American Geode

March 9, 2025March 9, 2025

Gem and Mineral Wonders of the Midwest

American Geode was honored to be the monthly speaker in March 2025 at the Northeast Georgia Mineral Society, negms.org. We are members of the Northeast Georgia Mineral Society, in addition to other clubs and societies, so this was a friendly and warm crowd of rockhounds and geology enthusiasts. The society was nice enough to record the talk and lecture, and here is their record of our fascinating lecture about the gem and mineral wonders of the Midwest.

Charles grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana, but lived in New York City for many years. His love for Indiana geodes started with a trip to rural southern Indiana (the Bedford / Bloomington area), as an adult, to visit with friends. He went for a walk one morning in a wooded area along a creek and saw geode after geode embedded in the creek banks and the dry creek bed. Many of them were basketball sized or larger. The area had experienced drought that year, so the geodes were more exposed, than usual. Charles managed to lug some geodes out of the creek bed to take back to New York in his luggage…airport TSA was full of questions, which led to a 15-minute geological lecture. Later, he returned to the area to get more geodes but drove his car so he could take back more and avoid TSA altogether.

Indiana used to be covered by shallow seas filled with crinoids, sea lilies, and sea urchins (during the Mississippian time frame). In addition, glaciers once covered Indiana and created the flat terrain, provided the rich soils, and exposed the limestone outcrops and geodes. Most of the geodes Charles brought back are fossilized crinoids heads / crowns that were buried under sediments, swelled with gases during decomposition, and finally were replaced with calcite and silica. The fossilized crinoid heads are called “popcorn” by locals. They use them for landscaping and building decorative mailboxes. Since the Midwest geodes are sedimentary and not volcanic, they do not contain bright colors like the western US and Mexico geodes and are not gem grade. However, some of them do contain blue chalcedony and large calcite crystals. Most Indiana geodes are located on federal, state, and private forest and farmlands, which remain unstudied.

Charles visited the Indiana State Museum, http://www.americangeode.com/blog/gem-and-mineral/ which has a geology room. He spoke to the museum curator to learn more about them and donated a couple for their display. When he returned to New York, he took the geodes to a car wash to get them cleaned up, which was very smart. He sold some of them to interior designers and at flea markets, in New York City. At 6AM he’d pull his wagon to the flea market site at 48^th street and set up a table. Most people who stopped by had no idea what they were, and he gave them mini-geology lectures and he managed to sell some. If he was there early enough, he even caught people leaving the nightclubs and managed to sell a few to them as well. He jokingly said that the people leaving the nightclubs had probably over-indulged in alcohol or stronger things and found that once they sobered-up, they were confused as to why they now possessed a rock, and their wallet was $30 lighter. Ha-Ha. Charles also sold them at rock and gem shows. If you wish to see videos of his geode rockhounding adventures, they can be found at americangeode.com.

September 28, 2021September 28, 2021

Knoxville Gem & Mineral Society 2021 Show!

Knoxville Gem & Mineral Society 2021 Annual Gem Show

Rothchild Conference Center 8807 Kingston Pike, Knoxville, TN 37923

Friday, October 15, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm Saturday, October 16, 10:00 am – 6:00 pm Sunday, October 17, 11:00 am – 5:00 pm

As a precaution for Covid masks will be required for admittance.

The show will feature 23 vendors with a wide variety of jewelry, fossil and mineral specimens, meteorites, gemstones, and decorative objects. There will also be educational activities and gem and mineral ID tables. Admission Adults: $6.00 Run of Show Pass: $10.00 Children Under 12: Free

June 12, 2021June 12, 2021

Summerville, Georgia Agate Rockhounding Trip 2021

Through one of the gem and mineral clubs to which we belong, we were invited to rockhound for lace agate, banded agate, moss agate, and druzy quartz from a private mining site near Summerville, Georgia.

I arrived and was lucky to have the entire mining area to myself except, over the course of the morning and afternoon, 2 different couples stopped by to collect agate, and a family was out on a rockhounding trip.

American Geode takes that attitude that if you can, take a lifetime supply. We filled up every bucket and bin we brought, and also picked up many large and heavy agates. The stone was plentiful. The only time we used our tools was to break apart a behemoth stone into more manageable sections. We found moss agate, lace agate, banded agate, and our favorites had druzy quartz pockets.

The beauty of these stones were not easy to see without being splashed with a little water, but we ran out of water, so started collecting more than enough to overcompensate as we expected to have some stones better suited for the garden. On a recent gem and mineral meeting over Zoom, when I was showing off these fine agate specimens, I learned that the agate, and the stone formation containing covers a lot of Northwest Georgia, even into Tennessee, but it is on private land, or federal park land, so not available or accessible to the general public.

This agate tumbles well, but it loses a lot of surface area during the tumbling. It is beautiful however, and we are sure that a cabochon or lapidary person would have even more fun with this agate.

