Rockhound State Park

One Of Very Few Parks In The United States Where Visitors May Collect Rocks And Minerals And Keep Them, With A Posted Weight Limit Per Person; On The Little Florida Mountains East Of Deming · Deming, New Mexico

Almost every park in the United States tells you to leave the rocks where they are. Rockhound was created in 1966 to do the opposite: visitors may collect and keep up to a posted weight per person, which is usually around fifteen pounds, and people arrive with buckets. What is in the ground here is the eroded remains of rhyolite flows from the Little Florida Mountains, which means jasper, perlite, common opal, agate and thunder eggs - geodes that look like ordinary lumps until you cut them. Finding a good one takes patience and most visitors go home with a bucket of attractive gravel, which is entirely the point. The park sits on a slope above the Mimbres basin at 4,500 feet with long views south toward Mexico, a campground among the ocotillo, and a separate unit at Spring Canyon holding a herd of introduced Persian ibex on the crags, which almost nobody visits. Buy a hammer, gloves and a bucket in Deming before you come, because there is nothing to buy at the park itself.

9880 Stirrup Road SE, Deming, Deming, New Mexico, 88030, United States

Open all year, day and night, with a day-use fee collected at a self-service station. The visitor centre keeps daytime hours and is closed on some holidays. The campground operates year round, part reservable and part first come first served. Collecting is permitted during daylight hours within the posted limit. The Spring Canyon unit a few miles away has its own gate hours and is closed in parts of the year.

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