Dwarves' Earth Treasures Museum: Orange Star Thundereggs
Orange Star Prospect Site, Hermanas, Luna Co., New Mexico
.
This is one of few thunderegg sites I discovered (or
re-discovered) on my own and it just happens that the March 2008 mining
of Baker Egg Mine was interupted when a backhoe operator suffered from
a cardiac arrest that he has to be rushed to the hospital (he survived
and doing fine). Since I don't like to just sit there and wait for them
to resume mining of hte Baker Egg Mine, I decided to just wander around
and see if I find anything. A while away, I spotted some white rocks and
approached to them and immediately I noticed an "orange star" over there.
It turned out that the "orange star" is a weathered thunderegg core showing
Laguna-like banding and the name stuck. I asked Paul "GeodeKid" Calburn
about that site and he said that I may have re-discovered one of several
lost agate mines as result of being forgotten or lost with death of the
original discoverers.
I still have a way before learning a lot more about
this site, but it seems to me that the agates tend to be small in large
thundereggs and are typically colorless rimmed with reddish primary bands.
I found several showing very good bluish-gray banding wtih centers tinted
with yellowish to tan colors and only one so far with strong Laguna-like
yellow, red and orange colors (so far). I am not sure if I can find more
once I start digging deepr (I just found them on the surface) so I will
have to investigate this site more in the near future.