Garnet Hill In Raleigh, North Carolina, or The World's Largest Source Of Gem-Quality Garnet Stones, & They're Free!
by
H. Kent Craig
Photos of the site are at
the bottom of this page.


At a location on a main highway public right-of-way at the northern edge of Falls Lake Reservoir, just north of Raleigh, North Carolina, is a roadcut which has exposed the world's largest source of gem-quality (almandine variety) garnets. They are free for the picking by anyone. Literally billions of carats of perfect and near-perfect dodecahedron semi-precious gems are just waiting to be patiently worked by hammer and chisel from the tightly layered mica schist matrix. Or, if you want to wait until after a heavy rain, thousands of carats' worth are routinely exposed after erosion weathers some of them free.

When old NC Highway 98 was moved and the roadbed re-cut because Falls Lake was being built, it exposed this huge vein of garnets. Nearby, there is a road called "Mica Mine Road". This facecut is part of the same huge ore vein which supplies the nearby mica mine.

I enjoy taking those new to rockhounding to this place, especially parents who bring along their younger children, and watch the parents get almost excited as their kids, when they start finding loose ones at the base of the few plants growing in the cracks of the rockface.

The garnets' beautiful deep purple color is obvious even in their rough and unpolished state. Their perfect crystalline structure in roundish dodecahedron form is equally obvious. It's like when I take those new to goldpanning to spots where I know there's a sufficient flour-gold concentration in the ore, so that they can actually recover some color in the bottom of their goldpans, even if their technique isn't that good. At Garnet Hill, all one has to do is carefully look for the garnets, and literally pick them up off the ground.

Carat sizes of the individual garnets range from 1/100th of carat, pinhead size, to some as big as 30 or 40 carats, small marble size. Most stones are in the 1-to-10 carat range, usually big enough to be polished and mounted in jewelry. Speaking of which, polished garnets are pretty to look at, but have never been expensive to buy. When this site opened up, it drove their wholesale price down to next-to-nothing. Please, don't think you'll find anything more valuable than a free souvenir of the first time you went rockhounding. You can buy cut and polished ones from ads in rockhounding magazines actually cheaper than you can collect some of this site and then pay to have a lapidary polish them for you. But there is a certain satisfaction about having a nice ring or brooch that you can point to and say "I found that stone/those stones myself!"

Here are the two main ways to get to the site:
1; From Highway 70 Business/Glenwood Avenue in Raleigh, take Highway 50 North (Creedmoor Rd.) to the Highway 98 interchange, then go east exactly 6.7 miles on Highway 98 East. You'll cross water from Falls Lake exactly three times, and look for the cutface on your left.

2; From US 1 North in Raleigh (Capitol Blvd.), drive north like you're going to the Town Of Wake Forest, exit right at the Highway 98 interchange, make a left at the bottom of the ramp, and go exactly 1.9 miles, the cutface will be to your right.


At the site, you'll see shallow trenches where many before you have dug into the hillside. The rockface itself is reasonably steep, maybe a 45 degree angle or greater, so do wear hiking boots if you have them. Tennis or boating shoes will also work fine for hiking the few feet up the slope.

You may park on the shoulders on either side of the road. I always park across the road from it, the shoulder is wider there, and isn't as muddy.

If you don't have a geologist's hammer and a small, thin, sharp, steel cold chisel to break the garnets free with, an ordinary hammer and a flathead screwdriver will work fine, though you will probably ruin the screwdriver's flat point doing so, so don't use a real expensive one. I would look around for some loose ones first, the "easy pickings", before I'd start the tedious process of trying to free them from the schist.

No one to my knowledge has ever been hassled by Dept. Of Transportation crews or law enforcement-types for collecting these garnets, since the site is on a public right-of way and is very well-known. I wouldn't recommend, though, that you use power tools or dynamite to free the stones from their mica host, since that might get someone's unwanted attention!





Photos of Garnet Hill


Garnet Hill 2 (76K) Garnet Hill as seen from across the small gravel parking area across the road on Highway 98
Garnet Hill Front Trail 2 (89K) Trail going up the face of the hill well-worn by legions of rock hounds
Garnet Hill Looking West Mailbox (57K) Looking west on Highway 98 in front of Garnet Hill. Notice the mailbox; this leads to a private home just over the ridge beyond Garnet Hill, the owners of which actually own "the hill". Please respect their property and and privacy and do not disturb them. You do not need permission from then to collect garnets, since the exposed face is on a public right-of-way. All they ask is that you do not litter around the site, thank you!
Garnet Hill Closeup Exposed Face (93K) Close-up of exposed face, clearly showing garnets embedded in the mica schist.
Garnet Hill 15 Carat Gem (54K) 15-carat or so rough garnet, found literaly at my feet as I was walking up the front trail.
Small Garnets On Paper Towel Best (40K) It took me less than an hour to collect all these garnets.
Small Closeup Of Garnets 2 (13K) Close-up of some of the garnets shown above.



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