As a child, I always asked while traveling highway 89 to Provo or Salt Lake about the town of Birdseye. Where did it get its name? Is there really marble there? Do people collect marble there? Then someone said "There's rattlesnakes there." So I lost all interest in going to find the marble.
Where to collect:
Specimens can be found along the road just after crossing the Forest Service boundary. If you feel adventurous, this road can be followed up to the abandoned birdseye marble quarry (roughly 2.5 miles), but four wheel drive is highly recommended. Some of the birdseye marble contains cores of snail fossils, which have been replaced by the mineral calcite. This material takes a great polish and is ideal for making unusual decorative bookends.
Utah’s rock, mineral, and fossil collectors must adhere to rules and regulations established by owners or managing agencies of the lands on which they wish to collect.
Prior to collecting, rockhounds should determine ownership of the lands they intend to visit and familiarize themselves with the regulations that apply to collecting on those lands. Consult surface-management status maps (sold by various agencies and outlets, including the Utah Geological Survey and the Bureau of Land Management) or site-specific land-ownership maps (at the recorder’s office in the county where you intend to collect).
Utah’s lands are managed by the federal government (Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Reclamation, Department of Defense, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, American Indians), state government (School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration), and private owners (including local governments). Rockhounding permits may be required to collect on some government lands, and permission is required to collect on private lands.
About 67 percent of Utah’s lands are managed by the federal government. Most of this land is open to collecting except for National Parks, National Monuments, American Indian lands, military reservations, dam sites, and wildlife refuges.
Federal Lands
Links of interest follow:
http://www.untraveledroad.com/Tour/USA/Utah/Utah?w=23Whttp://www.mindat.org/photo-337354.html
The following comes from wikipedia.
Birdseye is an unincorporated community in southeastern Utah County, Utah located on the back of the Wasatch Range along U.S. Highway 89.
Birdseye was settled in 1885 and originally named "Summit Basin" and later "Clinton". The present name "Birdseye" was chosen because of the nearby birdseye marble located in the quarries near Indianola.[3]
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