Every stone has a home ground. Learn where each one forms and the desert stops looking empty.
Some of the best gem ground in America is open to anyone willing to pay the day rate and swing a pick. Virgin Valley, Nevada is the premier black-opal field in the country, and the mines there let you dig the ash beds yourself; keep what you find in water, because Virgin Valley opal can crack as it dries. The Himalaya mine's tailings in San Diego County give up pink and green tourmaline, and the Benitoite Gem Mine holds the only gem-grade benitoite on earth, a stone that glows electric blue under a UV lamp.
Nevada's turquoise districts, Royston and Number 8 among them, made the stone famous, and most of that ground is claimed and worked, so look, photograph and ask. The ancient workings at Turquoise Mountain in the Mojave were mined a thousand years before the 49ers and are protected antiquities: admire, never dig.
California nephrite jade washes onto the Big Sur shore at Jade Cove, and collecting is legal below the mean high-tide line, so work the surf cobbles. The Hauser beds near Wiley Well give up geodes to anyone willing to dig the ash, the desert washes carry agate and jasper that show their color when wet, and the volcanic country north and east runs with obsidian, including the rainbow beds at Davis Creek.
On open BLM and Forest ground, personal-use collecting in reasonable amounts is generally allowed, up to 25 pounds plus one piece a day for petrified wood. Parks and wilderness are closed to it, active claims belong to their holders, and artifacts and vertebrate fossils are never taken. The map shows land status and every active claim, so you know before you kneel.
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