Aphrodite marble mine beautifies Southeast: the search for this colorful rock brought entrepreneur Gary McWilliams into business.

• Author: Colby, Kent L.

She was the Greek goddess of love, beauty and sensual rapture. From aphros, or "sea foam," arose Aphrodite, and the sea carried her, Greek myth says, to either Cyprus or Cythera. There, husband Hephaestus lavished her with jewels and finely wrought gold, weaving magic into the filigree work.

Though this is a Greek tale, evidence of Aphrodite's presence in Southeast Alaska has been witnessed for years, as loggers and forest workers casually collect bits and pieces of a striking flesh-colored stone, laced with heart-shaped fossils of vivid color.

SEARCH FOR APHRODITE

It was more than 10 years ago that South-easterner Gary McWilliams spotted a chunk of the interesting stone being used as a doorstop in the Ketchikan office of U.S. Forest Service Geologist Jim Baichtel. That event began a quest for McWilliams to discover the source of the unique material-to find his Aphrodite.

Baichtel says he didn't know where the intriguing stone originated, so the two men set out to track it down.

The resulting many-year expedition and subsequent commercial development resulted in a precedent-setting win for Alaska's mineral-extraction industry-and a cooperative relationship with a primary federal-land steward.

McWilliams already had a history in mining and geology when he migrated to Alaska in 1979. He bought a boat, the elegant M/V Hyak-at first glance resembling the African Queen of Bogart and Hepburn fame-and began what would be a successful 20 years of chartering the waters of the Alexander Archipelago. At that time, his charter trips had a slightly different twist from most. He specialized in geology, working for the U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Bureau of Mines, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and many private mining companies.

The Hyak spent much of its time plowing through obscure fjords, back channels, beaches and waters not popular with typical fishing charters. Its guests hiked to hidden waterfalls and out-of-the-way geologic formations, combed secluded beaches, studied the unique physical make-up of Southeast Alaska, and only occasionally fished. They studied wildlife and watched birds and, in an informal way, they prospected.

Although that was not the focus of the expeditions, McWilliams always had his eye out for those special configurations and patterns of the rock native to the region's forested string of islands. Nearly five years after first spotting that "interesting stone," as he calls it, his eyes finally settled on its origin: a...