Mi Sueño (My dream)

Agua Nueva Vein Agate from the Mi Sueño claim.

Once upon a time there was a Mexican cattle rancher named Rodolfo Quevedo who loved agates. He traveled to El Paso often and knew an agate dealer in El Paso named Richard Vaughn. Vaughn’s Lapidary was one of the dozen or so rock shops in El Paso in the 60’s and 70’s that brought rocks and minerals to the U.S. market. Mr. Quevedo hired some workers to mine a new agate he liked and brought it to Richard Vaughn’s rock shop in El Paso. Richard called me and said I should come and look at it. A meeting was arranged and I went to El Paso to see the new agate and meet Mr. Quevedo.

Hole in the ground where the Agua Nueva was mined.

The agate was fantastic. It was a vein agate with the purple, yellow, rose, and white banded tube formations over a gold toned moss. I made a deal with Rodolfo to buy all the production and arranged with Richard Vaughn to accept the agate from Rodolfo and send it to Wisconsin. Rodolfo told me the agate came from the Agua Nueva ranch.

The Gem Shop, Inc. introduced this agate in the 1974 Tucson Show and sold it for many years until it became unavailable. All that Rodolfo would tell me was that something happened on the ranch and there would be no more agate for at least 10 years.

Agua Nueva to be mined from the right side of the valley.

In the early 1990s I had the opportunity to visit the Coconut geode mine east of the town of Esperanza. The road from highway 45 to Esperanza goes right through the Agua Nueva Ranch. I asked my guide, if there was time, could we look at the place where the Agua Nueva agate came from years ago. We stopped at the ranch, got permission and directions after talking for over an hour and drove as close as we could to the deposit. The workers, years ago, had set up a camp along the river bed about half a mile away from the working. We walked up a side canyon to where the agate came from and looked around. All the diggings were on one side near the head of the canyon. Only hand digging had been done and there was no claim monument to be seen. The digging was not very extensive and I was certain there was a lot more agate in the ground. Again, I wondered why the production had stopped so abruptly years ago.

The erected monument.

After my unsuccessful attempt to mine Apache, I considered the possibility of mining the Agua Nueva agate. I checked and there was no claim on the area. I cannot own a claim in Mexico, myself, without a Mexican company. The approximate cost for forming a Mexican company at the time was about $6,000, and I looked for ways to do this with less financial risk. My friend, Don Burrow had moved to Aldama, Mexico some years earlier and formed a company called Agata Aldama. I asked him if his company would file and hold the claim for me if I paid all the expenses. He said sure, but it would be necessary for me to come to Aldama, Chihuahua and show them where it was. I flew to Chihuahua City and Javier, Don’s partner, and I bought the cement blocks and mortar, drove to the deposit, erected the monument, and established the claim, Mi Sueño, or My Dream. Now all I had to do was figure out how I was going to mine it!