The San Juan County Gem & Mineral Show returns to Farmington the first weekend of July, marking its 38th year as one of the region’s most enduring summer traditions and likely drawing roughly 3,000 visitors who come for minerals, fossils and hands‑on lapidary arts.
Organized by the nonprofit San Juan County Gem & Mineral Club, the show features 38 longtime vendors, a $1 raffle with prizes such as a towering amethyst cathedral, and a popular Kids Day focused on geology education. Club members say the event – and the Rock House workshop where stones are cut and polished year‑round – helps preserve a fading, hands‑on craft while inspiring new generations of rock hounds across the Four Corners.
The San Juan County Gem & Mineral Show runs July 3-5, at McGee Park. Admission is $1 for adults, and free for children 12 and under.
Along with an amethyst cathedral, raffle prizes include a blue quartz petrified wood from Blue Forest, Wyoming and a 36-inch rock pick. People have the option of dropping their raffle tickets in one of the three buckets to chose their prize if their ticket is drawn.
Tory Bonner, San Juan County Gem & Mineral Club Show chair, has been with the club for about 12 years with this year marking his 10th as the key organizer. Since moving the show to McGee Park in 2016,
the attendance has typically been around 3,000, Bonner said.
He said about 38 vendors show up every year.
Friday is “Kids Day,” with fun activities for them to learn about minerals and fossils.
“That’s been a real bright spot as a club,” Bonner said. “Our mandate as a nonprofit is for education, so we always do like museum tours at the college, and we’ll take home school groups out on field trips and things like that.”
Bonner, who grew up in Nucla, Colorado, said it was a family thing to be a rock hound and collect crystals and petrified wood. In 2008, he moved to Farmington for employment and met his wife, a geologist.
“I think she picked me because I can pick up all the heavy rocks and carry them for her,” he said.
Bonner said being involved with the show is his way to “keep alive this hands-on art that is almost a dying thing,” adding, “people don’t hardly go outside anymore, and they certainly don’t make things with their hands.”
The point of the show is for local craftsmen to have a place to showcase their wares and pretty things, lure people in and excite them about the club.
Bonner said the San Juan County Gem & Mineral Society is a nonprofit club open to anyone interested in rock hounding, collecting fossils and minerals, lapidary arts and jewelry making.
About 50 club members meet at 7 p.m. the fourth Tuesday of the month in the School of Energy building at San Juan College.
Joe Bishop provided a tour of the Rock House, which is used by San Juan County Gem & Mineral Club members and others to cut, shape and polish rocks. He’s been a primary assistant at the Rock House, 220 N. Orchard Ave. in Farmington, which serves as a lapidary workshop. Bishop said the house, which the club has used for about four years, is in Farmington’s historical record.
Bishop, who’s been into rocks and minerals his whole life, showed off the Pepper Tree petrified wood raffle prize.
“I specialize in petrified rocks, I study petrified wood,” he said, adding his dad was a rock hound. “All my friends in school were going to Disneyland. Guess where I was going – in the middle of the desert picking up rocks.”
Bishop said there are several different types of petrified wood in the San Juan Basin, including palm, cypress, sycamore and conifer.
“We’re in a Cretaceous area, all around here,” he said, adding the Cretaceous seabed went right up U.S. Highway 550 with swamp lands to the west.
Bishop said you go by eras, not years, when attempting to determine the age of petrified wood. He said dates cannot be validated – only rough approximations of eras.
He compared petrification to pickling, in that every cell must be replaced by a mineral or silica, which would take tens to hundreds of millions of years. A cucumber must absorb the vinegar into every cell to soften and gradually become a pickle.
Petrification requires an oxygen-free environment with pressure, he said. However, the process can be accelerated by vulcanization, as witnessed by the discovery of petrified wood after the eruption of Mount Saint Helens in 1980.
Bishop’s passion studying the petrification process and the beautiful results is palpable as he shares his knowledge. His library on the subject of petrification is vast, he said, noting the book “Ancient Forests: A Closer Look at Fossil Wood” by Frank Daniels is one of the best for the novice.
Jason Backe, a second-time user of the Rock House who was working on a Brazilian agate in the Rock House, said he attended a San Juan County Gem & Mineral Club meeting at the college.
“It’s great,” Backe said about the Rock House. ”Five-dollar fee, come in, have fun, get to grind on the rocks.”
The annual fee for the San Juan Gem & Mineral Society is $10 per person and $15 for a family. Use of the equipment at the Rock House is $5 for four hours.
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