Where to Find Quartz in Kentucky
Kentucky has 8 mapped collecting spots that report quartz, spread across 6 counties. 8 of the spots are on land mapped as publicly accessible.
Every quartz spot we track in Kentucky
Best spotGraves CountyGraves County, KentuckyPublic access · Agate, Chalcedony, Chert +3
Best spotLincoln CountyLincoln County, KentuckyPublic access · Geode, Quartz, Celestite +3
Best spotLittle Sandy RiverElliott County, KentuckyPublic access · Apatite, Almandine Garnet, Chromite +3
Best spotKentucky Agate District (Jackson County)Jackson County, KentuckyPublic access · Agate, Chalcedony, Jasper +1
BirdsvilleLivingston County, KentuckyPublic access · Calcite, Dolomite, Fluorite +1
CarrsvilleLivingston County, KentuckyPublic access · Calcite, Fluorite, Quartz
Kentucky LakeLyon County, KentuckyPublic access · Geode, Jasper, Quartz
Green RiverLincoln County, KentuckyPublic access · Geode, Quartz
Standout quartz spots in Kentucky
Hand-picked from the full list above, with the reason each one earns a trip.
Little Sandy River
Elliott County
Elliott County holds the only kimberlite in Kentucky, the Late Cretaceous Elliott County Peridotite at Ison Creek, a mantle-derived intrusion that carries pyrope garnet, chrome diopside and olivine.
Graves County
Graves County
Graves County, in the far-western Jackson Purchase, is the state's best-known source of gravel-pit agate, jasper and silicified wood.
Kentucky Agate District (Jackson County)
Jackson County
Jackson County is a core producer of Kentucky agate, the banded red, black and gray quartz named the official state rock in 2000.
Lincoln County
Lincoln County
Lincoln County sits at the heart of Kentucky's geode belt, where the Mississippian Fort Payne and Warsaw formations shed hollow, quartz-lined nodules into the upper Green River drainage and its feeder creeks.
Best counties for quartz in Kentucky
Ranked by the number of mapped quartz spots. County links open the full rockhounding page for that county.
Before you go
Read the quartz identification guide so you know what a keeper looks like in the field: Quartz in the encyclopedia.
