Rubies and Sapphires

If you like rubies and sapphires and amethysts then I can tell you how to get some that are dirt cheap. If you type Franklin, North Carolina into Yahoo Search you will find that Franklin is known as the Gem Capitol of the World. About twenty-five years ago we drove from Brookville to Franklin to look for gem stones. Nestled in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains, this quaint southwestern North Carolina town offers a change of pace and a never-ending supply of activities for the entire family. We liked the idea of looking for gems and found them scattered around the edge of town. These places are like ordinary farms except they cater to tourists who want to look for gems.


When you drive up to one of these places, you will see shelter-like structures with a wooden trough running down the center. It doesn't take long to find out how the system works and I will try to explain how it was when we were there. The hills roundabout are owned by the men who runs the sluice. He is in business to sell dirt that contains gem stones. He uses a backhoe to dig out fresh piles of dirt. This dirt is used to fill buckets. Each bucket will contain some gem stones. When you are ready he will sell you as many buckets as you want.  If this is your first time, he will show you what to look for and how to work the sluice to wash the dirt away and leave the gems.

Back then each bucket of dirt cost $2.00. We bought one bucket for each person in my family and began to pour the dirt from the bucket into a wooden frame with a screen on the bottom. The idea is to pour about as much dirt as you can lift easily in the wooden frame and then dip it down into the running water in the sluice and allow the water to wash away the soil. It takes a little time to do this and a little longer to catch on. Once you learn how then it becomes easy and everyone in our family found rubies, sapphires and amethysts. We also saw at least one emerald in the tailings others had dumped there. Among the rocks was the unmistakable six-sided emerald. I never was sure what this was that somebody had simply dumped out.

The owner/operator saw it about the same time that I did and he picked it up and showed me and said, "Don't throw these away." Duh. Nope. I won't. If I find one. It was about as long as a shotgun shell and super green, but a bit muddy. The ruby shines red in the water. There are a lot of them. We took two or three large ones and had them polished and ready to mount in jewelry. Each is about 2 carats. We also had two sapphires polished and those are about 2 carats. We have larger sapphires but not polished. Owners will buy your finds -- or, he can make a handsome ruby ring while you're looking for more. We took our's into town and a jewelry store polished them and mailed them to us. They arrived as promised. Our kids loved this trip and we are proud of our finds -- shown above.

© Abraham Lincoln