Crooks Gap
Jeffry City

Uranium country.

Back Then

As a child, I spent a fair amount of time with my father, in the Crooks Gap, Jeffry City area. The cold war was hot. This country needed uranium. And it could be found there. Just about everyone, in Riverton, my home town, bought a gieger counter and went prospecting. Fortunes were made. No one wanted left out.

Uranium prospecting became a weekend occupation for my dad too. And it was a family outing for the rest of us. For a child, uranium prospecting is a boring business, in a unattractive land. But splashing in the Sweetwater River or hunting Sweetwater agates and jade was much more rewarding. So, while my dad inspected outcrops for different kinds of uranium grunge, the rest of us went looking for real treasures.

Sweetwater Country

Our activities were typical for most families at that time. Almost everyone had a bucket of Sweetwater agates, the odd piece of jade and other mineral treasures stored in their garage or on their patios. Among those treasures was a common chalcedony called angel agate. They were just a translucent greenish-gray chalcedony with a white rind. They were much more common than the Sweetwater agates. And I though they were rather plain at the time. My friends had plenty. So, my angel agate specimens came from them, as they were found farther east than my father prospected.

After fledging, I took up wrangling light aircraft. When heading to and fro, flying often carried me out over that desolate prospecting country. I'd look down and see a dozen or more vehicles encamped around a shallow bluff. People were digging holes, looking for those once abundant angel agates. From the air, the scene resembled an ant hill.

I wondered why anyone would spend much time digging for such a plain agate. That is, until I saw them under an ultraviolet lamp. They were brilliantly green with a dull red coating. I thought about going out there and digging a few of my own, but I had those from my youth. And, as the deposit was about 100 miles away, I somehow never got down there.

Angel Agates Now

Now, here it is, thirty-five years later. With a map, shovel, and rock hammer, I'm headed for that angel agate deposit.

This is a tough country. It's high, hot in the summer, cold in the winter and high winds blast this very dry area most of the time. Global warming hasn't been kind to this area either. The temperatures are even more extreme. And with a decade long, extreme drought, what little vegetation remains, is browsed, blasted and cow burnt almost to extinction.

Cattle grazing was the primary use of this land in my youth. Hundreds of cattle resided in the area. It was often exciting to startle them, in the willows, while splashing in the Sweetwater River. It was fun to pretend they were bears which were infrequently found there. Today, the Sweetwater river is just a trickle. There are few willows and not enough of them to hide anything but a bird. I only saw one cow and it looked lost. This area is just a shadow of what it was in my youth. It's depressing from that aspect.

Angel Agates

Access, off the highways, is much tougher than it used to be. There were no fences, when I was a child. Access was anywhere you wanted it. And historical cattle trails and seismic roads provided unrestricted access. Today, the highways are bounded by gated fences. The gates are seldom anywhere near most of those old, historical roads. It's actually hard to get off the highway and into the dirt where you want to! The gate wire I need to open is banjo tight and rusted. No one has been in there in a long time.

After a half hour drive down one path, I recognize the hill. It's just as non-descript on the ground, as it was from the air. But I remember the area. And there's not another vehicle in sight. It's an ominous sign? I wonder if all the agates have headed east in the car trunks of hundreds of collectors over the years.

A quick inspection shows a thin seam of angel agate outcropping near the top of the hill. Most of the early collecting occurred in the eroded material, on the dip slope, below the agate seam. Once this material was gone, the agate seam, located a couple of feet below the surface was harvested up its dip slope. Then, as a final act, the seam was followed into the hill. Eventually, the brow of the hill collapsed from all that digging. And it covered the seam with debris. A few attempts were made to dig a slot through the debris and reach the center of the deposit. But apparently most rock hounds didn't think it worth that much effort or risk.

After a little walking, I find a small, thin, extension of the original seam. Decades ago, someone found it before me. After a little digging, they had abandoned it for better diggings to the west. That's about all that's left of this deposit.

So, out comes the pick and shovel. After an hour digging, I've got a hand full of small, lower quality, angel agates. Man it's hot, in the upper 90's. The humidity is around 10%. It's dry. And it's dusty. The dust, formed from some evaporites in the unconsolidated sandstone, has an acrid nature. Cool water and the shade of my truck are worth more than a few more pathetic angel agates. I fill my diggings back up and head for the truck.

On the way back, crossing a camping area used by those rock hounds, I find some culled and cobbed material. It's not large, but it's better than the stuff I've dug out of the hill. It goes in my collecting bag.

It didn't take long to look over the angel agate deposit. But while I'm in the area, I think I'll head farther west to visit my old stomping grounds.

