Garret Romaine

Garret Romaine is an award-winning journalist and technical writer hailing from Portland, Oregon. His grandfather, Harold Banta, was an attorney in Baker, Oregon specializing in mining law, and his grandmother Floy ran a rock shop in Baker. As a boy, Garret visited many collecting areas, mines, and ghost towns in the Baker area, and was hooked for life on field work. He earned a geology degree from the University of Oregon, studying under stalwarts such as Dr. Ewart Baldwin, Dr. William Orr, and Dr. Allan Kays, and followed that up with a master's degree in geography at the University of Washington and an MBA from Portland State. Garret has written for multiple publications in the Portland area, and has managed technical writing teams for several technology companies. He has taught technical writing at Portland State since 1997, and serves on the board of directors for the Rice Northwest Museum of Rocks and Minerals and the North America Research Group, devoted to fossil hunting. Garret authored a regular column entitled "Mining the Internet" for the Gold Prospectors Association of America (GPAA). He has written features, product reviews, personal interviews, field reports, and research compilations for many locales across the west. He wrote Gem Trails of Washington, updated Gem Trails of Oregon, and wrote Rockhounding Idaho. He has also written a series of rock & gem identification books, plus handbooks for rockhounds and prospectors. He has written gold panning guides for the Pacific Northwest and California, and is working on Colorado next. In 2017, he completed "Geology Lab for Kids" which explores easy lab experiments for kids to educate them about crystals, fossils, meteorites, and geology. Mr. Romaine continues to recon and explore, and with the help of Martin "Dusty Fingers" Schippers, he produced a series of YouTube videos modestly titled "Garret's World of Geology." It's an easy Google search. The inspiration behind the videos, each under ten minutes in length, is to share great rockhounding spots and encourage people to get out and explore. He also has a blog at http://writingdocs.blogspot.com/ and can be found on LinkedIn and Facebook.