The Many Facets of Hunting for Garnets

While experienced hunters thoroughly enjoy a good day of garnet hunting, you don't have to be an experienced hunter to find these dazzling little gemstones. In fact, they are probably the best stone for the inexperienced rockhound to begin hunting for. These delightful gemstones are quite common can be found in many US states and countries around the world.. The rock which bears the garnet is very often peppered with the stones, too, so once you find a good garnet bearing area you will easily be able to take a very healthy cache home with you.

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Garnets come in many varieties and the type of rocks in your chosen area will determine the type of garnet you will be collecting. The most desirable crystals will be a deep wine red to purplish, pink, or brilliant green. Even smaller crystals are quite distinct in their natural form and you will be able to recognize them when you see them.

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Your first step in garnet hunting, as with all gemstones, is to check your maps and guides. When it comes to garnets, I never worry too much about a location being "picked over" as the stones are usually so plentiful in any garnet area. Next you will want to make sure that you pack all of the equipment you need to gather the stones.

You will want to take your rock pick and mallet and a small screwdriver (1/8th of an inch blade is good) or chisel for any stones you find in the matrix rocks. I use these a bit at garnet locations as every once in a while I will see a stone still embedded in the matrix rock that I just can't pass up. Many times the rock bearing the garnet is soft and the stones can be removed easily with a small flat screwdriver or knife blade. A mallet can be used to break the rocks apart to find the stones. This is actually the hard way to get the garnets, however, and I don't usually resort to bothering with the rock itself. The tools that I use most frequently hunting for this particular type of gemstone is a spaghetti colander, a screen, and an army issue fold up shovel.

Over time garnets erode from the matrix rock. By scooping the dirt in the area of the gem bearing rock and sifting it in the colander you can easily find handfuls of gems. I use a colander for hunting gem rock as the holes are about the right size to let the stones which are smaller than I am interested in keeping fall through. If you want to spend money at a hardware store for special screens, they do have different sized meshes that will allow you to choose how large the gems must be for them to be trapped by the screen. If an area seems to have been picked over, by digging down deeper you can usually find the stones that fell and were covered before the area became popular to hunters.

After "panning" the rock area, I like to also pan the nearby streams for the gems. Garnets will wash
downstream from their source over time and are not as heavy as some other minerals so you don't need to dig too deep to find good quality stones. Water currents can erode the natural facets of the stone however, so you may find many of the crystals in water are much smoother than those from the actual rock area, depending on how long they have been there. When I choose a spot in a stream I will use the colander again to check for gem quality and sized stones.

The normal sized screen I use for concentrated gem areas in streams where the stream bed is literally pink with small garnets. You will see this in many garnet areas. Most of these little garnets are not of gem size or quality, but they make great craft supplies. These I scoop up in the screen and just put in a bucket. Later at home I separate the small stones from the rest of the sand while watching television or talking on the phone.

Once you have found a few nice gemstones to use in jewelry, you will want to read up on panning for gold so you can find a nugget that one of your new gemstones will look nice with in a ring or pendant.

The Many Facets of Hunting for Garnets

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Treasure Hunting For Star Garnets

India and Idaho are the only two places in the world that star garnets are found. They range in size from a grain of sand to golf ball in size. Star Garnets display a reflection of the light with a four or six ray star, which is caused by an inclusion of rutile in the gemstone. Idaho is the only known place where six ray star garnets are found.

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The U.S. Forest Service operates a star garnet gemstone collection area at Emerald Creek Idaho. For a fee of per day the treasure hunter can search for garnets and remove a maximum of five pounds of gemstones. Screen boxes, buckets and shovels are provided by the Forest Service; however you should bring drinking water, snacks, sunscreen, hat, gloves and a container for your treasures. The treasure hunting season starts at the end of May and lasts until after Labor Day. No pets allowed.

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How Is It Done

Use the shovel and fill your five gallon plastic bucket with dirt and rocks at the mining area. Next take your bucket to the screening area and sift all of the dirt and sand leaving only the rocks. Next take your collection of rocks to one of the two sluice boxes to wash the material and look for garnets. Any rock that appears to have a shiny plastic like shine could be a garnet.

The garnets found at emerald creek are nearly opaque and will be a dark reddish or purple in color. Good quality large gemstones are rare and about one half of the gemstones you discover will not be of a quality suitable for cutting or polishing. Many of the stones will show a four ray star but the six ray star is quite rare. A good quality star garnet may fetch up to 0 per carat.

