Manufacturing Methods

The loosely compacted sedimentary state of the Montmorillonite from Panaca is merely freed up by the use of traditional farm implements and screened at low temperature to preserve its integrity.

Chelated, colloidal, ionic Montmorillonite with organic matter in Lincoln County, Nevada showing plowed (left) and rotovated (right) surface-exposed material. Notice the basaltic formation in the background giving rise to many of the other important trace elements appearing within Montmorillonite.

The Window Peak monument sitting atop the central point of the Panaca Montmorillonite deposit provides a “rock record” of the formation. The harder material that has withstood the rigors of centuries of weathering is obviously of inferior quality for nutritional purposes. Some twenty feet below the bottom of the monument is the finer, softer material, richer in humates and fulvates called Montmorillonite. What remains visible, is essentially the overburden that is no longer found covering the areas of interest for present and future excavation.

The old warm spring and swimming hole outside the city limits of Panaca, is still assisting the growth of some of the same rushes and lush pond grasses whose ancestors may have provided much of the organic material, interbedded in the silts now being harvested along with the Montmorillonite.