state very easily. Many people have been fooled into buying lakefront properties that are really only sinkholes filled with standing water--when droughts occur and there is no natural spring water source to feed those "lakes", people find themselves with hole-front properties and literally dry docks. ;D

If anyone would like to read more about Honeymoon Island, here's an interesting link:

funandsun.com/parks/HoneymoonIsland/honeymoonisland.html


Now...if anyone wants some of our abundate silicates, Fossilman and I as well as the other FLoridians on the Forum will be happy to ship you a box of genuine FLorida sand! ;D


Lady B

[Bikerrandy]

Great rocks!!
If you want to find some awesome fossils, go to the phosphate mines in Bartow. I used to go there when I was a kid. I had a box full of megalodon teeth, petrified bones, petified whale teeth and other sorts of related junk as well. We did have to obtain permits to go onto the property though. The crane shovel was big enough to park 6 cars under!

[ladyt]

The Phosphate mines in Bartow have been closed to the public. My hubby has done work there with the engineering firm in which he used to be employed with. He said there may be a few closed mines around the area that they may let you in, but not the big one. That second pic that LadyB showed, I have a bunch of that stuff. That's what I called Florida rock until Fossilbrain enlightened me to real rocks. LOL After the holidays and bussel are over, I'd like to go in search of myself. Where Fossilbrain went isn't that far from me, I'll just pack a lunch.

[Bikerrandy]

Too bad, we used to find some really cool stuff. Some of my shark teeth from there were 3 inches long. I don't think that it was open to the public back then, but my mom's ex husband was a P.I. so he was good at finding things out, like how to get to places with special permits. I remember that we all had to wear orange hard hats while we were there. I was young then, but it seemed like the stuff that we were finding was being dug out of a hole the size of a canyon!!

[fossilbrain]

Florida is definitely relatively scarce of "real rocks" for all of the reasons LadyB stated, and I certainly wish a lot of the sites were still in existence mentioned in "Gems and Minerals of America (A Guide to Rock Collecting)" by Jay Ellis Ransom (a 30 yr. old book of my mother's which encourages rockhounding in 22 Florida counties).
I'd have to say it goes beyond just the occasional piece washing up on shore here and there, though. The coral, limestone, and fossils in FL have eventually resulted in oodles of not just druzy, but solid agate boulders of blacks, whites, firey oranges, pinks, etc., which are found in excavations far from any body of water.
This was one of several found in Brooksville by my mom:

She can't remember the exact location, but said it was all over the place amongst limestone. Possessing only so many specimens of this type of material would interest a collector unless cut and polished, I'd think, though, bringing out its inner beauty and wondrous variety from region to region. I'm not speaking of the geodes found in isolated locations -- those have their own charm.

I just used to think, because Florida lacks so much of the rock-significant geologic history of other states that I was pretty much hosed on rockhounding, and just enjoyed fossils. Imagine my delight when, as a person whose favorite rock was quickly becoming agate for lapidary use, anyway, I discovered there's all kinds of places I can drive to on a tank of gas and get different color combinations of *exactly that* to tumble, slab, cab, or just admire as-is (in some cases).
As far as I know there are no restrictions on amateur collecting of agate from at least some agate-rich areas of the Withlacoochee and Suwannee rivers, where they're exposed naturally.
They can only physically keep me out of and/or pave over so much of this abused land. Plus, despite pretty agate underlying much of the state but normally being inaccessibly underground, hopefully it is statistically inevitable that there will always be areas, new or old, for me to collect in, due to excavations, sinkholes, erosion, water, hurricanes, etc.

BikerRandy & RebelRose -- yes, I aquired my vertebrate permit for the purpose of trying to talk myself into some places over in Bartow. I have family that live around Indian Lakes Estates and River Ranch who know folks that work in Bartow. We'll see

-Jeff

[LCARS]

You can find rocks anywhere on Earth...
....you just have to know what to look for.[/b]



;D

[free4rms]

The latest issue of Rock and Gem magazine has an article on collecting agates (fossil coral) at Honeymoon beach.