The garnet name is believed to have come from the pomegranate. Many of the ancient pieces of jewelry have clusters of red stones that do look a lot like a cluster of pomegranate seeds. Travelers often carried garnets to protect them from accidents. Legends suggest that garnets will glow at night and will protect the owner from nightmares. Noah has also been rumored to have used a garnet lantern to navigate the Ark at night.

Happy Treasure Hunting.

Treasure Hunting For Star Garnets

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Dig Your Own Garnets at The Garnet Hill Recreation Area

Near Ely, Nevada is a special area the Government has set aside for rock hounds to hunt garnets. There is no charge and the area is open to the public. The Garnet Hill rock hound recreation area in White Pine County is located about 4 miles Northwest of Central Ely in the Eagan mountain range. The major access road to this area joins US Highway 50 about 6.4 miles West of the traffic signal at US 395 and US 50 junction in Ely. The area is locally referred to as Garnet Hill and this nationally known rock hounding area is famous for its very dark colored garnets found in a flow banded rhyolitic volcanic rock. Two square miles of public land was designated as a public recreation area in 1970 to ensure continued public access to the site because of its recreational and scientific study values. There is some limited camping space for tents and small RVs at the site - three tables are located around the road loop near the top of Garnet Hill. Other camping opportunities are located in and around Ely. The Garnet Hill road loop is about 3.1 miles East of US 50 and access is provided on a winding and somewhat steep but graded road. The Garnet Hill road is a maintained dirt road, and is suitable for use by sedans and other standard passenger vehicles. From Garnet Hill one also has a fine view of the open pit copper mine in the multicolored waste rock dumps at the nearby Robinson copper mining district.

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The Garnet usually occurs as single crystals attached within small cavities known as vugs. The Garnet bearing vugs seem to occur in specific mineralized zones and areas, and these are confined to certain areas and not randomly dispersed and even manner through the rhyolitic rock. When searching for a zones which will contain the Garnet crystals, perhaps the best clue is the presence of veins are cavities which are lined with sugary, sparkling light gray tridymite, a high temperature version of Quartz. Collectors have worked at this spot for many decades, and broken waste material and rubble completely covers the ground in some areas, burying any potential Garnet bearing host rocks. Often, unless one works within the established pits, a considerable amount of work to move this rock rubble will be required.

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Most rock hounds conduct their search for garnets at this location in one of two different ways. The first method involves visually searching the surface and nearby drainages for the dark colored stones that have weathered from the pink to gray colored rhyolitic rock. Small garnets which have come loose from the host rock are spread here and there around parts of the area and their very dark color contrasts strongly with the local rock and soil. Using this visual hunting method usually does find some stones, and the finds come with the least amount of work involved. The garnets collect in small gullies and drainage areas because they are heavier than the surrounding rock in a manner much like a placer gold deposit. The second method is used by other, more energetic rock hounds, who will work to break open the Garnet bearing rock with hammers and chisels. These tough workers seek to break open the hard rock and reveal any gems hidden within. This is a popular method and is actually the best one for locating the finest specimens of Garnet, where the stones are still attached to the mother rock. If one seeks to use this method, it is necessary to bring sharp chisels and heavy crack hammers to break open the hard unweathered rhyolite stone. It is also very hard work. When I dug here, I felt the distinct flavor of what it must have been like to break rock in the old time prisons.

The historic old copper mining community of Ely is located a few miles south east of Garnet Hill and for those visiting the area, Ely is the chief source of supplies and goods. Ely is the county seat for White Pine County, and most normal shopping and other supplies can be found there. The Ely area offers a number of attractions, including an interesting train ride from town down to the local copper mining area at Ruth. Great Basin National Park, which includes the fascinating Lehman caves, is only a short drive away.

Dig Your Own Garnets at The Garnet Hill Recreation Area

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Garnet Minerals - The Many Colors of Garnets

Spessartine is an uncommon garnet. Spessartite or spessartine is manganese aluminum garnet, Mn3Al2(SiO4)3. Madagascar's spessartine garnet is a recently discovered variety with a beautiful raspberry body color, and spectacular salmon-pink fire. Spessartine is an orange-red or plain orange stone, also called "Mandarin garnet. Mandarin Garnets were recently discovered in East Africa and are a variety of Spessartine Garnets. They were found in the German Spessart Mountains, hence their name Spessartine.

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Rhodolite garnet is a combination of almandine and pyrope, and is sometimes referred to as pyrope-almandine garnet. Rhodolite is a purplish red variety of garnets that has been used since ancient times. Rhodolite garnet, like all garnet is a fairly hardy gem. Rhodolite Garnet boasts a vibrant cranberry color, and its name is derived from the rhododendron flower that shares a similar hue. The color ranges from pink to purplish red in color and is mined in Africa, India, and Sri Lanka. Rhodolite Garnet is used as affordable substitutes for the Ruby. Pyrope garnet is also called anthill garnet in Arizona because ants bring the gem to the surface while building their homes. The term "American ruby" is actually a pyrope garnet (and not a ruby at all).

