My Florida trip started out with a 5 hour flight from South Bend Indiana to West Palm Beach Florida. Being my first time on a plane I think it went quite well. I enjoyed seeing everything seen everyday turn into dots within a couple minutes. What beautiful sites you see when flying...

Ruck’s Pit started out as a shell pit in 1987. Shells were mined and crushed/ground ke gravel for roads. The shells are ideal for this usage because of the cementing properties of the calcium, of which they are comprised. The mining continued a vuggy limestone rock was found deeper in the pit. This limestone also made a great road aggregate. Until three years ago the miners used explosives to mine the rock from Ruck’s. As they moved towards more mechanical means of extraction, they stopped using these explosives. Now that the explosives are not disintegrating the rock they started to find the now highly collectable Mercenaria clams bursting with beautiful dogtooth calcites. Later examinations of the sands found in the shell pit confirm a 3% Titanium content which is just shy of the 5% needed to mine it commercially.

My first day of collecting started out at the FT. Drum General store where I met with my good friends Mickey Cecil and Gary Maddox. Seeing how I had flown down Gary was nice enough to let me use a set of tools he brought for me. Mickey and Gary told me the first place to start my search would be on the spoil piles that were drying out prior to the grinding to make aggregates. There were around 300 people who showed up for this open house and it was pretty tough to find a good digging spot with that many collectors. And what a wonderful day it was for collecting. The sun was putting a warm touch on each of our faces as the temperature approached 70 degrees.

Birds at motel eating their breakfast in the fish cleaning station

Parking lot filled with vehicles of the nearly 300 collectors

Found in the piles were quite a diverse selection of different fossil shells along with the Mercenaria that are filled with nice golden calcites.

In the spoil piles, loose single clams can be found

Some of the clams show calcite before their washing off in a bucket of water

Side clams show some damage when found on the spoil piles, they still make attractive specimens

After spending most of the morning on the piles we decided it was time to take a lunch break. We headed back up to the tents that were set up for the swap area and also a concession stand with bottles of water, soda and BBQ sandwiches. After a hard days work hunting most of you know how hungry you can get. Now with our bellies full we decided to venture down to the main digging area in the south end of the pit

Many of the people were digging on the south wall in some really hard limestone

the south end of the pit was the best producer

In the bottom of the pit whelk and scallop shells over 2 million years old can be found

Here digging in the hard limestone and shell matrix you can find wonderful clams. The most prized found will still be in the “living” position. These seem to form better crystals during development given the room to grow.

matrix pieces are hard to get out whole because of the fragile nature of the Nashua limestone

Clams found in the “living” position have the best calcites in them.

Mickey and I started to scout for new locations for our day digging on Sunday. As we walked around we heard a young lady asking for help. Her whole family was stuck in the sand/mud in one of the drainage ditches that are in the floor of the pit. I started to look for rocks to stand on making sure we had no others that are trying to help get stuck too. I handed Mickey a large chunk of matrix, as he threw it into the drainage ditch we noticed that the water was only 3 or 4 inches deep. Now we are wondering how these poor souls found themselves waist deep in this sand/mud. Mickey jumped in and started to dig the mother out of the “quicksand”. After two others joining in the adventure of digging out the worried parent they were able to free her. The 10 of us who were watching we were beginning to wonder if we were watching a reality TV program. The two other young boys that were stuck came out shortly after. All in all it was an hour-long extraction. Mickey and I went to Golden Corral for supper that night and talked about the day’s activities and we wondered “How did all three get stuck together?” Was it a genetics thing? Apparently the mother was trying to dig the son out with the other youngster helping, by them sanding still in the same spot for a period of time they too became victims of this “quicksand”. On a side note, the family that were rescued was still hunting right to the end of the day, minus their shoes which will be found in a few million years filled with calcite crystals ;-).

Sunday was not-so-nice of a day for hunting. It was noticeably cooler around 60 degrees and a light to heavy rain drizzled down on us. This was the day for the hearty collectors. Mickey and I decided to head down to the far side of the pit to a nice location that is not collected as much .As we started to work, more rain and wind. We worked the area for around four hours finding some great matrix pieces and some single clams all with wonderful calcites in them.

Even if clams end up broken, nice calcite clusters are still collectable items

Most of the “living position” clams show nice big crystals

Special conditions made it possible for the fossilization to record such fine detail

I would have to say this is one of the best trips I’ve been on. I want to thank Gary and Mickey for being such great friends and guides in helping new people into their area of expertise. RUCK”S PIT!

KOR

Everett

PS - Mickey will have to tell the story about his newly found friend with the “way out there” theories ;-{)