Did you know that you can find agates in Alaska? Enjoy these unique Alaskan agates found in the Talkeetna Mountains and Northwestern Kenai Peninsula in Southcentral Alaska near the towns of Talkeetna, Trapper Creek, Wasilla, Palmer, Sutton, and Chikaloon.

Agates found in this area were originally brought here by glaciers during the last ice age from the west side of Cook Inlet. Here, agates formed less than 2 million years ago in chalcedony-rich hydrothermal deposits associated with faults in volcanic rocks deep in the Mount Spurr complex west of Tyonek.

They were then scoured out by intensively eroding ice streams flowing down the nearby Chakachatna-McArthur River corridor, carried by glacier to the Salamatof-Nikiski area, and ultimately deposited in sub-estuarine fans that jut from our coastal bluffs on the northwestern peninsula. Not surprisingly, a good time to search for exposed agates is after a winter storm erodes those bluffs.

In Kenai, these agates are called lucky agates, or nudech’ghela and the stone brings good luck to whoever finds it.

Most varieties found in this area are white but occasionally come in other colors like deep orange.



About Agates

Agates are truly a natural wonder. Dr. Peter Heaney, a mineral sciences professor at Penn State University and an agate expert, writes that “agates are one of the few gem materials that have not been successfully synthesized, even today. So nobody knows exactly how agates formed. After many decades of studying crystal growth, I regard agates as the most complex example of hierarchical pattern formation in minerals, and most of the complex patterning is not even visible to the naked eye.”