For many decades, the agates along Yellowstone River have been found and crafted into various lapidary arts and jewelry. The agates are usually opaque to clear with grayish to black colors sometimes with banding and inclusions. The finest agates are naturally dyed with brown, orange and yellow colors. To make those agates even more attractive, they are occasionally found with dendrites, a type of manganese mineral growing within the fractures or between the bands and their patterns. With our imaginations, we can see the familiar shapes (trees, smoking ship, animals, whatever) in the dendrites. It takes proper cutting or grinding to bring those apparitions out. They still can be found in the gravel deposits along the river all the way from Emigrant, MT to North Dakota border and the source may be somewhere in Yellowstone Volcanic beds. Some of the most intense Iris Agates are cut from those type of agates.

YellowStone River	Look what I found!