Kansas Agate Types

Rosebud Agate

This agate type is quite new to the agate scene and is now the characteristic and common agate of south-central Kansas. While these have obviously been found for years in the area, it was only in the last year that we really figured out where they came from and what they were called. I spent a good deal of the fall semester last year attempting to track down sources online and talking to people in New Mexico in search of answers. I eventually was able to track down the source of these agates to volcanic canyons in Union Co New Mexico and (almost certainly) in Las Animas Co Colorado, as well as the name- Rosebud Agate. Obviously the agates that end up in the Arkansas River must come form the northern Colorado deposits, and while those have yet to be confirmed, we have found many Rosebud agates in the Cimarron River in far SW Kansas after hypothesizing that they would have washed from New Mexico. The route these agates must take to travel from the Comanche National Grasslands in Colorado to the Arkansas must follow the Purgatoire river out of the foothills to where it meets the Arkansas River near the town of Las Animas in eastern Colorado. It is a goal of mine to rockhound both rivers in the vicinity of their conjunction to prove this hypothesis, as should be easy to do.

The map below is a representation of each county where Rosebud agates have been documented so far (by myself and others). While not overlayed on this map, the counties highlighted in Kansas and Oklahoma (with the exception of Morton Co in SW KS) follow the course of the Arkansas river. Union Co New Mexico (highlighted) is one source for these agates, and I have specific information locating the strata these agates erode from. These travel downstream on the Cimarron River, and I have documented a number of these agates from Morton Co KS a hundred miles or so downstream. These agates also likely travel down the Pecos River to the south, as well as any other major waterway from the region. Please let me know if you find these agates naturally anywhere not shown on the map and I will be delighted to add them to my database. It is interesting to note that some people have found large quantities of them in landscape gravel in SE KS, obviously far from their source and clearly imported. How far afield these agates occur naturally is not well-established though, and is an open field for research.