Gem Mining in the North Carolina Mountains is a Blast!

The idea of stopping on the side of the road to sift through a bucket of dirt with the vague hope of finding a pretty rock might not be very appealing when you first think of it. I wasn't sure about it myself, but my husband had fond memories of doing this as a child, so we stopped at the Gem Mine at Gem World in Franklin, North Carolina on our vacation in July.

Gem mining for the tourist trade fairly simple operation. There is a waist-high wooden trough with piped in water flowing from one end. You buy a bucket of dirt, dump the dirt in a wooden box with a metal mesh bottom, drop the box in the water and wash the dirt out through the bottom. If you're lucky, you'll be left with some semi-precious stones. And we were lucky: in our $5 bucket, we found a large hunk of sodalite, a beautiful dark blue stone, and smaller but still sizeable pieces of adventurine, a pale green stone, and jasper, a burnt orange stone. I'm already planning on spending way more money than the stones are worth on getting them cut into pendants.

Gem Mine is owned by an agreeable gentleman named Bear. He's lived in the area all his life but he just got into the gem business five years ago as a way to keep busy after retirement. He operates the business from March through November every year and gets about a thousand visitors a week. Half the fun of the process was talking to Bear and hearing about all the stones we found, their names and their use in popular culture. You can purchase dirt buckets in several different sizes, ranging from $5 for the smallest, which is a little smaller than a child's sand bucket, up to $100 for a pickle bucket size. All the buckets are packed to the brim with dirt and hopefully a few interesting stones, too. For any buckets costing over $25, Bear guarantees that you will find something. But, as you can see, we found a few very nice stones with just our little bucket.

Some people might call this place a tourist trap. I call it a fun and interesting break from a long car trip. Maybe you'll be lucky enough to find a beautiful stone to remind you of your trip to the North Carolina mountains. And the kids will absolutely love it!

Details: 1884 Georgia Road (Hwy 441), Franklin, NC 28734. Phone 828-349-5411. http://www.rokgem.com/gemine/index.html