These 7 Abandoned Gemstone Mines Are Now Open to the PUBLIC (Here's the Map)

Comments · 170

• MI

  @michaelrickert1284 · 5 months ago

  The biggest gemstone mine that the government doesn't want you to know about is Ruby Ridge. It has quite the story!

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• GO

  @googleaccount-p2k8k · 6 months ago

  The Emerald Hollow Mine is a scam. They seed the creek with cheap mineral rough they get from Brazil. There have been a VERY FEW emeralds found there, but you'd be wasting your time. There is some amethyst there, but it's pretty rare, as well. Nearby is the only place in the world where Hiddenite is found, but that site is not open to the public. A word of warning- any 'gem mine' in NC where you buy buckets of dirt and sit at a flume to clean it is a scam. ALL of them buy scrap minerals from Brazil (mostly) and mix it into dirt to sell. I live here, so I'm very familiar with the practice.

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• BR

  @brucesmith5426 · 6 months ago

  Crystal Vista Mount Ida, Ark. is free, but it's a 30-35 min hike up the mountain. Went 2 days spending probably 5 hours digging each day. Brought out of there 45 lbs+ of quartz points and clusters.

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• TE

  @TerryMcVey-w6n · 6 months ago

  I hunted in Franklin, NC for gem stones with my wife and nephew. My wife found all the gem stones and I paid for us both to look. But it was well worth it because we had lots of fun

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• MI

  @michaelwallace8104 · 6 months ago

  When I retired in 2016 I had plans to make a mineral collection road trip. &nbsp;I was going to go start in Arkansas at the Diamond mine and work my way to the emerald mine, up to New Jersey and New York then west to Michigan copper country and on to Montana for sapphire, down to Nevada for black opal and to various California sites.<br>Unfortunately a woman changed all that when she hit me head on and crippled me. &nbsp;Getting out and looking for and collecting gem and minerals is something I surely do miss.

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• XI

  @Xiana424 · 6 months ago (edited)

  Currently Royal Peacock is $190 for raw digging from unmined soil. If you want to dig throught the previous days tailings. Its $75 per adult. They are only open.... Most of the opal mines are only open for 3-5 months out of years. Season starts May 1st

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• TO

  @tonyaxeman4381 · 5 months ago

  I have a public mine not to far from home. I have found a garnet right on the surface of the road right after a rain.

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• BR

  @bradstoner7226 · 2 months ago

  This video kind of got some of the facts mixed up about North Carolina emeralds. They are actually talking about two sites in the state where emeralds can be found. They mention the Spruce Pines mining district which offers the Crabtree emerald mine deposit in Mitchell County and they also mention a find at Hiddenite, Alexander County, NC which is some distance to the east of the first. Both deposits are geologically different but produce emeralds, the later one has produced the largest most valuable ones. The Crabtree deposit is the only one in the Spruce Pines district open by paying a fee that is producing emeralds but in Alexander county, there are actually a half dozen or so mines where emeralds occur with only one open to the public for a small fee. What people often don&apos;t realize is that there is a third locality in NC where emeralds were found. West of Charlotte, NC in Cleveland county, a smaller deposit was mined at the Turner and Plantation mines south of the town of Shelby around 1900. This deposit produced some exception emeralds but was shut down largely to legal reasons and never redeveloped. It is on private property and is not open to the public. So in reality, North Carolina has three distinct and different localities for emeralds. It also has amethyst, aquamarine, golden beryl, smoky quartz, kyanite, garnet, clear quartz, rutilated quartz, citrine quartz and even a few diamond finds.

  2

• LA

  @larrylamb5462 · 4 months ago (edited)

  Audrey Cashatt found what was, at the time, the largest emerald found at that emerald mine in Hiddenite. The perpetual con woman, she tried to parlay her finding it into another hustle. The Smithsonian offered her 2 million dollars for it; she refused. She claimed in a newspaper article that she had used her Psychic(Psycho, you would have to know the family) abilities to find the stone, so she started herself a fortune telling business, Palm reading, tarot cards, etc. That was in the early 80&apos;s. Fast forward a few years, and I was talking to my cousin about nothing in general, when I asked him, &quot;Whatever happened to that emerald that Audrey found&quot;? He said that it was now about a 2 inch piece on a bracelet she wore. Said she was showing it to someone, and dropped and broke it. We both agreed that with her psychic powers, she should have seen that coming.

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• GR

  @greggwoody1001 · 5 months ago

  As far as I know the Crabtree Emerald Mine in Mitchell County, NC is the only emerald mine in North America. Hiddenite crystals are spodumene based not beryllium.

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• TU

  @TutusAtticLasVegas · 6 months ago

  I’ve been to the Royal Peacock Mine in northern Nevada. It’s definitely remote. We had no cell signals when we were there. The Royal Peacock Mine used to have an RV and Camping place on their property. We had a blast, digging through the tailings and found a few opals. We paid a flat fee to dig through the tailings. It was about 10 years ago so it was $75 per person My Husband and myself and 10-year-old daughter. We were up there for quite a bit of time and it was very enjoyable. You can also find garnets in Ely, Nevada. And there are turquoise mines in Tonopah, NV, but I don’t believe they’re open to the public anymore.

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• DA

  @DavidConley-sz2co · 6 months ago

  Ron Coleman has a store in quartzsite AZ every winter

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