Cherokee Ruby Mine
GPS: 35.27287, -83.35125
Land type:
Private
Digging fee:
$30 per person, kids 6 and under are free.
Summary from my visit:
The Cherokee Mine is truly authentic, and it prides itself on that. I visited in Spring of 2026 for the first time. You won’t pull up to a large gift shop on your way in. As soon as you arrive, you’ll see the flume line (the wooden chute where you sift the dirt you dig). Over the years, there have reportedly been many different areas where material has been dug. The mine tends to have only one zone open at a time. For us, that was a large pit behind the flumes.
What’s cool about the Cherokee relative to other mines that offer native material digging is that you’re truly doing it yourself. You’ll be digging alluvial gravels here - meaning the corundum (ruby/sapphire) has been scattered randomly throughout.
During the day, I dug in 3 different holes. I tried getting into different colors of dirt and mud, and isolating them in their own buckets to see if I could notice any patterns on what tended to be productive. This proved to be difficult, as spotting the rubies and sapphires in the daytime is tricky. What I ended up doing is concentrating the buckets of muddy dirt down to just small gravels and taking them home so I could sort through them with an ultraviolet light. Rubies and sapphires will both glow a brilliant orange-red under a blacklight.
This mine does have some unique traits that can be found in its corundum, including asterism - which causes a star pattern to appear within the shine of the stone.
Aside from the rubies and sapphires that are the main target, visitors have a chance to also find garnets, kyanite, sillimanite, moonstone, and rutile.
Seasonality:
This site is open year round, as long as the forest roads are passable and there isn’t extreme weather. Their website suggests calling ahead of time to ensure they’ll be open. Franklin can get some snow and cold temps during the Winter.
Road condition notes:
The mine is reachable by any standard car. The mine specifically instructs visitors not take Coon Creek Road, Flowers Gap Road, or Ruby Knoll Road. Here is a specific link from the mine with some driving directions that include helpful photos: https://cherokeerubymine.com/#about
Additional information:
Address: 41 Cherokee Mine Rd, Franklin, NC 28734
Website: cherokeerubymine.com
A view of the flume. Some portions are covered, but most are in the sun.
The digging area. Prepare for mud if it's rained recently.
A closer look at the type of dirt you’ll be digging through. I used a half-length shovel and a pickaxe to work around larger rocks.
I filled 5-gallon buckets and shuffled them over to the flume line. They get real heavy.
Here is the flume. The classifier screens are provided by the mine.
Add in the dirt. Breaking down the clumps can be difficult. Don’t be shy to push against the screen in the water to help get it moving. Corundum is much harder than the metal screen, so you won’t scratch up your finds.
Here’s the concentrates I was left with.
Under the blacklight, you’ll likely notice lots of this material at the Cherokee Mine. This is moonstone. It has a blue/purple fluorescence.
Here's one...
…This one would be best described as a pink sapphire. It was explained to us that just about everything besides a deep red is locally considered sapphire. I hope to have more in my concentrates, it's a relaxing project to go through slowly with a blacklight at home.
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