CRAWFORD, Neb. — Every year on Labor Day weekend, tiny Crawford, Nebraska turns into a rockhound’s dream.

The Crawford Rock Show draws people from across the country, like Randy Wade of South Dakota. Wade is one of about 70 vendors at the four-day event drawn in by the all-consuming hobby. 

“It’s hard for me to talk to other people about rocks, you know," Wade said. "So here, you’re surrounded by other people that understand your language.”

The rockhounds come to the town of 800 largely because of it’s location, a stone’s throw away from gravel beds containing rare rocks like the Fairburn Agate.

“They are a sedimentary agate that formed in the Black Hills and were washed out of the Black Hills down into the Nebraska panhandle," event chairman Wade Beins said. "You can find them north of Crawford here on the Oglala Grasslands.”

Beins, of Chadron, has been the show chairman for 27 years. He’s seen it more than double in size and sophistication over that time. 

“Rock people are good people by nature, Beins said. "They go out, look at the land and hunt and find the beauty in creation.”

That connection to the Earth is what drew Mark Dameron of New York to the hobby. 

“People ask me all the time, ‘well what do you do with them?’ I sit around and look at them and admire them and sit there and think nature is the master artist,” Dameron said.

Doug Schiel of North Platte caught the rock collecting bug 60 years ago. 

"It’s like Christmas every time you cut a rock," Schiel said.

He’s been a vendor at the Crawford show for a couple decades.

“You wouldn’t believe the beauty that nature provides to us," Schiel said. "I mean, it’s just unbelievable. Some of these cut rocks, when you look at the rocks that have been cut, you’re seeing things that took hundreds of millions of years to create. You’re seeing the inside of that rock as a human being.”

The thrill of that next neat find keeps the hobby alive and keeps Labor Day weekend in northwest Nebraska on the calendars of hundreds of visitors.