Little Eagle Butte Sun Stone

- Jim Landon

The colors of many gemstones are automatically associated with their names. When one thinks of emerald, for example, the color green comes to mind. Rubies are red, aquamarine is sea blue, amethyst is purple to violet. There are differences in clarity, color intensity, size and cut, but the color associated with the stone is in the name. On the other hand, sunstones that are found in a small area north of the burg of Plush, Oregon, in the south-central part of the state, are something quite different than their name suggests. The range of colors and the combinations of those colors boggle the mind. In addition, stones can be dichroic and have microscopic internal inclusions of copper crystals, commonly called “schiller”. This diversity of colors and schiller make sunstone an unusual and highly desirable gemstone.

The original discoveries of sunstones occurred in the flat, sagebrush-covered Rabbit Basin, north of Plush. Commercial mining and fee digging for the gemstones has been taking place in this area for many years. The Dust Devil (dustdevil mining.com), Spectrum (highdesertgemsandminerals.com), and Double Eagle (doubleeag lemine.com) claims offer fee-digging opportunities alongside their commercial operations.

There is also an unclaimed public area, with places to park trailers and campers, where hopeful prospectors can wander at their leisure and either search for sunstones on the surface or dig for them in any of the numerous prospect pits that have been dug over the years. I have been fortunate to be able to dig in both the public area and, several times, at the Dust Devil.