Where to Find Quartz in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania quartz comes from two settings: Appalachian metamorphic belt veins, and the famous skarn pockets of the Pennsylvania-Maryland line. Herkimer-style doubly-terminated quartz turns up around the Chestnut Hill quarry near Easton and in scattered Lehigh County dolomite quarries. Smoky and milky quartz vein material is common on roadcuts through the Reading Prong and the Susquehanna highlands. The most famous Pennsylvania quartz locality is Ellenville-style sceptre quartz near the New Jersey border, and the Chickies Rock area in Lancaster County yields tabular and acicular quartz crystals in altered quartzite. Most active collecting today depends on quarry permission or fee access.
Map of 32 quartz collecting spots in Pennsylvania
Best counties for quartz in Pennsylvania
Ranked by the number of mapped quartz spots. County links open the full rockhounding page for that county.
- Chester County5 spots
- Delaware County5 spots
- Cumberland County3 spots
- Bedford County2 spots
- Carbon County2 spots
- Huntingdon County2 spots
- Monroe County2 spots
- Westmoreland County2 spots
- Adams County1 spot
- Berks County1 spot
- Blair County1 spot
- Centre County1 spot
- Lancaster County1 spot
- Montgomery County1 spot
- Northampton County1 spot
- Schuylkill County1 spot
- York County1 spot
Every quartz spot we track in Pennsylvania
Sorted by county. Coordinates open in Google Maps.
Before you go
Read the quartz identification guide so you know what a keeper looks like in the field: Quartz in the encyclopedia.
