Post by Sabre52 on Jun 17, 2009 13:42:39 GMT -5
Howdy folks,
Don't remember if I ever told the story about how I discovered the Cosmos Jasper site and it's hotter than Hades outside right now so I figured I'd spin ya the yarn.
When we bought our Hornitos ranch, I had no idea there was poppy jasper in the area till I ran across a piece in a local rockshop. Shortly thereafter, while walking my pastures, I found quite a bit of Sierra Primrose Poppy jasper along the hill across the road from our house and figured I'd check out the surrounding areas for more. I should mention that I'm the nervous type and can't hold still for long so long walkabouts around the valley were a habit of mine. Anyway, I had noticed that a mile or so away from our ranch some neighbors had cut a new road that ran up and down hill perpendicular to the way the poppy deposits lay on our own ranch so I figured that road must cut the deposits somewhere along it's length.
For you newby rockhounds, no matter where you are, newly cut dirt roads are always a good place to check out local geology and are usually open to poking around a bit as long as no heavy equipment is working. So anyway, I headed out the front gate and walked down to the new road with my rockbag, pick and gemscoop in hand. Well, at this point it should be mentioned that the Gold Country foothills of California almost rival Texas for heat and by the time I got halfway up that steep road, I was sweating like a pig and breathing like a steam engine and had to stop for a rest. Well, low and behold, when I sat down I found a nice little broken nodule of Sierra Primrose right where I was sitting. Got to say this got me back to my feet and I headed up to the hills crest where I immediately noticed chips of nice brecciated jasper in the road. It was mainly this kind of stuff:
Well, this was solid and cuttable so I started looking along the road ditch and I started noticing that the roadgrader had shoved up a pile of weird rusty angular looking stuff along the fence. I at first kind of blew it off as I was searching for more of the breccia but one piece was showing a little red color so I gave it a chip and almost choked when I saw what was inside. Here's a pic of some of that original rough:
Here of course, paranoia set in. My god, all this great rock was just sitting there in the open waiting to be found by another hound, so I started packing my bag and pack and hiding piles of small hunks in the bushes. At this point I went home for the truck but of course had to lug the largest boulder (45pounds or so) all the way home and up the hill to the house so no one else could get it ( see, I said paranoid!). Halfway home I figured it would have been better to leave it for the truck *L*. later in the next few days I used a steel probe to probe the dirt piles and found some more specimens too. here's a big'un:
I couldn't wait to get this stuff home to the saw and when I sawed the big boulder the pattern really reminded me of the views from the Hubble telescope with all the star fields and nebulae etc so I named the material Cosmos Jasper. Here's a cut face of the a piece off the big boulder. It tends to break into angular blocks which are then pretty solid;
The really cool thing about this road was the entire length cut through jasper deposits. The veins ran from breccia to Cosmos to the Strawberry Jasper veins and several other variants too with the hilltop being strewn with Sierra Primrose nodules that had eroded from the matrix. The fields on both sides were strewn with jasper too and I eventually ( after a couple of bottles of hooch) obtained permission to hunt those too. One of the ranchers though, promised me I could enter later and then promptly mined out his stuff and sold it ( that's one of the risks of obtaining permission. You got to show the guy what you're after). Anyway, that's pretty much the tale. I had access for about five years and found some myrickite type jasper with cinnabar on the one hill too and bloodstone on the back side. Then it sold to a Pakistani doctor who promptly built a home right on top the main deposits and graveled the road so no more jasper is exposed after rains (sigh). Fun while it lasted anyway and believe me, there is no greater excitement than being the first person to stumble upon a nice gem deposit.......Mel
Don't remember if I ever told the story about how I discovered the Cosmos Jasper site and it's hotter than Hades outside right now so I figured I'd spin ya the yarn.
When we bought our Hornitos ranch, I had no idea there was poppy jasper in the area till I ran across a piece in a local rockshop. Shortly thereafter, while walking my pastures, I found quite a bit of Sierra Primrose Poppy jasper along the hill across the road from our house and figured I'd check out the surrounding areas for more. I should mention that I'm the nervous type and can't hold still for long so long walkabouts around the valley were a habit of mine. Anyway, I had noticed that a mile or so away from our ranch some neighbors had cut a new road that ran up and down hill perpendicular to the way the poppy deposits lay on our own ranch so I figured that road must cut the deposits somewhere along it's length.
For you newby rockhounds, no matter where you are, newly cut dirt roads are always a good place to check out local geology and are usually open to poking around a bit as long as no heavy equipment is working. So anyway, I headed out the front gate and walked down to the new road with my rockbag, pick and gemscoop in hand. Well, at this point it should be mentioned that the Gold Country foothills of California almost rival Texas for heat and by the time I got halfway up that steep road, I was sweating like a pig and breathing like a steam engine and had to stop for a rest. Well, low and behold, when I sat down I found a nice little broken nodule of Sierra Primrose right where I was sitting. Got to say this got me back to my feet and I headed up to the hills crest where I immediately noticed chips of nice brecciated jasper in the road. It was mainly this kind of stuff:
Well, this was solid and cuttable so I started looking along the road ditch and I started noticing that the roadgrader had shoved up a pile of weird rusty angular looking stuff along the fence. I at first kind of blew it off as I was searching for more of the breccia but one piece was showing a little red color so I gave it a chip and almost choked when I saw what was inside. Here's a pic of some of that original rough:
Here of course, paranoia set in. My god, all this great rock was just sitting there in the open waiting to be found by another hound, so I started packing my bag and pack and hiding piles of small hunks in the bushes. At this point I went home for the truck but of course had to lug the largest boulder (45pounds or so) all the way home and up the hill to the house so no one else could get it ( see, I said paranoid!). Halfway home I figured it would have been better to leave it for the truck *L*. later in the next few days I used a steel probe to probe the dirt piles and found some more specimens too. here's a big'un:
I couldn't wait to get this stuff home to the saw and when I sawed the big boulder the pattern really reminded me of the views from the Hubble telescope with all the star fields and nebulae etc so I named the material Cosmos Jasper. Here's a cut face of the a piece off the big boulder. It tends to break into angular blocks which are then pretty solid;
The really cool thing about this road was the entire length cut through jasper deposits. The veins ran from breccia to Cosmos to the Strawberry Jasper veins and several other variants too with the hilltop being strewn with Sierra Primrose nodules that had eroded from the matrix. The fields on both sides were strewn with jasper too and I eventually ( after a couple of bottles of hooch) obtained permission to hunt those too. One of the ranchers though, promised me I could enter later and then promptly mined out his stuff and sold it ( that's one of the risks of obtaining permission. You got to show the guy what you're after). Anyway, that's pretty much the tale. I had access for about five years and found some myrickite type jasper with cinnabar on the one hill too and bloodstone on the back side. Then it sold to a Pakistani doctor who promptly built a home right on top the main deposits and graveled the road so no more jasper is exposed after rains (sigh). Fun while it lasted anyway and believe me, there is no greater excitement than being the first person to stumble upon a nice gem deposit.......Mel