Organizers for the annual Rock and Gem show were ecstatic Saturday afternoon with a turnout that brought 800 persons in during the first hour.
That total doesn’t count children under the age of 13.
Sweet Home Rock and Mineral Society President Dick Conklin said he thought there were fewer children than usual, but more adults were spending money, “making dealers happy.”
Graham Boucher, 13, of Salem and Marie Dadey, 8, were at the rock show with their grandparents. Boucher doesn’t collect rocks much, but Dadey said she had a collection. She added a couple of grab bags to it. Boucher bought a hematite ring for his mother. He also bought a small bottle of amethyst and a necklace.
“I’ve seen the ones that are like claws (holding a marble),” Boucher said about his necklace. “I like birds. This is like a claw with a bird on it.”
Their grandmother, Betty Dadey, of Lebanon comes to the show every year with her husband, Pat, she said. “I come against my better judgment, then I always have fun when I get here.”
Joselyn Kittson, 12, of Albany and her friend Stephanie Roles were enjoying the competition displays, which included entries from fiber optics to petrified woods and Indian artifacts.
“I like all the ocean stuff,” Kittson said. “I like all the dolphins.”
In fact, she found a dolphin necklace. Roles likes horses and found a unicorn mounted on a stone.
Kittson enjoys collecting rocks, she said. “We have a lot of obsidian, and I have, it’s kind of like an artifact. It’s what the Indians used to work obsidian.”
Kittson tries to visit the show every year.
“It seems like there used to be more things than there is now,” she said. “It’s still pretty cool.”
“It’s a good show,” Betty George, who was helping a dealer, said. “It looks empty right now. Earlier, it was just swamped.”
“It’s been one of the best shows so far,” Joe Cota, owner and operator of Rock Castle in Lebanon, said. “The attendance has been real good. Early in the day, you could hardly breathe in here there was so many people.”
Cota has been rock hounding for 25 years.
“I wanted to make some extra money right after I got married,” Cota said. He was a spreader in a plywood mill. Now, his rock business makes him a living. “It’s kind of like gold panning. It’s the thrill of finding something worth a couple of hundred dollars.”
He has dug up rocks worth thousands of dollars, Cota said. It took years to learn how to make such finds.
“You just milk the brains of the old timers,” Cota said. The surface rocks in the areas known by the old timers have usually been picked clean, but those are the places to dig.
Last year, Cota dug up a 14-foot log, six inches in diameter, in McDermott.
“We used to have a place in the Sweet Home area,” Cota said. “The Holley Blue agate, it was one of the prize (stones) in the Northwest. The timber company, CTC (Cascade Timber Consulting), doesn’t anybody digging it.”
That change two or three years ago was “a real letdown” and disappointment for area rock hounds, Cota said.
Christopher Arp of Portland used to dig Holley Blue.
“My mom and dad took me rock hunting when I was a little boy all over Oregon,” Arp said. “I’m looking for another place. I’ve been studying geology since I was a little boy. I know it’s out there.”
Rock hounds would love to come to an arrangement with CTC to be allowed to dig Holley Blue again, Cota said. The area was trashed and small trees pulled up by rock hounds after the site was logged.
“It was really kind of our fault, but we’d do anything to dig it and get it back to what it used to be,” Cota said.
The Rock and Gem Show drew more than 800 persons in the first hour, volunteer Linette Conklin said. “We have had a lot of people here, and it’s only 3:30 p.m. and we’re here till 6 p.m.”
Attendance was definitely up this year, Conklin said. “We don’t keep those kind of records, but today has been a great success attendance-wise.”
In the competitive portion of the show, Irwin Irvin of Vancouver, Wash., became the first person in the history of the show to earn 100 points for a display. He received the points for his jasper display.