A Rockhound's 80-Year Mineral Odyssey

A Visit to the Not-So-Dark Continent

- Bob Jones

As described in the earlier installments of this journey, my involvement in the Tucson Show was what actually set me up for this 80-year adventure with minerals. One of my best friends during my work with the Tucson club was Dick Bideaux, who had actually won a blue ribbon with his mineral exhibit in the first Tucson Gem and Mineral Show® in 1955! Dick and I had become fast friends and we traveled extensively together. We were involved in the birth of the Friends of Mineralogy organization and the magazine Mineralogical Record. We also did some collecting together, usually following up on some vague notice about minerals in an old mine somewhere in Arizona. Because of his in-depth involvement in minerals, the Tucson Show, and his writing, Dick had worldwide contacts, so he was a very important part of the evolution of the Tucson Show. He had been responsible for bringing Dr. Peter Embrey, Curator at the British Museum of Natural History, to the show in 1970. This was the first time a curator from outside the United States was invited to Tucson, and it started a trend. Having exhibits and mineral experts from other countries is a major feature of the show today. Dick had graduated from Harvard at a young age, so he also helped the show get experts from that institution to participate in the show.

In the 1970s, I was researching copper with an eye toward doing a book on the red metal as a collector species. Dick was researching for his six-volume series Handbook of Mineralogy, a superb reference that leans toward the use of computer information. Our research was one reason Dick and I spent time in England and on the European continent, checking out museum collections. Our trip there made it possible for me to photograph the mineral collection in the Sorbonne, Paris, and the British Museum of Natural History, London. We spent a lot of time with Gilbert Guathier, a remarkable mining engineer who had spent years in Africa.