HistoryJune 2, 2026 · 6 min read

The claim in Virgin Valley

We don't just buy rough — once a year we go dig our own, on a ten-acre fire opal claim in the Nevada high desert.

A wet crystal opal slab fresh from the wash bucket at Rainbow Ridge, blue, green, and orange play-of-color on dark wet rock.

Most of our rough comes direct from miners we've dealt with for years. Some of it comes from us. We hold a ten-acre claim in Virgin Valley, up in the far northwest corner of Nevada by the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge, and once a year we go work it. Most trips we also put in days at Rainbow Ridge, the mine Glen and Donna Hodson run together in the same valley — they've worked that ground most of their lives, and digging next to them is an education no book covers.

Virgin Valley is fire opal country — and it's strange, wonderful material. Millions of years ago this was forest and wetland; volcanic ash buried it, silica-rich water moved through, and opal formed where wood, cones, and roots used to be. A lot of what comes out of the ground there is opalized wood: you can see the grain, the bark line, sometimes the growth rings, with color burning through the middle.

What a digging season looks like

It's high desert — long dirt roads, antelope, no cell signal. The work itself is unglamorous: moving bentonite clay by hand and checking every likely lump against the sun. Most days you find nothing. Then a piece rolls out of the wall wet and flashing, and you remember why you drove eight hours.

The big find

Two diggers working through a pile of dirt and rock heaped on a steel table at Rainbow Ridge, high desert hills behind. — The pile, before. Fresh ground up on the table at Rainbow Ridge — every lump gets checked by hand.

The best day we've had out there started like every other one: a fresh pile on the table and a few hours of turning rocks. Then the wall gave up a seam of color that didn't stop.

A hand bracing a chunk of tan matrix with a seam of green and orange opal still embedded in the dirt. — Still in the dirt, exactly where it sat for the last ten-plus million years.

Two hands holding a dirt-crusted rock with a window of opal showing, over a blue bucket of wash water. — Out of the ground and over the wash bucket.

Hands washing the rock in a bucket of muddy water, the opal blazing green and orange through the murk. — Glen working the clay back in the wash bucket — the first time the color fires through the mud.

This is the part Glen makes look easy and isn't: getting a wet, fragile piece out of bentonite without snapping the color bar, then washing it down by feel. The opal came out whole.

Glen Hodson in a blue plaid shirt, magnifying loupe pushed up, examining a piece of matrix over soak trays in his shop. — Glen Hodson grading a piece over the soak trays in his shop — the eye that knows what's worth keeping.

Glen and Donna Hodson side by side at the sorting trays in the Rainbow Ridge shop, working through the day's material. — Glen and Donna at the sorting trays — they run Rainbow Ridge together, and the day's finds go through both their hands.

A wet crystal opal slab resting on dark wet rock, showing blue, green, and orange play-of-color. — Fresh out of the wash, still wet from the bucket.

A long opalized limb cast on wet dark rock in milky wash water, pale blue with flashes of green and orange. — An opalized limb cast from the same ground — silica where a branch used to be.

Fingers holding a rectangular crystal opal with a dark piece of petrified wood still attached to one face. — Crystal opal with the petrified wood still attached — the before-and-after of replacement in one stone.

Two dusty hands holding a water-filled display dome up against the desert sky, a large crystal opal glowing inside. — Ready for display — sealed in water so it never has to dry.

Here's the honest part, because we'd rather tell you ourselves: a lot of Virgin Valley opal is unstable when it dries. Plenty of pieces will craze — develop fine cracks — once they leave the wet clay they sat in for millions of years. That's why the big find lives in a water dome, why much of what we keep from these trips stays in jars as display specimens, and why anything we do cut and sell from there gets dried slowly, watched for months first, and described with the same full honesty as everything else on the bench.

The ground holds it for ten million years. The least we can do is be patient for a few months.

The crystal opal photographed on black velvet, teal and red fire across the full face. — Back home, on black velvet.

The crystal opal on black velvet from another angle, blue at the top falling into deep orange fire. — Same stone, different angle — that's the whole game with opal.

Mark Martucci rode along on the 2024 and 2025 trips and shot everything you see here; both full galleries are linked below. The mine is where the shop's name stops being a brand and goes back to being a place.