Rockhounding in Custer County, South Dakota

Custer County

Tepee Canyon is the home of the distinctive Tepee Canyon banded agate, a fortification agate of purples, reds, and oranges encased in a chocolate-brown limestone host. The old commercial diggings off US-16 west of Custer are no longer open to mining claims, and rockhounds have productively worked the tailings here for decades. Agates here sit several feet inside the limestone and usually must be chipped free.

Agate, Beryl, Almandine Garnet, Lepidolite

Custer County

These are the classic Fairburn agate beds, the type locality for South Dakota's official state gem, sitting in the eroded badlands and surface gravels just east of the village of Fairburn. Fairburn agates are prized fortification agates that occur in nearly every color combination, and the same ground also yields agatized wood and yellow jasper. The hunting is surface picking, best after rain or snowmelt freshly exposes material.

Fairburn Agate, Agatized Wood, Yellow Jasper

Custer County

This locality along the Cheyenne River drainage sits within the core Fairburn agate belt just south of the main Fairburn beds, and the river gravels and surrounding badlands carry the same prized state-gem fortification agate. It offers another productive Fairburn-agate option in the Buffalo Gap grassland country.

Fairburn Agate