Rockhound Resource – A Rockhound’s Worst Online Resource!
By Currently Rockhounding
This article and video have been a long time coming for me. Over the years I have seen the website rockhoundresource.com grow in popularity, and be shared and promoted as a valuable resource for the general rockhounding community, but the truth couldn’t be further from that when you look into what the site actually is in detail.
Rockhounding Resource is a website that claims to have rockhounding location information for all 50 states. The locations include GPS coordinates and maps with all locations shown.
At its core this is a marketing site that uses inaccurate, outdated, and unverified information about rockhounding locations to get you to visit the website so they can show you ads and do affiliate marketing. More effort has gone into the marketing on the website than the actual content.
In the disclaimer on the site, the site’s author and creator, Mike Rhea, admits that he has not been to any of the locations he tells other people to visit and he doesn’t actually know if you can collect at said locations. Yet, he still lists them on the website as a place to visit.
The disclaimer might have the website creator and author legally covered and protected from liability but it still doesn’t make it morally or ethically correct to put out such blatantly poor information. The website lists locations by GPS coordinates. There is a clear implication of preciseness with GPS coordinates; the coordinates point to an exact location. If this is meant to be “a guide to get you started”, using GPS coordinates provides a false implies accuracy and knowledge where there is none, in the case of this website.
Many times I have also seen just the Google map that he uses shared as a stand alone link, which is separate from his website. This means anyone accessing the map in that way is not being shown the disclaimer.
At the time writing, his Washington state map has over 470,000 views. How many of these viewers acted on this information given here and were mislead by it? Even if it was 0.25% that’s still over 1000 people for this Washington state alone.
In the video below I go in-depth how you can verify property records yourself so that you are never sent some place you shouldn’t go.
Below are all of the locations listed on the Washington map on Rockhound Resource. I checked the property records, of as of November 2022 and the results of private versus public property are listed below. For more information about property records, please watch the video above.
It’s not really as simple as saying what is public and what is private since not all public lands are open to rock collecting but here is the break down of the list below from his website:
Private: 43
Public: 27
Public but NPS governed so rockhounding not allowed: 4
Public but location is in water without access: 4
Both Private & Colville Confederated Tribes: 2
Public but located in the ocean: 1
Public but on the side of I-5: 1
Fee permitted access: 1
Yakima Training Center Military Reservation: 1
Unknown: 1
(The formatting of this table might look compressed on some mobile devices. Switching to landscape mode or a computer will fix it.)
| # | GPS | Ownership |
| 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. | 48.780966, -117.654436 48.879986, -117.371903 48.666653, -118.068779 48.236997, -118.199865 48.110741, -117.553049 48.147558, -117.333664 48.196447, -117.061826 47.944006, -117.197859 47.887224, -117.356467 47.729584, -118.048280 47.559173, -117.327674 46.781756, -117.048446 46.631565, -117.087870 46.676628, -117.560656 46.403261, -117.102810 46.419594, -117.176601 48.939766, -119.098149 48.452453, -118.807266 48.527297, -119.023560 48.561460, -119.486580 48.039464, -118.982388 47.929658, -119.007152 47.452081, -119.810409 46.960226, -119.988429 46.834922, -119.949694 46.774743, -119.848864 46.566137, -119.976887 46.395714, -119.613123 46.488451, -119.248572 46.131602, -119.846291 46.163077, -119.980711 48.731261, -120.749852 48.521257, -121.014838 48.474287, -121.020347 48.517063, -121.967882 48.251973, -121.594149 47.985855, -121.393945 48.071682, -121.971291 47.880312, -121.829620 47.856620, -121.710075 47.699511, -121.467792 47.433238, -121.448629 47.329481, -120.745627 47.272687, -120.633654 47.205511, -120.935447 47.089262, -120.517846 46.976742, -121.178819 46.163077, -119.980711 46.131602, -119.846291 46.235928, -121.547376 45.753198, -121.208526 45.695420, -121.242308 46.928434, -122.236806 45.616497, -122.273514 45.575986, -122.437540 45.731199, -122.572925 46.067206, -122.867712 46.442831, -122.843353 46.638923, -122.772335 46.607618, -122.861320 46.746115, -122.941503 46.617128, -123.141353 46.642502, -123.279982 46.573685, -123.303473 46.666966, -123.501912 46.563522, -123.564790 46.588285, -123.615081 46.360822, -124.064345 46.492395, -124.058736 46.850482, -124.113485 47.269929, -124.230802 47.539912, -124.356140 47.607679, -124.375181 48.139289, -123.133892 48.161209, -123.709422 48.079551, -123.930529 48.070646, -124.286030 48.274833, -124.680694 48.157809, -124.673123 47.934705, -124.495966 47.905015, -124.634910 | Private Public NPS governed rockhounding not allowed Private Private Private Private Fee permitted access Private Private Private Private Private Public Private Public Private Private & Colville Confederated Tribes Public Private Private & Colville Confederated Tribes Private Private Private Public Public Yakima Military Reservation Private Private Private Private Public Public Public Unknown Public but location is in water without access Public Private Private Public but location is in water without access Public Public Public Public Private Private Public Private Private Public Private Public Private Public Public but location is in water without access Private Public but on the side of I-5 Public but location is in water without access Private Private Private Private Private Private Private Private Private Public Public Public Public Public NPS governed rockhounding not allowed Private Public NPS governed rockhounding not allowed Public Public but located in the ocean NPS governed rockhounding not allowed Public Public |
I think it’s fair to assume that the same level of accuracy you see on the Washington map exists across all of the other state maps. In the video I go in depth into where many of these locations originated from. There is some information that can be used, but the way that the information is presented is inaccurate, deceitful, and at worst, dangerous.
You really need to go the extra mile to verify anything you read on this website since the majority of it is false or misleading.