THE MAKING OF A ROCKHOUND Step One:~by N.M. Smyer; from The Rockytier, January 2009.
(When one takes on a new activity, it starts with a beginning reason for doing so. This is my story of how I came to be a rockhound. There will perhaps be more to follow in time.)
Summer 59 with 6 of us in the car and our trailer behind, we set out just going where the wind blew us.
We had been camped on Pinal Mountain for 3 days when we decided it was time to look for a new adventure, which led to the town of Globe Arizona. In a small shop I found a copy of the Lapidary Journal with a field trip article on where to find peridot at Killbornes Hole, N.M. Away we went. Night caught us at City of Rocks state park, north of Deming N.M. The next day we headed on to Las Cruces. We stopped at Mesilla to get a screen to aid in our search for Peridot...then off to K-Hole in the outback SSW of Las Cruces. We wandered quite sometime looking for K-Hole because oil exploration Doodle-buggers working the area had left tracks going ever which way.
“EUREKA”! We finally found it in late afternoon. After looking around a bit, we decided to make a dry camp then explore and hunt peridot the next day.
Killbornes Hole is an upside-down volcano...a cone like crater about 150 ft. deep and 600 ft. across at the top and 200 ft. across at the bottom. A sandy dike about 15 to 20 ft. high surrounds the top...on this dike is where the peridot is found. The peridot, olivine crystals packed into a ball with a basaltic cover, spewed out after the big eruption pushed up the top soils in the rim. These balls ruptured when they landed, and in a mini-eruption threw olivine crystals in a circle around the landing site. The peridot are found by screening the soil in this circle.
A new day started early, we packed our gear, had a quick breakfast and started our hunt. We found
several promising sites and screened out a number of peridots. We also collected a few of the broken olivine bombs. I then climbed down to the bottom of the crater to look around but found no olivine bombs on the walls or the floor of the hole. It was now past noon so we had some lunch and headed toward home. About dark-thirty we got to Bottomless Lakes, east of Roswell, where we camped overnight. Next day we had a leisurely trip home, counting our rock hunt adventure a success!
We still have stones, cut from our first find, that hooked me on the hobby. You have all heard that “old Rockhounds never die....They just slowly petrify.” In my case, Rockhounds, when they’re my size, in old age, just crystallize.
~N.M.S.