There are no emeralds at Emerald Creek. But there are star garnets, a rock hound's glory hole of semiprecious gems found only in India and northern Idaho.
In ancient times, garnets were treasured for legendary power so great they could protect a house from lightning, bring on a heart attack or forecast vast wealth.Today, Idaho's state gem is a popular industrial abrasive and prized by collectors for its unusual, seemingly three-dimensional white star rising out of eggplant-colored rock.
"This is one of only two places in the world where star garnets are found," said Susan Hotinger, 32, a recreational aide at the Emerald Creek Garnet Area on the St. Joe National Forest in northern Idaho.
"These are almandite garnet and the optical illusion of the star is called an asterism," she said.
Hotinger's office is a two-story A-frame snugged into a Rocky Mountain gulch filled with Western red cedar, grand fir and white pine and the clear green creek from which the gem-digging area gets its name.
From Memorial Day to Labor Day, Hotinger and a co-worker dispense advice and cleaning screens to prospective rock hounds. In 1989, 1,617 people from places as far away as Florida, New York and Denmark bought $5 permits at Emerald Creek and weighed in with 1,686 pounds of garnet, according to a Forest Service report.
The biggest garnet found so far this year weighed 10.5 ounces, Hotinger said. In 1981, a first-time rock hound walked out with a two-pound garnet, the largest since the Forest Service opened the digging area in 1974, she said.
The permit entitles diggers to take out five pounds of garnet, which can be the size of sand particles or a baseball.
"Biggest isn't always best," Hotinger said. "If you work hard and get a good spot, you can get your five pounds."
Gordon Zumach, 48, of Puyallup knows all about shovel luck and pick work.
"My first day, I got nothing. The next day, I got 3 3/4 pounds," he said.
Zumach, like thousands before him, spent the morning on his knees, jeans coated with orange clay, digging into the side of a hill. He filled a bucket with concentrate - mud and rocks - before scooching down the slope to a cleaning pond.
The concentrate is dumped into an 18-by-18-inch screening box for shaking and rattling in the opaque puddle. Much like sluicing gold, the mud washes away, revealing a cache of garnet, glittery mica and quartz.
"That's the real hard part, getting them clean enough," Hotinger said.
Zumach's well-trained eyes easily spot the garnet, but even greenhorns usually catch on quickly, Hotinger said.
"The only problem is some people are color blind, and they can't see the color," she said.
Garnet digging began at Emerald Creek in the 1930s, and as its popularity grew, so did land damage from cut trees and soil erosion. In the 1960s, several northern Idaho rock clubs suggested the Forest Service acquire the land to control the rate at which garnets were being taken, according to an agency history report.
Northern Idaho and India garnets, the almandite variety, rate 7.5 on the Mohs scale for hardness, according to "Gems and Precious Stones in the United States, Canada and Mexico." Diamond, the hardest mineral, is 10.
Just a few miles up the gravel road in Fernwood is Emerald Creek Garnet, one of four garnet mines in the world. The garnet is milled to varying coarseness for water filtration, sand blasting and polishing. The industrial setting is dusted with shades of violet and lavender.
Garnet was formed 65 million to 135 million years ago in metamorphic, or changing, rock. Tremendous heat and pressure on iron, magnesium, aluminum, silicon and oxygen formed the garnets, Hotinger said.
The ghostlike stars reflected in the garnets are impurities that crystallize in geometric shapes. The stones are often cut and polished en cabochon, or rounded, rather than faceted, to show off the star, Hotinger said.
Sam Snipes, 36, a crystal shop owner from Tampa, Fla., has been digging at Emerald Creek for 10 years.
"It's real big in metaphysics. There's nothing like a star garnet," he said.
The value of the 12-sided crystals, called dodecahedrons, vary with the clarity of the stone and the brightness of the star.