We have been wanting to go amethyst hunting for awhile now
and when our club decided to do a dig at Jackson Crossroads Amethyst (JXR) mine
we jumped at the chance. While the temperatures
were a bit less than desirable for January dig in Georgia we said what the,
loaded up the truck, hooked up the R-Pod and down the road for nine hours we
went.
JXR is located just
outside Tignall, GA about 6 miles. It is not hard to find, but then if you do
not know where you are going you will get lost out in the middle of nowhere. And
with little to no cell phone service you cannot call anyone for help or
directions. But with some friends we met
at Elijah Clark State Park the night before we had no problems getting to the
dig on time.
Are plan was to
arrive on time to find a good spot to park the truck. It was about 25 degrees outside with a slight
breeze and we thought we would be the only one at the mine or at the very least
one of the very few. Boy were we wrong. We had to squeeze the truck into a
tight parking spot and when we looked out over the mine site there must have been
about 30-40 other folks. But that was ok because the more the merrier.
Once at the mine
there are certain restrictions, the main
one being you cannot go beyond the roped off area. Which was ok with me because
it was cold and the mine pit was full of water, cold water I might add and I
did not want to get frost bite.
Not having been
to an amethyst dig before we did not know what to expect or do to find them. We
walked around a bit, then jumped right in and started digging into the tailings
piles. We did not have much luck the
first day. I found a huge rock that first day and I busted it open but could
not tell what was inside due to all the mug on it. So I packed all the pieces
up into the truck and figured I would look it over once we got home.
It was a long first
day at the mine, we were hungry and tired so we packed it up and headed on over
to our base camp at Elijah Clark, Sunday would be another day and maybe our
luck would be better. But not having the proper rock busting tools we would
have to confine our hunting to the surface or scraping away the top layer of
the tailings piles.
Sunday found us back
at the dig site for another fun filled day. The sun was out today, and we even
managed to removed our coats a few times and there was no wind. We spent all
day surface collecting and found a few nice but small pieces of amethyst. One
young man busted open a huge boulder and found a real beauty. At the end of the day, we met some new friends,
sold some of our agates and swapped rock stories. All in all we had a great
time and know we would go back again. Oh and those busted up pieces from the
boulder I put in the truck on Saturday? Well they cleaned up real nice and I
found some really nice small clusters of amethyst.
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