Good places in or around Franklin NC

How long do you have to hunt? What area do you want to concentrate on? I went to the Emerald Hollow bucket mine ONCE! I will NOT be going again. Low quality and every single piece came form South America=Nothing Native. Even the creek on their property is salted. In the Spruce Pine/Little Switzerland area there are a variety of materials and locations as well as further west. There is an excellent book on rockhounding the area called Rocks, Gems, and Mineral Collecting Sites in Western North Carolina that is available on amazon.com for $10.29 and Barnes & Noble has it for about $14. I have used the book extensively and it has VERY accurate directions. I recommend the Ray Mine for beryl, mica and tourmaline. Little Pine for garnets. Walker Creek for kyanite. Like the rest of the country the western part of North Carolina is being rapidly developed so sites are subject to being closed at any time.

Apalmy: I too went to Emerald Hollow. The really good places to dig are roped off. Owner says, "they are leased and no trespassing." Like pldgrpuchy wrote, even the creek was salted with material not even found in the US or even east of the Mississippi River. I even saw a flatbed trailer load of buckets of dirt (minerals not even in them, they are added later). The dirt was not from that property or really close by, A different type of soil. My wife tried digging for several hours and found nothing. You got 1 bucket free with the digging fee. Strange that my wife's and I buckets had the same minerals and number of rocks. I felt like I got robbed of our 30 dollars, and I did. My 2 cents worth. West of Franlin, NC on US 64 there is a creek called Buck Creek. We have found garnet chips and on occasion some are big enough to be faceted. Also at a pull off to the righ, on a road that runs along Buck Creek, saphires can be found. Wade into the creek were an old road crosses and start screening the creek gravel. Light blue to grey saphires are found. Usually the deeper you dig the better results. The water can be cold at times. Be careful if the water starts to rise, get ready to leave. I have seen it rise 18 inches in 30 minutes and the flow is pretty fast. Hope this helps some. Take Care!! Still Diggin' n the Dirt, GaRock (Frank)