Robert Beard - Rockhounding New York: A Guide to the States Best Rockhounding Sites

FALCON GUIDES

Copyright 2014 Morris Book Publishing, LLC

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission should be addressed to Globe Pequot Press, Attn: Rights and Permissions Department, PO Box 480, Guilford, CT 06437.

FalconGuides is an imprint of Globe Pequot Press.

Falcon, FalconGuides, and Outfit Your Mind are registered trademarks of Morris Book Publishing, LLC.

All photos by Robert D. Beard unless otherwise noted.

Maps by Daniel Lloyd Morris Book Publishing, LLC.

Text design: Sheryl P. Kober

Layout: Sue Murray

Project editor: Ellen Urban

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

ISBN 978-0-7627-7900-0

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The author and Globe Pequot Press assume no liability for accidents happening to, or injuries sustained by, readers who engage in the activities described in this book.

M any people have helped make this book possible. I would first like to thank my editor at Rock & Gem magazine, Lynn Varon, who put me in contact with Globe Pequot Press, and William Kappele, another Rockhounding series writer and contributing editor at Rock & Gem, who suggested me to Lynn as a potential author for Globe Pequot in 2011. My writing experience with Rock & Gem enabled me to learn much more about rock, mineral, and fossil collecting than I ever anticipated.

I would like to thank my editors at Globe Pequot Press, David Legere, and Ellen Urban, for their patience when I had numerous delays due to inclement weather, and Melissa Baker in the map department, who gave me extremely helpful comments and suggestions. Thanks are also due to the production staff and the many people who were instrumental in producing and distributing the book.

Before doing field research for Rockhounding New York, I came across many websites, blogs, and forums that gave excellent information on potential sites and often provided key information that enabled me to find difficult-to-locate sites. Although I have met some providers of this Web information at mineral shows, most have no idea how important their information was to this book. Among these Web authors, special thanks go to John Betts, Jeff Wilson, Michael Walter, and Dr. Karl Wilson from the State University of New York in Binghamton.

Other online sources that should be acknowledged are the New York State Geological Association, the Rochester Academy of Science, Friends of the Grenville, the New York State Museum, the Penfield Foundation Museum, and Mindat.org Their websites, online guidebooks and conference proceedings all provided invaluable information.

In addition to online sources, I also benefited greatly from numerous printed articles on New York minerals by authors such as Dr. Steven Chamberlain of the New York State Museum and Dr. George Robinson of Michigan Tech. Many of these were published in Rocks & Minerals and the Mineralogical Record.

On a more personal note, I am also grateful for all the help I received from staff and managers at the fee-collecting sites that I visited: the Penn-Dixie Quarry, Herkimer Diamond Mines, Ace of Diamond Mines, Crystal Grove Mines, Diamond Acres, and the Barton Mines. I also want to express my appreciation to the Garnet Hill Lodge for allowing me access to the Hooper garnet mine, and to the many helpful individuals I met at the sites mentioned who shared their knowledge and provided various levels of assistance. If any of them by chance read this book, and remember our meeting, thank you for your help.

Lastly, I would like to thank my wife, Rosalina, and my children, Daniel and Roberta. They came on some key trips and endured many long drives despite being past the age when going on trips is involuntary. While they often now choose not to come on field trips, I hope they will look back on those trips in the positive way Rosalina and I do. For us they are among our best memories.

T his book is geared toward that rockhound or geologist who wants to visit sites without significant advance arrangements. Virtually every type of rock-collecting trip can be found in this book. Some sites will allow you to park your car and pick up rocks as soon as you get out. Other sites require some walking, and some sites require a lot of strenuous hiking over bad terrain. In some, youll likely find lots of minerals, and in others, you may have to work hard to find anything. Some sites have minerals that you can grab with your bare hands, and others will require you to use a sledgehammer to extricate them from host rock. In each case, I have done my best to help you easily find these sites and let you know what to expect.

New York is one of the first states where mineral collecting became popular, and the state also has some of the oldest mines in the United States. While New York has a wide variety of mineral occurrences, as in much of the East, many of these are on private land or public sites where mineral collecting is prohibited. In fact, theres been an increase lately, readily apparent in reviewing online information, toward private sites becoming public ones, whether as parklands or preserves. Other traditional collecting sites around mines have also been closed to collectors due to environmental contamination. Still, there are a wealth of collecting sites still open to the interested rockhound and a good many where even studying the rocks and recording them in photographs or video makes for a great outing and educational adventure.

In this book I have focused on identifying such sites where people can visit by themselves or with their family without significant advance planning or permission. Within this group, I have included fee-collecting sites that allow visitors to search for Herkimer diamonds, garnet, and other minerals as well.

In researching sites for the book I found that access could be a major challenge. Surprisingly, roadcuts were nearly always accessible, providing you could find safe parking. On the other hand, collecting along lakesides and beaches was often a problem as much of the waterfront land is private. Property maps that I obtained online were often of limited value. I have seen property marked as private that is accessible, and property marked as public that is often posted.

It is imperative to obey all signs and obtain permission to access off-limit areas. Just because a site is described in this book does not mean it will remain accessible or that collecting is permitted on the site. I have personally checked every one of the sites in this book. Many of the sites are roadcuts, roadside borrow pits, or outcrops that are somewhat limited in size but are reasonably accessible for visitors. Roadcuts are often within the highway right-of-way and sometimes belong to the state or local government. Generally you can collect in these areas if they are safe and you are not disrupting traffic, but I have also heard that roadside collecting may be illegal in New York. For what it is worth, I have never had a problem, but I always make certain that I am not inside posted ground and that I am not in an area where I am posing a risk to traffic.