Ear: Agate

On Sept. 3, rockhound and jewelry maker Jesse Creswell was out searching for interesting stones in Tillamook County with his friend, Joel Grothe, thatoregonlife.com reports. After “navigating 1.5 miles of slippery rocks, dodging log jams (and) wrestling through thorny Salmonberry bushes,” the pair came across a rockhound’s dream, a 60.4-pound agate in the coast range.

“We had come across a few decent finds,” Creswell recalled, “but nothing that stood out quite like the behemoth agate protruding from the ground,” the largest one he has ever found. He said on his Facebook page, Rock’N Oregon, that it was “more than half buried in the mud next to a creek.” The exact location (no surprises here) is a secret. They carefully packed it up and out of there, no easy task considering agate’s weight and the terrain.

When asked on Facebook what he planned to do with it, Creswell said Grothe “has a saw big enough (to cut it), but I wanted to get it home and admire it for a bit. I’m sure we will be cutting it soon.”

By the way, Guinness World Records says the largest agate ever found was in 2009 by Linda Wang in China, and it’s a whopper. It weighs 134,680.84 pounds and measures 798.82 cubic feet.