Teepee Canyon Mining Area
South Dakota
Find: Teepee Canyon agates
GPS: 43.73064, -103.89101
Nearest city: Rapid City, SD
Recommended Vehicle: Something with higher clearance is preferable, but I made it in here with a rear-wheel drive work van. I had to hike up the steeper 2-track roads on foot, though.
Season: Accessible year round, Winter is likely to have significant snow, ice, and frigid temperatures.
Summary:
Teepee Canyon agates are one of the few varieties of agates that have been mined commercially in North America. I am certainly no expert on the topic, but hey form in layers of limestone within the Black Hills area. Within these layers, you will find nodules of chert. In those nodules, you’ll find vibrant reds, oranges, and yellows comprising the layers of the tightly-banded Teepee Canyon agate.
When exploring these coordinates, you’ll be poking around a site that was formerly worked with heavy equipment. You’ll see all sorts of workings in the area. At these coordinates specifically, there are 3 areas that have been heavily worked. I parked in the valley between them all and hiked to each during an afternoon.
Turning over as much limestone as possible produced my best finds, which were smaller Teepee Canyon agates that were seemingly left behind or overlooked. Eventually, I sat down and dug in an area that had concentrations of small fragments with banding and color. I even got to pop open a couple nodules that I found, but didn’t get lucky on revealing any banding.
The road to get in here is a National Forest road and it wasn’t too beaten up. If you have a high clearance vehicle with nice tires, you can really make life easier and drive up most the 2-track roads to the digging sites.
3 Helpful Tools
Water Bladder
The warmer months are arid and dry in South Dakota. A water bladder is a great luxury to hike with.
I used a 1" flat bar chisel to split open nodules that I found to try and expose agate banding.
Chisel
Spray Bottle
A spray bottle is useful for getting a better look at banding in the dry stones you’ll find.
An example of the 2 track road I took my van down.
This is what the workings look like. It's a bunch of busted up limestone blocks.
These are some chert nodules, still within the limestone matrix rock.
One of the more eye-catching little fragments I found.
This is a different piece of a Teepee Canyon agate that I got wet to better show the color.
The spot I dug a little bit in to eventually find a few loose nodules.
No luck getting banding, but a little bit of color.
Teepee Canyon agates are found for miles within this area. Don't be shy to go out and find your own spot in the Black Hills to hunt for them!