I was reading "Red
Metal Retreat" parchment which has a list of copper mines
with each mine listing minerals found there and I noticed
that St. Louis Mine's list includes agates. After
obtaining some info on the location of St. Louis mine, I
explored the mine dump and started finding some of the
most colorful agates I have ever seen coming from any
copper mines and quite few came with copper inclusions. I
found it strange that St. Louis mine is located far away
from Kearsage Lobe and I learned that it was located on a
small Copper City Lobe. Maybe only two or three mines were
set on that lobe compared to so many mines along much
longer and thicker Kearsage lobe.
There are two different types of agates
found there. The small "purple" agates come with purple
primary bands and often have quartz and pumpllyite
centers. They're generally found in one spot.
Found in the greenish basalt
rocks at specific places around the mine dump are more
colorful and sharply banded agates. Red, white, pink,
orange, purple, and yellow colors are widespread in those
agates and they can have interesting banding structures
like "eyes" or mushroom-like growths. They're notoriously
difficult to extract out of the basalt rocks and that
might be why few people bothered to search for them since
they fracture easily when they tried to hammer the
agate-bearing rocks. It's still possible to find some
loose nodules only in specific places due to the way the
miners distributed the mine dump rocks. Amethyst nodules
are found there also. Expect to see widespread fractures
in the agates due to the blasting processes the miners
used to break the basalt beds in search for copper
sources.