4.6" Wingate Pass Plume Agate Section - California

Death Valley Plume Agate, also known as Wingate Pass Agate, is a relatively rare, colorful variety of plume agate that came from Wingate Pass in Death Valley, California. Agate from this location was collected prior to Death Valley's establishment as a national park, so specimens on the market are purely from old collections. This makes finding uncut, rough material difficult due to the majority of available specimens that are already cut and polished.

About Agate

Agate is a variety of microcrystalline quartz (chalcedony) that displays translucence and, in some cases, banding. Agate primarily forms when silica-rich fluids fill pockets within rocks and/or fossils, depositing the silica along the walls of the rock. This process can result in banding patterns, as the compositions and impurities of these depositing fluids change over time. These banding patterns can either form as flat layers, creating linear patterns known as waterline agate, or as rounded layers, forming more common ring-like patterns. These patterns depend on the surfaces available for deposition.