Rock & Mineral Encyclopedia

Search and identify 1,000+ rocks, minerals, crystals, and gemstones — with properties, formation, colors, hardness, and how to tell them apart.

Sandstone

A clastic sedimentary rock made of cemented sand grains, often quartz, recording ancient beaches, deserts, and rivers.

Iron-stained sandstone whose red color comes from hematite coatings, formed in oxidizing desert, river, and coastal environments.

A coarse sedimentary rock of rounded pebbles and gravel cemented in a finer matrix, recording ancient rivers and beaches.

Glacially deposited banded agates found along Lake Michigan beaches, small waterworn pebbles with concentric red and grey banding.

Glacially transported banded agates found along Lake Huron's shores, typically small, frosted pebbles with red-orange iron banding.

An Oregon picture jasper from the Rogue River area showing earthy scenic patterns in tan, brown, gold, and cream.

A feldspar-rich sandstone, often pink, that points to granitic source rocks eroded quickly in dry or cold climates.

A tough, quartz-rich sandstone cemented by silica, transitional toward true quartzite but still sedimentary in origin.

A warm earth-toned jasper from the Hells Canyon region of the Oregon-Idaho border, prized for brecciated browns, reds, and creams.

Natural obsidian with a frosted, matte surface produced by weathering, abrasion, or etching rather than a separate variety of glass.

A translucent chalcedony from Montana filled with black and red dendritic inclusions that look like moss, ferns, or scenic landscapes.

A pale translucent chalcedony threaded with brown-black manganese and iron dendrites that mimic tiny ferns, mosses or landscapes.

A prized Oregon picture jasper from the Deschutes region known for soft scenic landscapes in cream, tan, and blue-gray.

An extremely hard metamorphic rock formed from sandstone, made of fused quartz grains that break across rather than between the grains.

A clean, mature sandstone made almost entirely of quartz grains, representing extreme weathering, sorting, and recycling of sediment.