Home
The Ark-La-Tex Gem & Mineral Society is a nonprofit educational organization devoted to promoting interest in the various earth sciences, particularly the art of lapidaries and their related fields. Informational speeches presented at area schools and the presentation of awards and cash prizes at the Public School Earth Science Fair are two of the ways the society achieves its goals. Another contribution to the community is the annual show, held at the Bossier Civic Center. This "Jewelry, Gem, & Mineral Show" functions as a fund raiser for our group and a venue for the demonstrations of gold and silver casting, jewelry making, bead stringing, faceting, cabochon making, and flintknapping (the art of flaking stone tools such as arrowheads). Monthly meetings keep our members informed about the inner workings of our society and provide programs of interest to rockhounds, such as oral and video presentations. Our monthly newsletter, the Rock Rattler, presents information about our society, in addition to current rock-related events and articles. Jewelry making classes, taught through Bossier Parish Community College, complete the educational objectives of the club.
All areas of the site may be accessed through the navigation links to the left. We hope that you will enjoy your stay.
Upcoming Events
Ark-La-Tex Gem & Mineral Annual Rock Show - August 16-17, 2008
Come visit us at this year's show! It will be located at the Bossier Parish Convention Center (620 Benton Road; Bossier City, LA 71111).
Upcoming Rock Shows
View Rock & Gem Magazine's list of show dates from all over the country.
News / Updates
May Rockrattler - May 16, 2007
The May issue of the Rock Rattler is now available for download. The move to the new hosting is planned for sometime this week.
Rockrattler and Moving Day - April 13, 2007
The April issue of the Rock Rattler is now available for download. It was explained to the club at April's meeting that I will be moving the site to a new webhost as part of my own website, but with the same domain name. In the best case scenario, you shouldn't notice a thing. In the worst case scenario, the site could be offline for a day or two. That move will take place in the coming days and weeks.
March Rockrattler - March 3, 2007
The March issue of the Rock Rattler is now available for download. I've removed the image puzzles from the For Kids! page due to some quality assurance issues. Further research on rock image puzzles is pending.
Small Additions - January 20, 2007
The February issue of the Rock Rattler is now available for download. Once again, two more videos have been added to the Rock Show 2006 Video Gallery. One is a geode cracking demonstration and the other is a marble cutting demonstration. Small additions of contact information were made to the Club Officers page and Contact Us page. Other small wording changes were made throughout the site. I've also made some minor changes to the underlying site code structure to make it more standardized and hopefully more stable. You shouldn't notice any differences from the code structure changes.
More Videos - January 10, 2007
Two more videos have been added to the Rock Show 2006 Video Gallery. One is a flintknapping demonstration video and the other is the third dealer booth tour video. In addition, downloadable, higher quality versions of each video have been made available in the gallery.