Saturday the Owyhee Gem and Mineral Society was having a field trip to Coal Mine Basin. I was not sure what to think about this destination because I have been told that the site had been long been exhausted and the roads were so rough that even with a four wheel drive it was a challenge. I have found that reports like this can often be skewed by different points of view and sometimes completely bogus because the person doing the reporting doesn’t want others to collect material they might want. The club’s field trip leader had checked out the roads before hand and said that they were not bad at all.
Coal Mine Basin
After thinking it over I decided I did want to go on this trip. I called my friend Carl to see if he was going and made plans to meet up with him and go on the trip.
When I arrived at Carl’s house he gave me a couple of nice petrified limbs from Reynolds Creek that he domed and polished the ends. He told me that he wanted to make sure I got some good petrified wood because the trip could be disappointing. This was not a good sign.
The road into Coal Mine Basin was not a bad as I had been lead to believe. A high clearance vehicle can easily access the location without four wheel drive.
When we arrived I first hiked over a small hill in the opposite direction than the majority of people on the trip. Over the hill was a wash that I decided to explore. I found many pieces of agatized wood there. This material was not well defined branches or limbs but still looked good. Within about an hour I had a full five gallon bucket. After I got my bucket back to the truck I talked with others about their finds and everybody seemed to be finding a good amount of material all over the area. The next day I did cut a few slabs of this material and found that it was a solid material with a good pattern. I guess the exhausted story was not true either, unless you only wanted well defined pieces.
Instead of filling another bucket Carl I then decide to do some exploring on our own. The first area we stopped at looked very promising but did not have any petrified wood. The next stop had a huge amount of petrified wood but that wood was not lapidary quality. I did collect quite a bit of it because it still would look good in the garden. The best piece I found was a tree stump that would have been great in the garden but was too heavy, about 100 to 125 pounds, to get to the truck. If I had a pack frame and some rope I would have taken it.
Petrified Stump
We then checked out many other locations. Most of these locations had really nice tumbling sized pieces of petrified wood. I have already started a 3 pound barrel and have enough material to fill a few more barrels.
Opalized Wood for Tumbling
That day we covered a lot of territory from the entrance to Coal Mine Basin which is located literally at the Idaho-Oregon border to the south of Highway 95 to Succor Creek Reservoir. The roads are good enough that four-wheel-drive is not necessary and there is a good amount of material to still be collected. I am looking forward to going there again and would recommend it to other rock hounds.
