On a Personal Note:
It’s no secret that we search high and low for international gem news, doing our best to bring you—as the New York Times might say—all the [gem] news that’s fit to print. And we do find quite a bit of it. Some stories are genuinely gem-news-worthy. Others turn out to be little more than promotional fluff, and not exactly fit for republication.
And then there are those that include flat-out wrong gemological information—like this feature on emeralds from North Carolina.
I had to read this paragraph twice to be sure I wasn’t misreading it:
“Two basic varieties of emerald crystals are found in North Carolina. In the area around Little Switzerland and Spruce Pine, most emeralds are primarily composed of the mineral beryl. Emeralds found near Hiddenite, a very small hamlet in Alexander County northeast of Hickory, are usually a form of spodumene that exists nowhere else in the world.”
Yes, they really did write that one form of emerald is a variety of spodumene.
Of course, we know what they meant to say: that two important green gems are found in this part of North Carolina—emerald (a variety of beryl) and hiddenite (a variety of spodumene). A simple editing error, sure, but a doozy. We’ll try not to let that boner of a blunder ruin what might otherwise be a decent little news item.
So, let’s see what they did get right about gem hunting in North Carolina… – gr
While some of Hiddenite’s emeralds have been larger than your hand, a majority are about the size of a quarter(?) (above, right).
Walking their freshly-ploughed fields after rain and searching for arrowheads to sell to tourists, farmers in Alexander County’s foothills occasionally came across tiny crystals of quartz and other sparkling minerals. Some of the crystals glowed faintly green, colored like new leaves of spring. Those were emeralds, a gem 20 times more rare than diamonds, and occurring naturally in rocks of the Western North Carolina mountains.
Emerald was designated North Carolina’s official state gemstone in 1973. And at a few mines in Hiddenite, Spruce Pine, and Little Switzerland, guests can prospect for emeralds for a small fee and keep whatever they find.
WRITER: John E. Ross
PHOTOGRAPHER: Revival Photography
Wester North Carolina Magazine
MOUNTAIN LIVING IN WESTERN NORTH CAROLINA
Hiddenite and beryl are products of very unusual geology underlying isolated areas of Western North Carolina’s mountains. Some 600 million years ago, thick streams of molten minerals with the consistency of hot taffy welled up on convection currents from deep within the earth’s mantle. The force of the current injected these molten minerals into fractures and voids in gneiss, bedrock rock underlying emerald mines.
As the mineral-rich stream cooled ever so slowly, crystals of quartz, mica, beryl and hiddenite grew bigger and bigger. Eons of rain, a weak acid, have dissolved emerald-bearing bedrock into saprolite, a reddish orange clay-rich dirt in which mica, quartz, beryl, and hiddenite is left untouched.
This feature continues for a few pages, with pictures of the area, along with a few small crystals that have been uncovered. It does continue to confuse emerald and hiddenite, but if you can overlook that, it does cover history of the area, names of the people who made the area famous, and best of all, contact information is provided for two active areas, Emerald Hollow Mines, and Emerald Village.
It’s a beautiful area of the country, and would certainly be worth the visit if nothing else than to see where North Carolina Hiddenite and Emerald were found.
Tap here to read about Emerald and Hiddenite in
Hiddenite, Little Switzerland, and Spruce Pine, North Carolina.