We are selling this agate here: https://www.ebay.com/usr/americangeode

Summerville Georgia lace agate
Summerville Georgia lace agate
Summerville Georgia lace agate
Summerville Georgia lace agate
Summerville Georgia lace agate
Summerville Georgia lace agate
Summerville Georgia lace agate
Summerville Georgia lace agate
Summerville Georgia lace agate

June 12, 2021June 12, 2021

Gardening Benefit for Cabochon and Rock Tumbling Rockhounds

We have been tumbling North Georgia river stones, and most recently the Summerville Agate, in a 20lb barrel from MJR Tumblers. Each stage of tumbling takes about a week, and at the conclusion of each tumbling stage, I have been dumping the grit and the agate and river stone grit into the flower garden. The flowers LOVE IT! The rose bushes are more plentiful than ever before, and deeper colors than they were last year. One small rose bush that was red last year, was almost tie-dyed looking with streaks of white. The red impatiens are now a shade of orange. The mint and parsley plants are overgrowing! While this is not fertilizer, I can only guess the plants appreciate this concentrated mineral content in the otherwise mostly red clay soil. After I do dump the tumbling grit sludge into the garden I dilute it, and that happens naturally because I need to clean the tumbling barrel before the next stage, and also need to rinse thoroughly the stones before starting the next tumbling phase, or polishing phase, so I am hosing down the barrel and stones over the garden too, and that helps dilute the sludge and make it run over more of the garden to be soaked up.
I am sure that the sludge mix from a cabochon workstation would have the similar effect on your outdoors flowering plants. Never dispense of tumbling or cabochon grit down a drain, and no never, dispense of that valuable mineral sludge, but add it to your garden. For any questions about gardening, or rock tumbling, feel free to contact Charles at charles@americangeode.com.

Hope this is helpful!

May 17, 2021May 17, 2021

Field Trip to Union Chapel Mine/Steven C. Minkin Paleozoic Footprint Site Fossil Location

May 8 2021 Field Trip to Union Chapel Mine/Steven C. Minkin Paleozoic Footprint Site Fossil Location

By Charles Snider

I had been looking forward to this fossil trip sponsored by the Georgia Mineral Society for the chance to find tetrapod tracks. I was familiar with ferns, branches, and other vegetation because I had gone to Carbondale and Centralia, Pennsylvania sites of old strip mines, and collecting through the shale and slate, had found many fine ferns and fronds. This was the first chance to find real critters! Of course, I knew that if I made a breakthrough discovery that it would need to be shared with the Alabama club, and respective university and state agencies, but I would be happy with that for a breakthrough discovery.

I arrived the night before and stayed in Birmingham. All I needed was a place to sleep and shower, so I found a cheap hotel near downtown. How cheap was it? Let me put it this way, the night attendant was behind bullet-proof glass. I made it in great time however, somehow avoided the regular and horrific traffic around Atlanta, so I had time to step out in Birmingham that evening. I had my first post-covid margarita at a fine place that followed COVID protocol and then a night-cap at an establishment called Collins Bar. I recommend Collins Bar because their main decora is a huge mural of the entire wall behind the bar of the Periodic Table of Elements. So, while you are sipping a drink, you are quizzing yourself, or others on the Periodic Table!

The next morning, I met the field trip leaders at the nearby Walmart for sign-in. I have said this before, I wonder if Walmart appreciates that they are the universal meeting site of most gem, mineral, and fossil society field trips? If they did, they should offer early Saturday morning sales on gloves, chisels, hammers, and prybars.

We carpooled to the fossil site, formerly known as the Union Chapel Mine, and now also called the Steven C. Minkin Paleozoic Footprint Site. The area is large and full of slate and shale, to turn over, crack, split in half, and examine closely. The site sat on an ancient marsh, so is full of Pennsylvanian Age plant fossils, ferns, fauna, and tetrapod tracks and other vertebrates. The abundance of fossils, and the abundance of variety make this former coal mining site one of the most significant fossil sites in the world. In the 1990s, the grandson of the owners of the coal mine brought some examples from the mine to their high school science teacher, who recognized that these were something special. The teacher was able to visit the student’s family’s mine, and recognized the significance of the tetrapod tracks, and abundance of flora, fauna, invertebrate, and other fossils, and shared the information with the local paleontology club, word spread to professional paleontologists, the university, and the state. Now through a collective partnership of private and public, state and academic, the site is preserved and protected for fossil digs by academics, researchers, and fossil clubs.

The labor is not intensive unless you want to crack and pry apart larger shale and slate pieces. There is a lot of material on the surface for collecting and examining. There are cliff walls to one side, but that area is off limits. Past visits had yielded tracks, and we were told of someone’s discovery of the tracks of a giant scorpion. During the dig, I had the good fortune of seeing others’ finds that included burrows of insects, many broken branches, twigs, and other tree parts, and potential tracks. My personal finds included an almost 12 inch branch in a large plate, some plates with broken bark, twigs, and branches, and some interesting plates that had gas bubbles that I learned later were marsh bubbles – not the most exciting find, but fascinating to think that marsh bubbles were preserved in situ like that. At the follow-up Zoom show-and-tell, some fellow members had found tracks, where you could see the claws, and the back and forth motion of the crawling creature.

For future visits, be sure to take plenty of snacks and water. While the area is adjacent to where you park, the nearby gas station, or Walmart are far enough from the remote location that your limited time and access to this special place would be compromised if you were leaving for snacks or drinks. There is no shade, so be prepared with sunscreen.

I did engage in a conversation with members who noted that if some of the surface stone were moved with a bulldozer, and just 5 feet lower were exposed, that there would likely be new, and potentially breakthrough discoveries to be made. This was an excellent trip however, well organized and coordinated, and I am hopeful to return. For other fossil stories, and especially geode hunting and geode cracking articles, please find other articles at http://www.americangeode.com .