Among rockhounds, Graves Mountain in east Georgia’s Lincoln County is world-famous -- an international hot spot for collecting a variety of prized rocks and minerals.
The privately owned mountain -- a former mining site -- is open to the public for two weekends during the year. Last weekend was one of them.
Armed with chisels, rock hammers, picks and other geologist tools, scores of us rockhounds from as far away as British Columbia descended into a huge pit on the mountain in hopes of finding a rare, prized mineral or even a gem. As usual, I didn't find anything of great worth, but I did collect a bunch of beautiful rocks for the garden.
Rising gently about 500 feet from surrounding terrain, Graves Mountain has a complex, poorly understood geology. Its original rocks are thought to have been deposited around 300 million years ago during the Pennsylvanian period. Over time, tremendous heat, pressure and other geological forces transformed the material into the rocks and minerals found here today.
Commercial mining began here in 1963 for kyanite, a heat-resistant mineral used to make space shuttle tiles, spark plugs, porcelain and other products. Mining ceased in the 1990s.
Now, Graves Mountain is a rockhound’s Mecca because of the some 130 minerals found here. Many of them are highly esteemed among collectors -- barite, blue quartz and quartz crystals, fuchsite, kyanite, ilemite, iridescent hematite, lazulite, muscovite, pyrite, pyrophyllite and rutile.
The folks who come here to pound, scrape and dig for the minerals often swap stories about individuals who have made valuable finds over the years -- such as an Augusta woman who found a huge rutile crystal worth more than $5,000. Some specimens of lazulite -- a relatively rare, lustrous blue mineral -- also have fetched thousands of dollars.
Wielding a sledgehammer and a chisel to obtain some hematite, Ed Doyle, 89, of Wewahitchka, Fla., said he began collecting at Graves Mountain more than 30 years ago. “It’s an amazing place,” he said. “I always find something worthwhile. It’s a great place to bring kids, too; it could spark a career in geology.”
Graves Mountain’s caretaker, Clarence Norman Jr. of Lincolnton, opens the site to the public on a weekend in April and in October. Donations are requested. “But you can keep whatever you find,” he said.
For more information, go to www.gamineral.org/commercial-gravesmountain.htm.
In the sky
Though it peaked earlier this week, the Eta Aquarid meteor shower is visible this weekend. Look to the southeast from about midnight until dawn.
The moon will be first quarter on Tuesday, rising out of the east around lunchtime and setting in the west around midnight, said David Dundee, an astronomer with the Tellus Science Museum. Mercury, Venus, Mars and Jupiter are low in the east about an hour before sunrise. Venus and Jupiter will appear close together in Wednesday’s predawn sky. Saturn is high in the east at dark and visible all night.
