Wagontown, 10 miles west of Silver City, was once a stage stop on the road between Silver City and Jordan Valley. The town had few houses and a mill at one time but today there is nothing left except for the cemetery because the process of dredge mining the area destroyed the remaining buildings.

  The town may no longer exist but the area is still a destination point for rock hounds. A wide range of materials can be found here including agatized petrified wood, a colorful agate with various shades of white, red and purple and grey black agate with reed fossils.

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The camping trip to Silver City had been planned for almost two weeks however as always I was getting my gear ready the night before the trip. Earlier in the week I had been gathering my rock hounding tools and had not been able to find my sledge hammer or rock chisel. I decided that I would buy these items again and as I paid the shop owner I joked that I already owned these items but could not find them but I probably would now that I was purchasing new tools. As I was getting the camp gear together I looked in the bottom of a crate of cooking supplies and there were my missing tools. I had left them there last fall when I went to Hampton Butte.

At around 6:00 Saturday morning Jason arrived at my house and we loaded up my gear. We then made our way to Silver City taking time to checkout road cuts and rock formations along the way. When we arrived at the old ghost town we took some time to explore the area taking pictures of the old buildings and checking out the displays at the Idaho Hotel which still offers rooms and dinning during the summer months. Many buildings have been restored but they have been left as close to original as possible. Visiting this place is like stepping back into the late 1800’s.

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For almost two weeks I have been looking forward to taking the family on a trip to the Bruno Wood Pile in Southwest Idaho. As it came closer to the weekend my wife didn’t show any real interest in going and my mother-in-law who would be joining us started asking/complaining that she wanted to wear sandals and shorts because it was going to be too hot. I quickly came to the conclusion that this would not be a good trip to take the family on but more of a pain in the gluteus maximus. Thursday I decide that we would go to Shirt Tail Creek, Baker City, Oregon and possible Sumpter, Oregon.

By 6:30 Saturday morning the car was loaded and we were on the way to pick up Grandma. When we arrived at Grandma’s house we found her waiting in front wearing black walking shoes, a big straw hat and a pair of sweat pants that were so big that they likely were made by Omar the tent maker. The site was hilarious; we were not sure if it was Grandma or a rodeo clown. Anyway we loaded up Grandma’s stuff and headed to Ontario, Oregon where we had breakfast.

After breakfast we started heading towards Baker City Oregon. About half way there we stopped at a place called Shirt Tail Creek which is about a mile behind one of the concrete plants that are located along I-84. This was a location where there was said to be agate, petrified wood and Oregon jade. We followed the GPS to about 700 feet away from the way point. We were not able to go all the way to the way point because it is behind a fence that is clearly marked with no trespassing signs. We continued past the location to where there were no signs and looked around for while. As we looked around I accidentally walked into a large swarm of gnats. I was so focused on the ground looking for rocks that I didn’t notice the swarm until it was too late. I had the nasty little buggers in my hair and shirt and was itching all over. My wife helped me brush the bugs out my hair and luckily I had another shirt to wear. At this point I was done looking anyway because we were not finding anything worth collecting. Grandma took off the big pants (she had short pants on under them) and put on sandals then we continued to Baker City.

Once we arrived in Backer City we went to the Oregon Trail Regional Museum. This museum has two very nice rock collections on display. The first one is the Cavin-Warfel Collection of rocks, fossils and minerals. This collection was started by two sisters who collected for 45 years. In 1983 the entire 18-tom collection was donated to the museum. The second collection is the Wyatt Family Collection which consists of 2,000 agate and picture jasper cabochons representing 35 years of collecting and lapidary work. Both of these collections are well worth the $5.00 cover charge to enter the museum. I don’t know where to start trying to explain these fantastic collections. The biggest thing stands out is the massive crystals and crystal combination that are on display. I took many pictures of the displays but as we were leaving we were given a map of the displays and it asks that no photography be taken. Oops! I am not going to share all the photos but will give you one to wet you appetite. One photo doesn’t do these collections justice. If you want to see more you will have to visit the museum.

