Quartz crystal mines in Arkansas, where you can dig your own crystals     Index to Quartz Digging Cleaning Worth Fee Pay Mines Types Forms Inclusions Geology Mineralogy Synthetic Gemstones Handedness Experiments

If you want to dig your own crystal, the best and showiest pieces can be found at the mines. The following is a listing of fee-pay quartz mines in the Ouachita Mountains. If you are planning a trip, here's the current weather. Click for a forecast of the central Arkansas area. At most of the fee-pay mines, the miners collect from veins and pockets in the walls and floor of the mine, usually a pit. The mine operators don't get ALL the good quartz! They load up the tailings and clay from the pockets and bring the material out and dump it in the fee area. With some effort to dig through the tailings, you can collect nice material. Quality and quantity of specimens vary greatly from mine to mine and even at each mine on a daily basis, depending on what the mine operators are digging in. If they have a lean collecting day, so do you. If they have pockets galore, then you'll get some goodies also. Some mines let you dig on the veins. For complete information on the crystal mines, see the book Collecting Crystals. Arrowhead (formerly Leatherhead) Matthew Price, Mt. Ida  Ron Coleman, Little Blakey Road Jessieville, AR 71909  Crystal Heaven, 104 Sunrise Hills, Mt. Ida, AR   Crystal Hill, Closed  Fiddler's Ridge, 3752 Hwy 207 Mount Ida, AR 71957  Leatherhead (closed)  Miller Mountain, PO Box 21, Jessieville, AR 71949  Robins Mining, Closed  Stanley Mines, 513 S. Pine, Mount Ida, AR 71957  Starfire Mines, 5403 Hwy 270 East, Mount Ida, AR 71957  Wegner Mines, 82 Wegner Ranch Road, Norman, AR 71957  Willis Green Phantom Mine, Paron, AR - Planned Re-opening 2009   Contact the authors of Rockhounding Arkansas revised Feb 2008 ©Rockhounding Arkansas 1998 http://rockhoundingAR.com