- Areas of North Carolina's Piedmont and mountains are rich with gems and minerals hidden beneath the earth.

The Hiddenite community there in Alexander County is home to Emerald Hollow, believed to be the world's only emerald mine, open to the public for prospecting.

And if you're lucky enough to find one, it's yours to keep.

Teresa Litschke shows us what makes this a fascinating summer adventure.

♪ - How do we know those emeralds?

Why are there emeralds here?

Why are there minerals so dense here to start with?

There's about 65 different things you can find here.

All these hills that are around us are the convergence of five hills that come together.

So this area had to be incredibly active volcanically and just earthquakes, you would have had tremendous amount of ground movement.

So those voids make room for sediment and clay to get into that makes it mineral rich that they can form and grow.

It's gotta have enough compression to form a crystal, but be loose enough to let water and minerals congregate in an area and it can expand it.

- That's why gemstones are so prevalent in the red clay soil in Hiddenite, named after a man who put the town on the map.

- Go all the way back to William Earl Hidden, who was the guy that Edison sent to find the new burn bright element for the light bulb.

And they were looking for platinum.

And North Carolina's got platinum, just not here.

And it was an accident when they were digging and turning all this dirt over, couple rainstorms come through, next you know you got this mineral glistening, no one knew what it was.

They sent it off to France, where they had to identify as unknown mineral, spodumene and named it after itself, Hiddenite.

- That's in case we lose anybody, we gotta know who's driving what.

- Oh, okay.

- Safety is always first, along with an adventure like no other.

- Once we get you signed in, you have access to the entire property all day.

You can leave, go get lunch, come back, your permit's good all day.

- We're going to do the mining part first, and then after that, we'll go down to the creek.

Typically what we tell people is, go to the dig site first.

It's the hardest, especially if you get here early, spend your first couple hours there, we'll educate you on what you need to know.

Then ease out of it.

Go to the creek, relax, it's nice, and then end up at this loose way before you go home.

We provide everything.

Our shovels are all over here with buckets.

- We are mining for rubies, emeralds, gemstones.

- It's very personal.

Some people come and look for something specific like tourmaline.

We had a guy find almost two pounds in a vein.

Other people hunt the emeralds.

- Gems.

- Emeralds.

- Emeralds, yeah.

- We will teach them everything we know about the emeralds and the signs we know.

- The sparkly stuff is the mica.

Just remember what that means.

That was clay.

When it got heated, it turned into mica.

So if you want to find the gemstones, you have to bring dirt down here with mica in it.

- The number of people finding those special stones may surprise you.

- Many, many, on a regular basis.

It's the only active emerald mine, the only one in the entire world that you can come into and actually dig.

But we try to guide them in areas where we think they're gonna have the best chance, too.

So anything you find, you keep.

- Another way to mine is directly in the creek.

- I don't know exactly what this is, but it's a cool rock.

- That is a piece of dioptase.

Dioptase is a copper-based mineral.

It's a jasper.

Anything that doesn't allow light into it is gonna be a collection of a jasper.

- Rose quartz right here.

- All right, inside secret.

If you go to the end where it tees, this is where the sandbars end up.

And then if you catch the sandbars and rinse them in, that's where you're gonna find stuff that acts like a trap.

- Last stop is the sluice way to wash off the dirt and reveal the treasures you found.

- Oh my goodness.

- Even if you can't or don't want to mine the old-fashioned way, you can purchase enriched buckets that already contain amazing stones.

- The goal is to create a space here for everybody in the family, grandparents all the way down.

- We're excited.

- Some people can't navigate down here.

Some people can't navigate to the dig site.

So it's important for us to create space for them too.

Even our sluice way has sections we can take out for wheelchair.

- Look at these crystals.

- And have a full experience, have full interactions with everybody, get an education of what you're doing and enjoy it at the same time.

(upbeat music) - Emerald Hollow Mine is located at 484 Emerald Hollow Mine Drive in Hiddenite.

They're open 8.30 a.m.

till 5 p.m.

Monday through Friday and 8.30 till six on weekends.

For more information, give them a call at 828-632-3394.