Historic ranch opens to hiking, agate hunting
By Shawna Graves
Contributing Writer
The historic Kokernot o6 Ranch traces its roots back to early 1800, and has largely remained off limits to anyone outside of its cattle operations or the occasional guided hunt since then.
Sprawling between Alpine and Fort Davis at 108,000 acres, the ranch spans some of the most beautiful high desert country in Texas. It’s finally offering access to some of its choicest locations for pleasure hiking, agate hunting, and camping opportunities.
Aaron Thomas, owner of Trilobite Food Truck and a former geophysicist, has been an enthusiastic agate hunter for the past 25 years. He manages a Facebook group called Texas Rockhounds, and his side company, Take A Hike, arranges statewide rockhounding trips with schedules posted on Facebook.
Thomas struck up a relationship with avid outdoorsman and man about town Roy Saffel, a close personal friend to James Winn of the o6. The three hit it off, and decided to make exploratory excursions on the ranch, following Thomas’s understanding of geologic processes and clues from Winn’s own hiking discoveries. Their prospecting paid off when they found multiple world class agate sites.
Thomas was given the opportunity to work out of some of those sites with his Take A Hike company, and beginning in summer 2020, he and Saffel hosted weekly trips. Word of mouth spread quickly, and agate hunters have come from across the globe for the chance to fill their buckets with Alpine agates.
Rockhounds cut and polish the stones for sale or to display in rock shows, as well as for making jewelry, bookends, and other items.
Agates are transparent to semi-transparent fine-grained quartz rocks, with a range of color inclusions. They occur in igneous and metamorphic zones, of which the Alpine area is rich. The Woodward Ranch south of Alpine is one example of a site that became famous for its red-plume agates. It was open to the public for a long time, closing around 2014.
The o6 sites are gaining a reputation for having access to the most abundant variety of agates in the world.
A frequent visitor, Mark Zirinsky, said the experience is incomparable. Zirinksky is a sculptor from Boulder, Colo., and has hunted agates all over the southwestern U.S., Canada, and Australia.
“This is by far and away the best of them all,” he said. “The patterns and sheer variety, plus the incredible hosts Aaron, James and Roy, and getting to talk to other rockhounds, make it great.”
In one afternoon of agate hunting on the o6, one may find blue agate with quartz crystals, moss agate with gold and yellow, black dendritic agate, color banded agate, plume agate, and more. From Zirinky’s experience, he would have to cover 400 miles in Australia to see that kind of variety.
In addition to agate hunting, the ranch offers guided hikes throughout the week and camping on selected weekends in the fall. For scheduling and pricing, check the Texas Rockhounds Facebook page, or contact Thomas at 432-538-2399.
The o6 is a private ranch and is accessible by appointment only.
In the photo, showing off the find of the day, rockhound Fred Hall drove from Boulder, Colo., to look for large, quality agates at the Kokernot o6 Ranch with Take A Hike. Photo by Shawna Graves
