The PRT’s resident rockhound reflects on his low-key search for gold — and the search that brought him to Sonoita-Elgin in the first place, two decades ago.

Keith Krizan
Let’s Go Get Stones: Past Prospects
It is in the black sand that gold can sometimes be found. The fact is, though, that I have yet to authenticate a single flash in my pan.
Let’s Go Get Stones: Animas Valley
Finding carnelian quartz, called the sunset stone by ancient Egyptians, in a sunlit and beautiful place in the borderlands.
Let’s Go Get Stones: Melendrez Pass
A gathering storm during a recent adventure into the Santa Ritas precluded any rockhounding. But we did stop at a remarkably intact prospector’s cabin in Little Fish Canyon.
Let’s Go Get Stones: Monsoon Hiatus
Summers here are not the ideal time to go off-road and hunt for minerals.
Let’s Go Get Stones: The Road to Chalcanthite
It is foolish and dangerous to enter an old dig, but one day last winter my wife and I decided to enter the mine in Middlemarch Canyon.
Let’s Go Get Stones: Carr Canyon Quartz
One of the unmitigated joys of rockhounding in southeast Arizona is how often one comes upon the long-ago abandoned remains of a once thriving mining operation.
Let’s Go Get Stones: Hunter or Gatherer?
Is it better to be a hunter or a gatherer? What happens when we try to apply logic to the art/science of rockhounding?Â
Let’s Go Get Stones: Digging the Past
Many important dinosaur remains have been found all over this state. From my backyard I can look and see the places where fossils exist.
Let’s Go Get Stones: Land of Leaverite
The glint in the black sand at the bottom of a pan can give momentary rise to an elevated feeling of Eureka! Only to be followed by the feeling of anti-Eureka, whatever the name for that is.