Traveled down to the Hot Springs area of Arkansas for my annual fall trek, for a few days of rest and relaxation from the grind of work with two goals in mind, photograph some models and dig for some beautiful quartz crystals, which can be quite impressive and found in the Mount Ida and Hot Springs areas. Having traveled to this area for the past four years as part of my fall vacation, I opted to take the advice of a few rockhound friends and visit the Miller Mountain Quartz Mine near Jessieville, Arkansas, about ten miles north of Hot Springs along Highway 7 and ten miles west on Hwy 298.  I had Kyle, one of my models with me, and he likes to rockhound too. We were staying at Lake Ouachita near Mount Ida and drove over to Miller Mountain on Saturday morning, arriving at 8 am and found we had the place to ourselves.

The mine is under new management and very well run compared to the last trip I made there a few years ago, I was very impressed with the new caretakers, Faith and Bill. I was given good advice on where to look and after paying our dig fees, Kyle and I got to work and started finding some nice crystals. I was looking for clusters and Kyle was happy with single points. I brought some canvas bags with me from my Lowes store and a few buckets and left with the buckets filled and five canvas bags full as well. I found several nice larger clusters merely by walking around on top of the tailing piles and surface collecting as well. All in all it was a great four hour dig and as we were wrapping up and packing the truck bed, about seventy boyscouts and fifteen scoutleaders descended upon the mine and began their day looking for treasures. Here are some photos to show you what we encountered and found….

here are the tailing piles looking north….

and looking south here…

and Kyle shown digging for single points here…although he didnt have to do much digging, there were so many just laying on top all over the place…he filled two bags alone with them…

here is what it looks like up close…a chunk of clay, but lurking under the clay are crystals….several have said the best time to get here is when the sun comes out after a good rain, but I have found sunlight anytime to be just fine…one can get really muddy there even when its dry cause the clay chunks underneath are usually still wet too…

and these clay covered crystal chunks show you the size comparison to one of my canvas collecting bags….but now I`m sure you have seen enough clay and want to see what we found so here you go….

here are some of my finds grouped up and below are some more…

here is one of the pretty big ones I found….

this was a large single lemon crystal with a spur of crystals attached….something I never thought I would be lucky enough to find is a lemon crystal which are highly prized and widely believed to be powerful healing crystals….

and some more of the nicer clusters I found there…some have damage, but even the miners that look for the good stuff find damaged crystals too….

Def looks like a place worth going to for a days dig, keep all you find, for $ 10, doesnt it ?