Montana Moss Agate

Receive ONE medium sized tumbled Moss Agate from Montana, USA. 

Montana Moss Agate is a name given to this beautiful chalcedony. It's found, most abundantly, in the alluvial. gravels of the Yellowstone River. This agate would probably be better named Yellowstone Agate, because its genesis was centered in the Yellowstone Park area. 

The actual tremendous volcanic activity that produced the conditions necessary for the formation of agate, spanned hundreds of miles and millions of years.

Although it’s genesis centered in the Yellowstone park area of Montana and Wyoming, this volcanic activity ranged from the eastern Rocky Mountain front in south-central Wyoming to the western front of the Black Hills and north across eastern Montana and into Saskatchewan and Manitoba Canada.

Eastern Montana was mostly a shallow inland ocean, almost a swamp with huge forests lining it’s shores and islands of volcanoes spewing forth lava to entomb parts of the forest in lava and ash. The bowels of the Yellowstone bulged and roared and flowed mountains of lava that decimated thousands of acres of mighty redwoods and sequoias for hundreds of miles around. This decimation continued for hundreds of years with layer upon layer of forests growing up and then being driven down under the ponderous weight of all the mega-tons of lava and ash. The hot lava devoured most of the wood in its rush to cover the trees, but some of the shape and ingredients of the limbs remained trapped in the cooling lava. When the time of volcanoes and lava was subdued and the rains came, mineral laden silica-water flowed into the cavities and pockets left by the dying trees and bubbling lava. As flow after flow slowly filled the pockets with liquefied silica, Montana Agate was born.