The Tee Pee
Canyon Agates
in form of concretions can be extracted up only by hands
(hard work!) as
according to the National Forestry officials. The agates
came from a hard
limestone formation on the southwest side of the Black
Hills, and may have came from the same limestone
formation as more famous Fairburn agates, but formed
under different environment conditions.
It appears that the agates tend to
come in typical red, yellow, and white colors, but that
is
not always true. It is my experience that agates in Tee
Pee Canyon concretions
tend to be narrow, irregular and somewhat unpredictable,
meaning that just
because you can see a spot of good agate on a nodule
doesn't mean that the
agate will widen to take up more space within the
nodule. The agates
are not always centered within the nodules, and that is
obviously
why some people slab them up in search for bigger agate
faces. Any agates taking up 35% or more within intact
concretions are quite rare.
YOU CAN CLICK ON
THE PICTURES TO
SEE LARGER PICTURES
Rough Appearance: Tan nodules usually in large sizes
sometimes
with red to white agate showing.
Commonly in broken clunks due to difficulty of extracting
them out
of hard limestone.
Agates are typically red, yellow and white. Any other
colors are rare.
