Dixie Mineral Council of SFMS
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The Dixie Mineral Council is an official program of the SFMS. We are an association of field trip leaders within the Southeastern Federation of Mineralogical Societies who have agreed to join together and share one of our mineral or fossil field trips.

Membership in DMC

To be a member of the DMC, MAGS has completed the following requirements:

1. Your gem and mineral society is a fully paid and active member of the Southeast Federation of Mineralogical Societies, Inc. If your society does not pay the SFMS insurance, you cannot join the Dixie Mineral Council!

2. Your society has an Internet e-mail contact address to coordinate the set-up and distribution of field trip information to all members of the Mineral Council. This could be your club's WWW site e-mail address or just one of your members who has volunteered to use his personal e-mail address as your club's contact address. Of course, Field Trips leaders and Newsletter editors are perfect candidates for this job.

3. Your society has agreed to host a mineral or fossil field trip to a location where your club normally goes to collect in large numbers. Preferably, this means a field trip site(fee or free) that can handle a crowd and has adequate parking. Alternatively, you may specify an attendance limit and that all persons who attend must contact the hosting club before the trip to let them know how many will be coming and from which associated club. In this situation, the hosting club will have to additionally provide a contact phone number, a contact e-mail address, and a contact mailing address on the Council's field trip form.

4. This collecting location is within a radius of 150 miles of your club's home location or your society is the only club which can obtain exclusive access to a desirable collecting site outside the 150 mile range. This insures a wider dispersion and a better diversity of collecting sites. It should also limit the number of duplicate trips to more frequently visited locations in the southeast. "We all want to visit NEW places to collect minerals and/or fossils."

5. Your club has also agreed to provide members to act as guides at your hosted field trip. These members should be very familiar with the collecting location and should stand ready to identify specimens and to direct field trip guests to more productive areas.

6. Provide the Dixie Mineral Council with a completed "Field Trip Form" on the mineral or fossil location you will be hosting a trip to.

7. Agree that all Dixie Mineral Council field trips will be exclusively for member clubs! You cannot invite non council clubs or their members on any Dixie Mineral Council field trips. A list of all DMC associated clubs will be attached to every e-mailed council field trip. In return, The Dixie Mineral Council will provide the joining mineral society with an e-mailed Field Trip Flyer for all Council field trips. All flyers will be e-mailed out by the first of the month before the month of the trip. (i.e. E-mailed on June 1st for Council trips taking place during the month of July.) For more information about the Dixie Mineral Council, visit the Dixie Mineral Council website.

Additional Information

There are approximately 85 clubs in the Southeast Federation of Mineralogical Societies. Of those 85 clubs, about 45 of them carry SFMS insurance for their club outings. Those are the clubs that are eligible to be members of the Dixie Council. If every eligible club were to join the DMC, each club would only have to host an outing once every four years. Think of the possiblities. Think of the places we could visit and rocks we could collect. This website will publish Dixie Council information to help you plan your field trips and your vacations.