OTHER GEMS
During 30 years at the WGS, while consulting for diamond and gold exploration companies, I found hundreds of gold and gem deposits. How did I do this? I used geology as a guide, I looked at things differently, and I was motivated unlike most people I worked with whose biggest discoveries were the donuts at the local bakery. For me, I wanted to see what was on the other side of the hill, I wanted to see what was hiding in an outcrop, I wanted to see if I could find geological and geochemical clues that could lead me to the next mineral deposit.
Above - barite from Mine Hills, Shirley Basin. Below - a group of cabochons cut from various material.
While 
conducting reconnaissance, I discovered jasper in several old mines at Tin Cup near Sweetwater Station. I found a large outcrop of jasper (with fossil leaf imprints) near the south edge of the Rattlesnake Hills, and found jasperoid at Quaking Asp Mountain near Rock Springs. Some of the Tin Cup jasper is extraordinary and includes masses weighing several hundred pounds.
While mapping South Pass (a large greenstone belt in the Wind River Mountains), I found some aquamarine in pegmatites at Anderson Ridge. A super person, Elmer Winters (RIP) followed up on my discovery and found an extraordinary aquamarine gem (>1 foot in length) in this same pegmatite. At Casper Mountain, I decided to search for helidor and aquamarine. I found several specimens of helidor and later met a miner who worked that deposit. It was mined for beryl and feldspar & most people believed the beryl to be worthless as a gem. But the miners had taken out coffee table-size specimens that were partially gem-quality (helidor). Another good prospector, Larry Clark (RIP) searched the Sierra Madre and found excellent, sea-green transparent beryls that were bordering on emerald in color.
Left - Labradorite from Sybille Canyon, Wyoming.
Apparently, no one had looked at kyanite as a gem in Wyoming (let alone the rest of the world). But there were giant deposits with beautiful colors. So I collected specimens and had them cabbed. There are literally millions of carats in certain pelitic schistose belts of this gem that are overlooked every day.
Yes, with imagination, following-up reasonable leads, looking at old geological reports, using geochemistry, and aerial photography - I found more in a few years than anyone could expect including several dozen diamond deposits, several hundred cryptovolcanic structures that are likely diamond deposits, opal, evidence for several other opal deposits, a dozen ruby and sapphire deposits (including evidence for a few other ruby deposits), hundreds of gold anomalies, the largest iolite deposits in the world and evidence for more. And what did I get for all of this. I received national and international awards from industry and various geological and prospecting groups. At the WGS I was not a 'team player'. Yes the director told me I was making everyone else look bad & needed to stop otherwise there would be consequences. Bureaucrats, you have to love them, but do people like this get placed in charge of anything?
Nearly everywhere I explored, I followed trends and examined geology which lead me to other mineral deposits. I was curious enough to find out what some of the unusual minerals were that I picked up, 
and as a result, I identified more than a dozen minerals that had never been reported in Wyoming before.
Below - beautiful jasper from Tin Cup & me standing in old prospect pit. These 
prospects were reported as having high-grade gold values. I found no gold & likely these were left over from various gold mining frauds and scams from the 1800s. Note the large mass of jasper to my right (probably a few tons of high quality material).
