Rome Snakeskin Agate – May 2021
We were driving past Rome, Oregon so we decided to stop to collect snakeskin agate since it is so unique looking and the collecting location is only a few miles off of the highway. In addition, books describe this location to also have jasper, agate and apache tears. This was a last minute addition to our trip so we hadn’t done any research or planning before we headed out to the spot.
If we had done research and planning beforehand we would have found that the GPS locations in both Oregon rockhounding guidebooks are on private property. Whether it’s okay to rockhound on this specific parcel of private property is unknown. The guidebooks clearly state that this is public lands and it clearly is not. There is public land very close to the GPS locations given in the book and there likely is agate there but it is irresponsible to send people to rockhound on private property without indicating that it is private property.
However, we were unable to make it all the way to the rock collecting spots because the road was washed out and currently is only passable by highly capable off road vehicles. The brown pin in the photo below marks where the road was impassible. There is another road that appears like it could lead to the other side of the intersection near the impassible spot, but on satellite view it’s clear that that other road no longer exists and is not a possible route in.
