While researching mineral locations for the field guide “Rockhound Barstow” we noticed a few different fluorite deposits listed with vague pinpoints associated. One of our favorite spots to visit is the area south of Afton Campground.

Afton Canyon is a remarkable place, featuring dramatic walls surrounding miles of washes leading into the Northern Cady Mountains, a wonderland of agates, jaspers and various mineral oddities. To the North, there are two exits that will take you from the 15 down to Afton Canyon and the North Cady’s. Afton Road will take you to the campground and for those with 4×4, you can take the Spanish Trail East and you’ll pop out on the other side of the mountain, otherwise accessible by Basin Road, the next exit Northbound on the 15 from Afton Road. Taking Afton Road will get you to the campground where you can proceed into the area on foot, or, by taking Basin Road, you can drive to the deposits on rugged dirt/rock/sand roads.

For our trip, we can go two ways. We can drive in on Basin Road and then take a series of washes and mountain roads and bam, you can drive right to the fluorite prospects. It is a tough drive and with some satellite maps and planning, you can attempt to reach the location via vehicle. We do not go in this way. We walk in from Afton Campground, through Pyramid Canyon. You start by going under the railroad bridge and across the shallow waterway of Afton Canyon to head South into the giant canyon wash. This wash continues for about 1.6 miles taking you through some magnificent large canyon walls, ending at a giant block of black basalt with a waterfall opening some 100+ feet from the bottom. Instead of walking to the back, we walk up a switchback .2 miles before the end, which takes us up to the top of the canyon. A road and path lead you to the upper wash, which would spill out into the lower wash we just hiked up. This whole area is a treasure box of crystals and lapidary goods, with different things found on different hills. Tons and tons of red and yellow jasper is found all over, zeolite included agates and jaspers, crystals of quartz and calcite and even some odd-ball zeolites, casts and epimorphs are found tumbling out of the basalt hillside. The basalt here features areas of intense gas bubble inclusion, resulting in literally MILLIONS of quartz pods filling the ground. Some of these have crystals, some of them did weird things, like replace zeolites and anhydrite, some of them have calcite on top of quartz, sometimes the quartz is over the calcite. It is a fun, uncommonly visited, vast in area, place, most often visited by people in search of agates and jaspers.

Continuing South on the upper wash of Pyramid Canyon you come to what we call the “Mixing Bowl”, which is an area that had three washes mix into it, making what looks like a pool in the wash. To the South there is a 10 foot waterfall wall which most can scale up with little assistance. To the SouthEast there are two washes, both of which lead to the Fluorite deposits of Afton Canyon. Yet, they are not really terribly close to Afton Canyon, we just had to walk nearly 2.7 miles to get there, from Afton Canyon. Maybe the Fluorite deposits of Near the wash that leads into Pyramid Canyon did not have the same ring.

If you hop up the waterfall you can walk over to a deposit of “Cattail” reeds, or Typha. You will see hundreds of reed stalks along with dozens and dozens of pods of seeds, the familiar “Cattail” part, which have been turned into quartz and calcite geodes, sometimes with banded red and white jasper/agate. Those ones are particularly showy. Some lapidary collectors have taken advantage of the pretty banded agate/jasper available, yet literally tons more are there, not including another deposit further North with the same type of material. More deposits of Typha fossils must exist in more locations in these hills.

From the cattail fossil site, there is a road that takes you Westward towards the Basin Road area via a DEEP dip Southwards via Baxter Wash. Just a short distance West on this road and a faint turn off will be visible on the North side of the road. This turn off leads you to the start of the Fluorite prospects.