After leaving the museum we went on to Sumpter Oregon. Sumpter is an old mining town. We had lunch then walked the main street and photographed the buildings stopping at one of them to view some museum displays of the local history. We then went to the train station where you can ride an old steam train and photographed the train. We ended our stay in Sumpter with a visit to an old gold dredge. This was a massive machine that tore up much of the area in search of gold; you can see dredge piles for miles. While at the dredge Grandma and my son Andy learned to pan for gold. As we were leaving I found a small piece of agate in one of the dredge piles. I was excited that the whole day wasn’t a collecting bust but when we got home I cut the agate and found that it was too fractured to do anything with other than tumbling.

  This trip was not a good rock collecting trip but was a great family outage. Everybody enjoyed themselves and is already taking about doing the same trip again. I am personally ready to go see the rock collection at the Oregon Trail Regional Museum again.

The plans for this next weekend are to visit Siler City. I will also have my first batch of finished rocks coming out of the tumbler so hopefully I will have some more to share early next week.

This last week end was a busy one for me. It started Friday evening as I was loading the car for the next day’s trip to Rome, Oregon. As I loaded up my Equipment I also worked on my tumbling project. This was the time I need to change from the 220-grit to 400-grit. The rocks are looking really good now except for one problem; I am starting to get some chipping in the rocks. I am guessing that this is due to the fact that the rocks have worn down quite a bit and now the tumbling motion is much rougher. To resolve this I combined the two three-pound barrels in one barrel. I have read about using plastic filler pieces to resolve this issue so I will look into purchasing the filler if the combining does not resolve the problem. I also started another tumbling batch of petrified wood using 90-grit. When I checked the barrels Sunday evening both barrels looked very promising.

Saturday started early as the alarm went off at 5:30. I had to be at the ION truck stop at the highway 78 and highway 95 junction by 7:00 to meet up with the group going to Rome, Oregon. I was worried that I would not make it in time but managed to get there with plenty of time to spare. Shortly after arriving Walter Barnett, the leader of this field trip, informed me that I would not be able to make it to the collecting site in my car. I made arrangement to ride with a guy named Carl once we left the pavement because I wanted to take my car so I could explore some other areas on my way home.

At around 9:30 we had arrived at the dirt road leading to the collecting area. I grabbed my gear and jumped in Carl’s truck. Right away I could see that I would not have been going anywhere in my car. As we road along Carl told me about his experiences collecting in this area. We decided to stop at a location the he had collected at before; we figured we could catch up to the group later. At first we weren’t finding anything but soon we were finding small pieces on a hill a little ways from where we parked.

After working the hill for a few minutes I found a piece that I thought was petrified wood. When I showed it to Carl he said that it might be a petrified bone. This gave me an uneasy feeling because it is unlawful to take bone from public lands. As we looked at it again later Carl changed his mind about what it was and thought that it was just an odd piece of the snake skin agate that we were there to collect. I polished the end of this piece Sunday and now I am back to thinking it is petrified wood due to the pattern that can now be seen. I also found a very nice chunk of the snake skin agate that had no chips and some nice orange-red colors.

We then joined the group and found some more snake skin agate. These pieces were small and will make good tumbling material. We also explored another ridge before leaving and found a few more pieces but nothing as good as the pieces found on that hill side we explored earlier.

I didn’t explore any other locations on the way home but instead followed the group to Hooker’s creek to collect petrified wood. Hooker’s creek is located north of Jordan Valley, Oregon. I drove my car into this place but found it a bit rougher than when I had drove in there a year earlier. I collected about a half a bucket of wood before leaving. As I drove out I accidently hit something in the road. Whatever it was I could not see it coming or going. My guess is it was an animal hole. Luckily there was no damage to my car.

When I got home all I could think about was dinner and a shower. Unloading the rocks and gear from the car would just have to wait until morning.

Sunday I unloaded the car and then spent most of the day cutting and polishing rocks. I first cleaned up and polished the two nicer pieces collected in the Rome area the day before. Then I started cutting more of the Jasper from the trip with John and Jason a few weeks ago. I ended up making a small free form cabochon with some very nice material that was found at the collecting area that is literally at the Idaho-Oregon border on the East side of highway 95. I ended the day and weekend activities by checking the tumbler and passing out rocks to the neighborhood kids that often come by to see what I am up to.