Hematite Pebbles

Item Description

"Bars", or gravel terraces, along the Missouri River were worked for placer gold (and in the case of the Eldorado Bar, where these specimens are from, sapphires) beginning back on 1865. Here is a box of naturally rounded pebbles of hematite from the Eldorado Bar, collected from placer deposits there by someone probably quite a long time ago. The old label shows the pebbles to have been acquired in 1944, out of the "Starz Collection." It is not inconceivable that these go back to the 1800s.