Patagonia-Gringo Gulch Area Quartz

The town of Patagonia is relatively close to my Vail, AZ home and, so, it is an area that I often visit or pass through. There is one area, just NW of Patagonia that has interesting quartz crystals. It is easily accessible and being on State land, collecting is allowed! In addition, the scenery is amazing there and on the drive there.

The entire area seems to be underlain by basaltic volcanics with very thin ground cover. Much of the basalt is amygdaloidal and it is relatively easy to hike around and pick up loose geodes or hack them out of the basalt. The trick is to find larger geodes. As well, there are veins or, possibly, breccias that have milky quartz, amethystine quartz and baryte crystals in them. ALL of the geodes and veins seem to be filled with calcite, after the quartz formed, so acid etching is required to expose the crystals.

Anyway, collecting involved hiking around the basalt-rock areas looking for geodes or places to dig! Simple as that. It is a large area!

There is another area very near to the J.C. Holmes Claim, that has produced very nice quartz epimorphs after, I think, fluorite. Here are some examples of that type of mineralization. The epimorphs range from extremely sharp, thin walled quartz shells to very rounded, thick epimorphs.

I still have to find some sceptered amethystine quartz crystals from this area. I've seen good ones in a couple of collections! I'm glad this area is close, so I can easily keep going back to, eventually, find some of those scepters!

Thanks for checking this, not so recent, Recent Activity out!!