"My son, daugher and I were on our way back to Atlanta from Virginia this last weekend and decided to try and hit the Sheffield Mine in Franklin. We were running way late because of the weather and when we got to the mine the place was so sloppy with mud there was no way I was going to take a 1 year old in a stroller and an 8 year old who loves to slide down muddy hills to the mine. Instead we decided to stop at a little place on Bryson City Road heading back to Franklin. The public area of the Mason Mountain Mine sits right next to the Cowee Gift Shop. It isn't real big and might not seem terribly impressive at first glance, but that opinion didn't last long once we stopped. Similar to other mines, they offer options of digging through their tailings or going through a buckets with gems of varying size and density based on the price. We've been to other places with this type of "mining" and had no problem going through higher end buckets in less than an hour. We had exactly an hour before closing time, picked up a $100 bucket for myself and a $30 bucket for my son and neither of us could finish. We had to back up the rest of our dirt and bring it home. My son ended up with a nice 60 carat ruby, some excellent emeralds, sapphires, and smokey quartz on top of the garnet that makes up a good bit of that mountain. I ended up with a very large sapphire, a whole bunch of rubies, some emeralds that could go into settings right now, tiger's eye, rutilated quartz, blue topaz, and a number of other stones. The staff was very nice and helpful. Even helped keep my 1 year old entertained. I would almost rather go back to a small place like this than to the larger, better publicized mines. "