Blackbird Creek Garnet Area

No. Blackbird Creek drains the Blackbird Mine, an inactive cobalt and copper mine on the EPA National Priorities List. The mine site is roughly 830 acres of private land within an active Superfund cleanup, and creek sediments are contaminated by historic mine drainage. It is not a recreational collecting destination.

The Emerald Creek Garnet Area near Clarkia, managed by the St. Joe Ranger District of the Idaho Panhandle National Forests. It is the only public star garnet dig in the world, tickets are booked through Recreation.gov, and the limit is 2 pounds per person with one permit per individual per year.

Uncontrolled acid mine drainage from the workings carried metals including cobalt and copper into Blackbird Creek and Big Deer Creek, tributaries of Panther Creek, damaging chinook salmon, steelhead and resident fish habitat. That led to federal listing on the National Priorities List and a long-running cleanup.

The mine property itself is private and gated. Surrounding land is Salmon-Challis National Forest, where general recreation is allowed and casual mineral collecting for personal use is generally permitted, but active and historic claims are widespread. Verify claim status and forest rules at 208-756-5100 before collecting.

Very. The site is about 21 miles east of Salmon via the Panther Creek road system, on long unpaved forest roads that are often single lane with no cell service and are snow-closed outside roughly July through September. Carry extra fuel, water and recovery gear if you travel the drainage.

The federal register of the most contaminated hazardous waste sites in the United States, commonly called Superfund. Listing triggers federal oversight of investigation and cleanup. Blackbird Mine is on it because acid mine drainage carried metals into Blackbird and Big Deer creeks and damaged salmon and steelhead habitat downstream.

Travelling public roads in the wider area is normal, but the mine property itself is private, gated and part of an active cleanup, and creek sediments in the affected drainages carry mine-derived metals. Do not collect rock, sediment or water there, and do not enter workings, which are unstable as well as contaminated.

In Lemhi County, Idaho, about 21 miles east of Salmon, on a surface water divide between Big Deer Creek and Blackbird Creek, both tributaries of Panther Creek. The mine site covers roughly 830 acres of private land reached by remote forest roads through the Salmon-Challis National Forest.

It was one of the most significant cobalt resources in the United States. Mining began with gold in 1893 and shifted to cobalt and copper through the twentieth century. Cobalt's strategic importance kept interest in the deposit alive long after the environmental problems became apparent.

Casual mineral collecting for personal use is generally allowed on Salmon-Challis National Forest land, but active and historic mining claims are widespread throughout the Lemhi County districts and boundaries are often unmarked. Verify claim status with the forest at 208-756-5100 before collecting anywhere in the area.

Collectors who notice the discrepancy point to how site lists get built: a mineral occurrence record showing garnet in the Salmon River Mountains gets copied into guide after guide without anyone checking what else is at that coordinate. The result is that a Superfund cleanup area with contaminated creek sediments circulates as a collecting destination. The general advice people draw from cases like this is to check EPA and land-status records, not just mineral databases, before driving to a remote coordinate.

The consistent position is to stay out and stay off. People note that mine waste can carry arsenic, lead, cobalt and copper in forms that are not obvious by eye, that dust and sediment are the main exposure routes, and that many such sites are also legally closed. The recommendation is to treat any site with visible acid drainage, coloured seeps or remediation infrastructure as off limits regardless of what minerals are reported from it.