Quartz crystal
Geologists say that Arkansas and Brazil have the best-quality quartz in the world, and today rockhounds, families and tourists from all over the world head for the Hot Springs and Mount Ida area to go prospecting in the abundant quartz crystal deposits of the Ouachitas, according to the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism’s website.
Rockhounds will find multiple “dig-your-own” crystal mines in the Ouachitas, mostly in Mount Ida, the “Quartz Crystal Capital of the World,” the department says.
Additional mines are found in Mena, Jessieville and Story. For those who like quartz crystals, but don’t want to dig their own, there are numerous rock shops in Hot Springs and the Ouachitas that sell Arkansas crystals, according to the department’s website.
The most popular mineral resource on the Ouachita National
Forest in Arkansas is quartz, according to the U.S. Forest Service’s website.
Natural occurrences of quartz crystal are common in white quartz veins found throughout the Ouachita Mountains in the eastern and southern portions of the ONF and adjacent areas.
Arkansas quartz crystal is eagerly sought by the commercial operator and the “rockhounder” alike, it says.
The desire to find the stone stretches back in history. In the “notable quotes” section of its website on the minerals, the ONF quotes H.R. Schoolcraft, from a book on the mineralogy and geology of Missouri and Arkansas and other sections of the western country that was published in 1819: “One of the most noted localities of this mineral (quartz) west of the Mississippi River is the Hot Springs of Ouachita in Arkansaw Territory. At this place numerous pieces of quartz have been found, very pure and transparent, and beautifully crystallized. … “
In 1952, A.E.J. Engel, in “Quartz Crystal Deposits of Western Arkansas: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 973-E,” notes that the “existence of quartz crystals in the Ouachita Mountains has been known since the days of the Indians. According to Hugh Miser, DeSoto’s men found that the Indians had been chipping arrowheads from quartz crystal.”
In 1988, former U.S. Sen. Dale Bumpers noted in remarks before the U.S. Senate that “The Ouachita (National Forest) contains large deposits of quartz, a silica-based mineral which is valued for its aesthetic qualities and for certain industrial applications. Small mining operations have existed on and near the National Forest for many years … In the Ouachita Forest, where the quartz crystal formations are reputed to be the best in the world, the result has been an onslaught of new mining activity.”