Where to Find Jasper

Owyhee country: America's picture jasper capital

The high desert where Oregon and Idaho meet produces the most famous jaspers in the world. Biggs jasper from the Columbia River hills and the Owyhee picture jaspers (Blue Mountain, Deschutes, Succor Creek) form scenic brown-and-blue landscapes inside the stone, and rough still weathers onto public BLM ground across the district. Bruneau Canyon in southwest Idaho grew the legendary Bruneau jasper; the historic digs are claimed, but float shows up in area gravels.

Hunt the region by walking wash bottoms and talus below jasper-bearing ridges. Fresh breaks show the color: a dull brown cobble often hides a vivid interior, so experienced hunters carry a crack hammer and check anything with the right heft and smooth fracture.

• Jasper in OregonThe most mapped jasper spots of any state: Biggs, Owyhee picture jasper, and beach jasper on the coast.See Oregon spots →
• Jasper in WashingtonColumbia River gravels and ocean beaches carry jasper alongside agate.See Washington spots →

The desert Southwest and Rockies

Utah's west desert, Wyoming's basins, and New Mexico's BLM lands all scatter red, yellow, and brecciated jasper through their washes, often in the same gravels that carry agate and petrified wood. Texas adds jasper along its rivers and in the Big Bend ranch country, and Arizona's washes produce colorful material statewide.

In desert country, jasper hunting is a surface game: walk slowly, work the low sun angles, and check gravel bars after flash floods rearrange the wash. The material is tough, so it survives long transport and turns up far from its source.

• Jasper in UtahWest desert washes with red and yellow jasper on open BLM land.See Utah spots →
• Jasper in WyomingBasin gravels and BLM flats, often mixed with Sweetwater agate country.See Wyoming spots →
• Jasper in New MexicoRio Grande gravels and desert districts across the south.See New Mexico spots →
• Jasper in CaliforniaMojave Desert washes and central coast beaches both produce collectible jasper.See California spots →

East of the Mississippi: historic jasper districts

Jasper is not only a Western stone. Eastern Pennsylvania's Vera Cruz and Macungie area holds jasper quarries that Native Americans worked for thousands of years, and honey-colored jasper still turns up in the surrounding woods and creeks. Piedmont creeks in North Carolina and Georgia carry jasper pebbles alongside quartz, and the material shows up in river gravels throughout the Southeast.

• Jasper in PennsylvaniaThe historic Vera Cruz jasper district and jasper-bearing creeks in the southeast.See Pennsylvania spots →
• Jasper in North CarolinaPiedmont creek gravels with jasper mixed into quartz float.See North Carolina spots →
• Jasper in GeorgiaRiver gravels and piedmont exposures across the state's center.See Georgia spots →