REED POINT — In May, Letha Mcgowen, a Reed Point resident, rock collector and miner, reopened her rock and crystal shop, RockSanity, for the summer.
The shop sits in Mcgowen's front lawn, located at 4 Park St., a block away from the Reed Point town square.
See the video for this story below:
"Everybody loves rocks. Everybody knows someone that loves rocks," said Mcgowen, a retired railroad worker out of Laurel.
Now that she's retired, she's pursuing her lifelong dream of opening a rock store, along with teaching rock tumbling classes to kids.
"Since I was a kid, like little kids go out and look for rocks on that beach, and that's what I did with my grandfather," she said Wednesday.
Mcgowen says while she doesn't have a geology degree, she's learned all her rock expertise from geologists and her family, who were gold miners.
Mcgowen says out of all rocks in her collection, the agate is her favorite, as it forms during volcanic activity and creates banding.
"It fills voids, and it's usually from volcanic activity and fissures in the Earth, or cracks... bring superheated steam from the center of the Earth... It fills voids and creates banding, and many pretty colors. It brings the minerals with it," she said.
The shop in Reed Point is Mcgowen's second rock shop in the United States.
The first is in Arizona, which has been open for five years.
Considering the population of Reed Point, less than 500, Mcgowen says that business is booming.
"A lot of rockhounders and travelers. Eeveryone wants to find a rock shop," she said. "We're right on I-90, a lot of traffic from Yellowstone."
Mcgowen decided to open RockSanity because of her Facebook group, Rockhounding of Montana. She says members of the group convinced her to open a shop in Montana because it's her home state, and she's accumulated quite a large collection.
"Everybody kept asking me, 'We want to see your stuff.' They see my picture on Rockhounding Montana, they see my pictures on my page on Facebook, and they're like, 'We want to come see your stuff.' And it was all packaged in a trailer. And I said I need to do something. So I did," she said.
As far as Mcgowen's collection, she says she does a lot more than order crystals and rocks from online storefronts, like Temu or Amazon.
Mcgowen either mines the rocks herself, auctions them from Arizona, or purchases them from a geologist. At her residence in Reed Point, Mcgowen has a workshop where she tumbles, polishes and cuts her rocks for the store.
With spare parts, she often makes jewelry and magnets.
Mcgowen says while she's still setting up for the season, she's open for business.
Customers can visit RockSanity Wednesday through Saturday at 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
