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There's Gold In Them Thar Hills--and Diamonds, Emeralds, Rubies, and More
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17870 |
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LIFE
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3 / 1990 |
3,261 Words |
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Steven Kaplan
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Fifteen-year-old Seth Hammer may have though it a bit corny, traveling with his family to North Carolina on an expedition to dig for emeralds. The Hammers are city folk, after all, and the closest they had ever gotten to emeralds was the local jewelry store in downtown Springfield, New Jersey. But once in Gemstone Haven, the digging fields near Spruce Pine, North Carolina, they searched through the gem-filled earth like pros, looking for the flash of green that might reveal an emerald.
"Suddenly I heard Seth shouting "Hold Cow! Holy Cow! Holt Cow!" recalls Mrs. Hammer in a story she wrote for Lapidary journal. "He just held out his hand, revealing the most beautiful emerald specimen we had ever seen. Still wrapped in a mica schist, the crystal, a gem more than an inch long and two and a half inches in circumference, sparkled with a green brilliance."
What Seth had dug up was a natural emerald in a matrix weighing 83.11 carats. His find is presently in the collection of New York City's American Museum of Natural History, whose director thought the emerald should be left in its original state as an example of an excellent North American gemstone. Though the Hammers would rather not reveal what the stone is worth, experts guess it is many thousands of dollars.
Not everyone who goes digging for gemstones is going to be as successful as Seth Hammer, but his story is instructive nonetheless. For Seth, as for all the other members of his family, this outing was the first time ever digging for stones. None of them were rock hounds, and none of them knew anything more than what they had learned from attending one meeting of the local geologic society the week before leaving on their trip.
There are riches in the earth waiting to be found, and you don't have to be a mining expert to find them. All across the country there are opportunities to find gems in mine areas created especially for the enthusiastic yet inexperienced searcher. Gold, diamonds emeralds, rubies, sapphires, opals, and just about every other valuable stone can be - and is - mined in America, just for the fun of it.
For the most part you need neither special equipment nor special knowledge to begin your search for rare gems. Most "lease" mines are run for amateurs and will provide whatever equipment is necessary when the entry fee is paid. They all offer instructions on how to find and recognize the gem you're searching for, and most of them have on-site aides to answer any questions that may arise.
Many places don't even make you dig your own dirt - they have buckets of gem-rich earth available, ready for the search. This is the easiest and most pleasant kind of gem mining, done sitting at a table under the open sun. More and more American families are discovering that searching for gems can make for an exciting and fascinating vacation.
Finding Sapphires And Rubies
Montana is the Saudi Arabia of sapphires, holding better than 50 percent of the word's reserves of those precious stones. The state has been, and is still being, extensively mined, but the major burst of commercial sapphire mining began in the late 1800s and ended half a century later. That doesn't mean there are no
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