I grew up near Roseburg in Southern Oregon and began collecting agates, jaspers, and other natural oddities when I was about six. By age ten, when we moved into town, I had self collected and identified drusy quartz, calcite, pyrite, and laumontite from an old quarry and a prospect near our farm. I had also played with triboluminescense and thermoluminescense. After moving to town I continued to actively field collect with the help and encouragement of my mother and uncle. Vigorous road building and construction in the area provided numerous locations to explore. I was motivated to "save" as many specimens as I could from these transitory sites, and soon was trading zeolites to collectors in other parts of the country. During high school I built a mineral museum and qualitative analysis laboratory in an unused room in our large garage.

During college and graduate school my mineral collecting came to almost a complete stop, but I boxed up and saved my collection. After marrying and settling in Southern California I eventually resumed collecting with one or two casual family trips a year. During the ensuing years I decided to give up agates and fossils and concentrate on crystallized minerals.

About twenty years ago with the family grown I resumed very active collecting and soon expanded my interests into the world of micro minerals. I currently am very interested in investigating and documenting the mineralogy of the many old mines that dot this region and in preserving specimens from them. I am fortunate to have access to an SEM with EDS, and more recently to a Raman spectrometer, to use in this effort. I have written articles on several local mines for Mindat and regional publications and plan to continue this documentation. I have also participated in discovery of a number of new minerals, primarily from the Blue Bell Mine and Otto Mountain in San Bernardino County CA and the Masonic District, Mono County CA. If you would like to contact me directly about any of my articles or other mineral related subjects my e-mail address is rhousley@its.caltech.edu.