Gem Stones In Washington

Good

This was a gift for my son, but he was excited when he found info showing areas close to us.

expected a little more!!

My husband was thrilled with this gift

this is interesting, will be using it when we moe out there,thankyou

Not what I thought it was going to be

Lots of good info.

The blurb says "Unavailable since 1949," but this small pamphlet was previously reprinted in 1964 and 1972, at least, and is currently available online as an excellent quality PDF from the Washington State Department of Natural Resources.But I suspect I will end up buying this new reprint anyway, since a book in the hand is so often preferable to an electronic book on a Kindle, tablet, or laptop.The content is definitely interesting to anyone familiar with the region, or wishing to become so. I especially like that the locations tend to be nonspecific: Instead of sending you to overly specific locations, as do many guides, e.g. "Gem Trails" series, there are many discussions of the type of feature and terrain that has proven productive over an interesting-sized area. Consider "Chalcedony occurs as amygdules and as fillings in larger irregular cavities in the Teanaway basalt. which crops out in an east-west belt 2 miles wide that is crossed by the highway (U.S. 97) just south of Liberty. Specimens, including blue agates, have been found in road cuts and in the hills on either side of the highway."Obviously, material this old is not going to be useful by itself, but should be used in combination with later gem hunting and rockhounding guides, a "Roadside Geography of Washington," and perhaps especially in combination with the recent "Rocks & Minerals of Washington State" by Dan & Bob Lynch, which contains broader but potentially useful geographic hints in its mineral descriptions.One might also want to have a road map of the era, or at least have a good sense of where current highways might stray from older routes.