Small Orb Hornitos Poppy jasper

Love these!

They sure look like that Hornitos poppy was worth the poison oak!

Gary, I had poison oak so bad the nurses took me around to show me to medical students. It was hard to convince myself it was worth it. *L*

Additional note: If digging into the side of a hill, make sure and note what is above you on the hill*L*. I did not get near any poison oak plants or leaves but did not consider that the roots from a poison oak thicket go a long distance underground and the juice from the roots is apparently very nasty.

Rockbrain, Since we owned a ranch there for about 15 years I got to know most my neighbors and had access to many private properties. Much of the poppy jasper is unfortunately on private ranchland. There are many sites on BLM land too, but it took me like eight years of looking to locate them after first finding deposits on our own place and I had help from a couple of other hunters. My buddy's dog actually found the original old pits for us. One was flooded and the doggy got hot and went swimming. My buddy found the dog and stumbled upon the original digs in the brush.

goldfinder: Glad some of my info has helped you score some material. There are really a lot of deposits scattered in the area, but as you know, it's rough country and difficult to explore. The site we found that had me the most nervous was the pit we called the " stinky horse hole" because a local was nice enough to dump his dead horse in the pit we were digging, and the horse carcass was clearly attracting bears. Digging while looking over your shoulder can be kind of nerve wracking, *L*

I was told, the poppy in this area is in highly altered Jurassic seabed deposits and formed as spherules in marine ooze. I did find an example on our own ranch that had loosely packed little spheres with no silica filling between them. That being said, it leaves me very confused because I found a lot of poppy lenses and veins in situ. So, did this ooze fill in cracks and voids in harder andesite looking rock while in the ocean floor? It further confuses me that this jasper often has little inclusions of gold bearing sulfides which must have flowed into the voids too. One thing for certain, the orbicular jaspers at this location have seen a lot of weird seismic activity and then been resealed, as there is Hornitos Brecciated Jasper in the area ( some of this has orbs too) and many poppy examples show significant distortion, offsetting or blurring of the patterns or even dissolving some of the poppies. The area shows a lot of parallels to the Stone Canyon Jasper ( it sometimes has orbs too) and to the jaspers of Big Sandy Creek near FT. Hunter Legget. Big Sandy, along with Stone Canyon type breccias had some very weird poppy types too. I left a boulder in my Ojai yard that was solid like Hornitos ( Hunters Valley) stuff and composed of orbs in yellow, green and red that were so tightly packed that you had to look close to see they were orbs. Different color palette but otherwise really like some of the Hornitos stuff. One pit we found at Hunters Valley had material that though, pretty fractured, strongly resembled Ocean Jasper. Without a doubt, the most interesting area I've ever hounded.

Reading Sabre52's explanation, I immediately started comparing the Poppy Jasper formation to Ocean Jasper...and figuring there has to be a similar way in which both of them were formed...

Mel, those examples are amazing!


goldfinder - of course we'd all love to see pics of your finds!  LOL

*LOL* Goldfinder: One of our members drove like 20 hours straight to my place in Texas and got most all my Hornitos rough and lots of other stuff. He pretty much had a pickup load. The rest I sold off or gave away before I left California for Texas as it was just too much to move. Almost made me cry when I had to give away a huge quantity of Hornitos Brecciated jasper and Cosmos Jasper. Of course, I still cry about the big boulders of Stone Canyon type jasper from Big Sandy Creek and Creston that stayed in my old yard too. Some of those weighed like 90 pounds and had to be carried out of the creek on my back. Man, those were the good old hounding days!

Thanks so much for the detailed info Mel! Sabre52 Excellent directions, I know exactly where you are talking about. Depending on how the weather is tomorrow I might head out there and check it out. They are forecasting rain so if it's raining too bad I might head underground to work some of our hardrock mines.

Ok fine jasoninsd and roy , here are some pics lol.

Mel you mentioned the orange poppy, that's one of my favorites varieties and I don't think I've ever seen any posted online. I just polished this one a couple days ago but need to sonicate it to get the cerium out of the vugs.



You mentioned the brecciated jasper so I thought you might like these.





This two look like a distant cousin to the ones you and rockbrain posted.





You mentioned the very tight poppy where there isn't much space between the poppies and I thought of this type. I don't know what the black metallic iron looking stuff is but it polishes amazingly well.



I entered this one in the "flower" themed cab contest last year. Mel, I though you might like to see it.



Thanks it for now folks, I've been digging this stuff for a couple years now and have been pretty hush hush about it and this is the first time revealing it on the forum. Most my buddies don't know how to research claims or file them, a few years back helped a buddy get a couple gold claims a few hills over. Once I started researching the poppy deposit (with the critical help of Mel's info), I already knew all the surrounding claims and their maps and put 2 and 2 together and figured out that the poppy claim had been closed.

I started to dig and assess the ground and over the next few months and liked what I saw. There is a local fellow who will refile on any closed claims, and promptly sell them on eBay for usually 10x what it costs. He was doing that to a bunch of nearby claims so I couldn't risk him doing that to this spot, so we filed on the poppy area to secure it from that guy reselling it.

Haha yup you did! Yeah I thought I tossed some of that type in there. That cab you made of it sure looked good. I almost want to try cutting a cab of just the metallic stuff to see how it'll look.

Love how this stuff looks! I'm just about to post pics of a few pieces of tiny orbed poppy jasper I found recently and came across this thread. Wish I had this material!