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 48th 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.
