Rock collecting in the Mojave Trails National Monument that includes Route 66 in southern California may become banned under a proposed rule by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.
The Los Angeles Times reports the BLM is nearing completion of a management plan that could declare rock collecting a form of mining.
If that happens, rockhounding would fall under the control of the General Mining Law of 1872, which regulates extractive industries that take such raw materials as gold, silver, lithium and oil from the earth on public lands. It would also hasten the demise of California’s relatively small and aging community of gem and mineral collectors, Losson and others say.
“We see this issue as an existential threat to a hobby that dates back to the turn of the last century,” said Lisbet Thoresen, a mineralogist and advocate of hobbyists who find joy in lugging a few bucketfuls of rocks home to be cut and polished with lapidary equipment: diamond saws, grinders and tumbling machines.
No national monument administered by any federal agency currently operates under a management plan that allows mining. But advocates of rockhounding are hoping that the BLM will make an exception at Mojave Trails that could be used as a template for accommodating the hobby at monuments elsewhere.
The Times article also delves into rockhound history, including its roots on Route 66.
Rock hunting was a fast-growing new hobby in the 1930s, when collectors began venturing into the vast Mojave Desert by car via the legendary U.S. Route 66, then took dirt roads to mineral hot spots including the Cady Mountains, Lavic Siding and Afton Canyon — a four-mile furrow carved by the Mojave River.
Its heyday was in the 1950s, when there were an estimated 2 million home lapidary shops in operation across the nation, and rockhounding was encouraged by the U.S. Bureau of Mines as part of a strategy to increase stockpiles of minerals crucial for national defense.
I’ve encountered a few rockhounds on Route 66, including one who gave me a bolo tie made from a pink stone that I still wear years later.
I admit to being on the fence about the rock-collecting-as-mining issue.
The Mojave Trails National Monument encompasses about 1.6 million acres. It’s hard to believe a few rockhounds braving the desert’s unforgiving heat would have much of an impact on the landscape.
Then again, the Petrified Forest National Park is fiercely protective of its grounds and admonishes visitors to not take any petrified wood from the park.
South of where I live in Tucumcari, New Mexico, there once was a large field of petrified wood. It even was listed on area maps during the early 20th century.
That Tucumcari petrified wood field is long gone — picked over and pilfered by visitors decades ago. You still can occassionally see a few pieces used as landscaping in front of homes.
But the notion a natural wonder can be obliterated by selfish human hands is not without evidence.
(Image of Amboy Crater near Amboy, California, by bighornplateau1 via Flickr)
So the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.equates collecting by hand rocks found on the surface with “mining”? If I stop by the roadside and come across a pretty stone and take it home, is that mining? Equating that with the loss of the Tucumcari petrified wood field is a long leap. By all means ban using pick axes and such like, but not picking up stones lying on the surface.
I’m with you Eric. This seems like a lazy power grab. They don’t want to be bothered having to pass legislation or policy on the subject (which would perhaps be subject to scrutiny and public input), so we’ll just pervert a 140 year old law to include an activity that it clearly was never intended to cover.