Nestled in the heart of the Texas Hill Country sits Llano, a town where stress dissolves faster than butter on hot cornbread and worries float away down the crystal-clear river that bears its name.

Brown is a common topaz color, and the gem is sometimes mistakenly called “smoky quartz.” Topaz actually has an exceptionally wide color range that, besides brown, includes various tones and ...

Moorehead or any rockhound can just head outdoors and find minerals or crystals like quartz, a hard white or colorless mineral, which he said is common throughout the Verde Valley. According to Bill ...

It is associated with smoky quartz, albite (cleavelandite), tourmaline (elbaite), and Li-mica (lepidolite). Facet-grade transparent green feldspar (figure 8), which is very rare here, has been ...