STORIES: NEW AND ARCHIVED
I’ve kept a mining journal from when I was a teenager. What I hope with these pages is to share some of our family’s adventures. Some of the photos are from slides, some are from the first digital cameras, and some are more recent from cell phones. I have about forty from old web pages but, as you know, most of my days are spent mining and getting minerals ready for shows, so these pages come at the end of normally long days. Hopefully I can post some of the older stories (I may correct errors, but that will be all) as well as post some newer pages. Enjoy. Let me know your thoughts in an e-mail. Joe Dorris

Betty Jean Pocket Summer 2019
2019 season, a fantastic specimen was recovered from Site D on the Smoky Hawk Mine.

Summer 2005 – Story of the Legend and the Legacy Pocket
An incredible specimen now resides at the Colorado School of Mines Geology Museum. This is its discovery story.

Christmas Pocket 2000, Blue Smoky Claim
December 2000 we hit one of our first major amazonite with smoky quartz pockets on the Blue Smoky Claim.