COLLECTING BANDED AGATE, CHERT, & DRUSY QUARTZ
SUMMERVILLE, GA
July 14, 2009

by Ray Hill

Just south of Summerville, GA in Chattooga County is an active chert quarry owned by the William D. Patty Construction Company. Here you can find banded agate, chert, and chert with drusy quartz crystals formed as cavity filler and as a “crust” on host chert rock.

The above two photos are of material from this location. The shot on the left is of a large chunk of banded agate. Notice the banding and swirls.

This material is excellent for lapidary work and for tumbling. The photo on the right is a piece of the drusy quarts on chert. The photo doesn’t do justice to this specimen. It sparkles nicely in the sun.

The banded agate here is a flow-banding material much like the “crazy lace agate” coming out of Mexico. The material has the same banding and swirls as the Mexican material but is not quite as colorful. It is very plentiful however. The chert and drusy quartz is not hard to find but you might take a squirt bottle with you to find the really nice banded agate.

About six months ago one of my rock buddies and I visited this quarry on a Saturday afternoon. When we got there it has just finished raining. Everything was wet. There were three huge piles of soft-ball size rocks that the heavy machinery had broken up. The agate was wet and easy to spot. We could have carried away buckets of this material, but, I only collected a couple of nice display specimens that day. Those two are on display in my office.

Here’s a photo taken from the entrance to the quarry at Hwy 27. Here you can see the large hill in the center with huge areas where the chert material has been scooped out. My guess is that this material is being quarried for road fill. (Isn’t that a shame……)

Should you wish to visit this site, keep in mind that it is an active quarry. I happen to know that many rock collectors have been visiting this site for years. My advice is to visit when the trucks, cranes, and other heavy equipment is not running, like on the weekend. And keep away from the equipment and the steep banks. It would be easy for someone to have an accident here. Fall down a hill, have a bank or rock fall on them, turn an ankle, or whatever. No one wants this to happen. My guess is that should someone ever get seriously hurt while collecting here, this site could be permanently closed to rock collecting.

The above left photo shows one of the pieces of quarrying equipment. Notice the huge pile of broken-up chert/agate/quartz material. This pile is about thirty feet in diameter and about fifteen feet high. That’s a lot of specimens. The above right photo shows a couple of piles of crushed material with the distant hills in the back ground. Many tons of material has been removed from the area here, and from looking at the hills to the left and in the background, there are about as much more material that can be removed.

This site is located on Highway 27, about two miles south of the city of Summerville, GA.. This is Chattooga County. It’s easy to find. It’s easy to collect at. You’ll enjoy this trip.

This quarry is owned and operated by:
Wm. D. Patty Construction Company,
7525 Highway 27,
Summerville, GA 30747
Phone: 706-857-6577, 706-314-5293.

Happy rock hunting.

Ray Hill
Great South Gems & Minerals, Inc.
www.greatsouth.net
888-933-GEMS

Note: Only rock clubs have permission to print this article but must give credit to the author, Ray Hill, and Great South Gems & Minerals, Inc. For everyone else, please email us for permission.

Great South Gems & Minerals, Inc. www.greatsouth.net 38 Bond Drive Ellenwood, Georgia 30294 USA 1-888-933-GEMS (4367) FAX: 770-389-8095