Septarian Nodule Hunt
Kane County, Utah
May 2002
Report by Mike Streeter
(mcstreeter@charter.net)

 

We spent a day looking for Septarian Nodules in and around old mostly abandoned mining claims. We followed the directions in the "Gem Trails of Utah" book to find massive excavations as deep as 50 feet that had been dug by track hoe into gray, poorly indurated and weathered shale.

 

We went from hole to hole looking for fresh signs of digging and leaverites. After half the day had gone by with no luck, we found a hole that looked good (relatively fresh signs of digging and plenty of leaverites scattered around).

I took a few whacks into the bottom side of the excavation and uncovered the end of a large Septarian nodule (geode) that Chrissy is pointing to below.

This one looked like it had part of one side broken off by the edge of the track hoe bucket; you could see right into the interior pocket lined with yellow calcite crystals - lucky me! I used pick, shovel, chisels and prybar to liberate the 8" diameter geode from the wall. The following are a couple pictures of the cleaned up specimen.

Click on each specimen picture to enlarge

During the next couple hours of very hard and hot work I was able to recover a couple more decent size nodules/geodes and several smaller ones from the same layer of shale.

 

I have since had one of the larger ones cut and it has a hollow center portion filled with small yellow dog-tooth calcite crystals that are characteristic of the Septarians. I was able to hand polish the cut Septarian in only about an hour.

Click on each specimen picture to enlarge

After finding enough Septarians to be more that satisfied, we made our way back down the dry dusty roads to civilization.


CLICK THE LITTLE MINER TO RETURN TO THE FIELD TRIP PAGE