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Hessonite (also called "cinnamon stone") is a cinnamon-brown to orange gemstone variety of grossular garnet. Hessonite Garnet is a special Garnet used in Vedic gemology to increase creativity and imagination. The oranges and browns of Hessonite hail from Namibia and Sri Lanka.

Commonly called Tsavorite Garnet, this green grossular are very rare. Tsavorite is among the most coveted members of the garnet family. We adore Tsavorite Garnet because it offers the color and hue of an emerald and yet, it's more rare, and much more vibrant. The name for Tsavorite Garnet comes from the Tsavo National Park in Kenya, which is the only region where Tsavorite Garnet is mined. Tsavorite can be considered a "new" gemstone since it was unknown before its discovery in Kenya in the 1960s. Tsavorite has a beautiful vivid green color, is bright and lively with a high refractive index, and has a garnet's durability and high clarity. Even though Tsavorite Garnet is rare, the lack of demand keeps the prices well below that of the more plentiful Emerald.

Grossular is a pale green, pink, brown, or black garnet, Ca3Al2(SiO4)3, occurring alone or as a constituent of the common garnet. Tsavorite is a variety of green grossular garnets discovered in 1967. The name Grossular comes from the Latin Grossulara (the name of gooseberry fruit) which is the same color as the greenish variety of garnet. Some grossular garnets can have round and elliptical inclusions. Massive white grossular has been found with jade in Myanmar and has been carved by the Chinese. A variety of Grossular Garnets, Hessonite comes in two colors, golden and cinnamon (this variety is commonly known as the Cinnamon Stone.

The demantoid belongs to the large gemstone family of the garnets, and is actually a variety of the garnet mineral andradite. One of the rarest and most sought after colored gemstones have always been demantoid garnet. The name Demantoid means diamond-like, because it has a very high adamantine luster, and color dispersion higher than diamond. As seen with the demantoid garnet, inclusions can sometimes be a benefit to garnets rather than a liability. Demantoid garnet was used lavishly by the Tsars of Russia. Originally discovered in Russia, the Demantoid garnet was favored by Russia's leading court jeweler, Carl Faberge'. Demantoid garnets are softer than other garnets and should be protected. Demantoid has been called the "emerald of the Urals" from its occurrence there, and is one of the most prized of garnet varieties. "Horse-tail" inclusions in demantoid garnet make it more valuable because they prove it came from Russia. It can be more expensive than ruby and sapphire.

Andradite garnet can be yellow-green, green, greenish brown, orange yellow, brown, grayish black or black. Andradite is a calcium-iron garnet, Ca3Fe2(SiO4)3, is of variable composition, and may be red, yellow, brown, green, or black. Andradite garnet is usually black and of no interest to the gem trade, but one variety called "Demantoid" is a lively green. A new green Andradite Garnet has been coming out of Namibia, but some experts say they lack much of Demantoid's character and luster. Andradite can be found in calcareous metamorphic rocks, especially marbles and skarns.

Uvarovite, an emerald-green variety from Russia and Finland, is rarely suitable for gem use. Uvarovite garnet is found only in tiny sizes. Uvarovite is a calcium chromium garnet with the formula Ca3Cr2(SiO4)3. The uvarovite garnet has been synthesized (mineralized with borax to facilitate diffusion of precursors) by several sols-"gel methods. Uvarovite is quite brittle; this makes it difficult to cut for jewelry. Uvarovite, like other garnets, forms rounded crystals with 12 rhombic or 24 trapezoidal faces or combinations of these and some other forms. The Uvarovite Garnet is found In Russia and is a bright green cluster of crystals sometimes also called drusy. Uvarovite develops in a metamorphic environment in serpentines with chromite and in metamorphosed limestone.

Mandarin Garnet is a bright orange garnet. Mandarin Garnet is a trade name for bright orange spessartine from Namibia. Recently, there was a new discovery of Mandarin Garnet in Nigeria with an unbelievable neon orange color. Mandarin Garnets are the intensely bright orange red varieties of the rare orange Spessartite Garnet, also known as Spessartine.

The Merelani Mint is a green grossular garnet. Merelani Mint Garnet is rapidly emerging as a collector's stone and it is becoming quite prominent due to its beauty and rarity. Merelani Mint is the name given to a bright mint green variety of grossular garnet that has been recently discovered in the Merelani Hills of Tanzania.

Garnet Minerals - The Many Colors of Garnets

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