Dwarves Earth Treasures: Union Road Agates from St. Louis, Missouri

Dwarves' Earth Treasures Museum:
Union Road Agates
Union Road, South of St. Louis, Missouri

The Union Road Agates come in form of concretion nodules, and they were collected by Bill T. for several decades. They came from the Union Road during the construction of I-270 & I-55 intersection highway south of St. Louis, Missouri, which is now overlaid with shopping districts.
It seems that very small percentage(5-10%) of any Union Road nodules contain agates, and quality agates are even rarer. The typical colors are white, black, tan, yellow brown and ivory, and more scarce colors are red, orange, purple, and pink. The color of many Union Road Agates had been bleached or redistributed by the water from nearby Mississippi River. Some agate fragments remind me of fairburn agates because of their bold colors. The fractures are to be expected in most of the Union Road nodules due to being weathered out of their limestone host by Mississippi river. Some Union Road geodes contain interesting minerals like geothite needles and sometimes millerite.

YOU CAN CLICK ON THE PICTURES TO SEE LARGER PICTURES

Rough Appearance: Weathered tan to brown concretions, sometimes showing agate.
Agates are heavily "bleached" and usually with re-distributed colors, common colors are white, tan, brown, and black.
Those with showy colors and bandings are scarce due to weathering.




Interesting colors	Reddish hue

		Petroleum in it! I can smell it when I was grinding the pair.

Red color, from a different location close to Union Road.	Natural form	Polished

I bought 5-gal pail of 100 roughs and only one contains agate.		I like this one because it has clues to how the cherts come to have agate centers. :)

Red color, from a different location close to Union Road.	Red color, from a different location close to Union Road.	Bold colors

Smokey Quartz center	Smokey Quartz center	That was the last pair I got from Bill before he died. :(