Sweetwater Agates Then

Toward Agate Flats

About forty miles to the west of the Angel agate deposit, is a 100 square mile area called Agate Flats. Both the Oregon and Mormon trails crossed this area and many pioneers noted the abundance of agates there. Some pioneers even had enough energy to carry a few agates with them to the west coast, where they reside as mementos for their descendants. And people have picking them up ever since.

During my high school days, a few small fortunes were made from the jade deposits in this area. And rubies, petrified wood and other kinds of agates abounded. But uranium and oil were king.

Jeffry City was the center of much of this activity. It sprang up overnight when uranium was discovered there. Thousands of people lived there. But when uranium demand and prices collapsed at the end of the cold war, Jeffry City disappeared as fast as it appeared, just like many of the ghost towns from historical mining and railroad activities of the past.

It's essentially a ghost town now. All that's left is a church, a few houses and a large, new and expensive, but empty school. I think the few remaining residents drive 50 miles to buy anything including gasoline. :>) The people who lived there were mostly westerners who came to make a fast buck. They were outdoor and resource oriented. The resources of that parched, but delicate land, took a hit from the impact all those people made. I was one for awhile. I'm sure most people had their own bucket of sweetwater agates, too.

Another big impact in this area, came from the caravans of rock hounds. Many were retired folks from back east. They had come west in their newer versions of the covered wagon. But rather than moving through this land, they parked their Airstreams and Winnebagos around any live water and the few springs in the area. Some stayed all summer. Some were commercial men who hunted rocks and sent truckloads of the stuff back east.

Agates in this area, formed much of the desert pavement on a dip slope erosional surface. The wind had sculpted and polished them into ventifacts, so they were easy to spot and collect. As a child, I didn't pick every agate up, but looked only for the largest ones with the most interesting dendrites.

As a young man, I worked in this area. Then, the good agates exposed on the flats, were gone. But some could still be found in the draws and gullies where erosion exposed them. Rototillers were used to dig them up on the flats.

The angel agate deposit was less than a square mile in area and was completely pillaged. The sweetwater agates were found over a much larger area. I wonder what it's like now?

Sweetwater Agates Now

Sweetwater Agates

It's hard to believe, but the land is even more parched than that at Crooks Gap. Wow, even a horny toad(horned lizard)has a tough time surviving here. The access is easy as the BLM has constructed a two lane, all weather, improved gravel road into the area. The agate area can't be missed as a large sign announces that if the agates are worth digging for, then they are worth filling the holes back up. But there's not a vehicle in sight, not another one in way over a two hundred square miles!

But then there's not a sign of anything even resembling a Sweetwater agate, either. Not on the flats. Not in the draws. No where! How could a bazillion tons of agates just disappear in my life time? I honestly can't imagine that so much jewelry, curios and collections could just completely consume such a resource.

As a geologist, I knew something most of the people collecting on agate flats didn't. I knew the rather complex geology of the area and I knew the source of the agates. They were formed as a jasperoid in a fault complex to the south. Then they were eroded out and deposited in a conglomerate to the north. Most of the conglomerate was again eroded and they were deposited on Agate Flats. But a few remanents of that conglomerate existed about 20 miles north and it contains Sweetwater agates.

Sweetwater agates fluorescing.

On the outside, they don't look anything like the Sweetwater agates most people hunt for on the Flats. These are covered with a dark brown bark or rind, which was weathered off as the agates were transported to Agate Flats. There's only one small problem. Almost all the rocks in the conglomerate are covered with that same bark. The Sweetwater agates aren't common in the conglomerate. But when they are found, they are large and of the best quality. It just takes a lot of whacking to find one.

More dust and back to a single track through the sagebrush. This conglomerate outcrops in a few shallow exposures without much erosion potential. The outcrops are small. Hummm..., I'm not the only one who understands the geology. Almost every rock that could conceivably contain a Sweetwater agate was chipped, cracked or wacked, some more than once!

One final look. I walked the shallow draws in the area hoping that erosion has uncovered a rock or two that I can wack for myself. Here's what I found, after an hours walk. Someone busted this one in half and threw it away as it's a very poor specimen. The others are agates that I had from my youth. But under the UV lamp, even the most unpromising rocks can shine.

I love getting out and about in this land. The vistas are boundless. There's beauty and solitude. The experience is energizing. But the rock collecting sure isn't what it once was.

Out west, most people once viewed the resources as boundless. Those that have been here awhile know better. Today, we reap the sad results of that perspective, not only in rocks and minerals, but also with our water and the environment. And some haven't learned much from that experience. Today, vast quantities of water are pumped out of the ground, by tens of thousands of wells, to liberate a little dissolved methane gas. The water is a waste product of the process and is discarded on the surface. It's one thing to look around and find all the Sweetwater agates are gone. It will be another thing, one day, to look around and wonder where all the water has gone.

I think we humans operate more like ants than we think. And maybe that birds eye assessment, made years ago, wasn't so far off the mark.