"Send the prisoners to the mines!" Finally, it's my turn to experience corporal punishment. I spent a couple of hours digging slag mines yesterday, sifting and washing, so tired I couldn't speak. Nature does not easily give away its beauty. Every little crystal is hard earned in this mine. Gemstones such as tourmaline and aquamarine are the specialty of Pala Chief's field, one of the few operating gemstone mines in Southern California, dug and cherished. No matter the cost, whatever you dig is fate.

This is a relatively niche tourism project, very educational, more suitable for the whole family, but many people will find it thankless. Crystal gems is another of my bad habits, so from the source to experience a, is a wish. This is the kind of physical activity I'll be doing again!



History:

It is not widely known that San Diego is a world famous gem producer. The Oceanview mine, where Tiffany has a mine where she's mining morganite, tourmaline, and purpurite. In fact, both Morganite and Kunzite were named after stones from San Diego brought to New York by gemologist and Tiffany Vice President Dr. George Kunz. Cixi also had tourmaline mined here, and the pink tourmaline on the Qing Dynasty beads you see in the Imperial Palace probably came from Santiago. Workers say the Tourmaline Queen Mine here is named after the Empress, and the white one on the green mountain is the Queen Mine.

Experience:

Oceanview is the only mine in the famous Pala gemstone fields that is open to the public. The mine provides screens, barrels and shovels (. After a short training session, you have four hours to search for gems in the mineral soil. You can take anything you find.

I asked the staff, they blow up the mountain once a week, and the mined soil goes through a primary screening. It will be screened for tourists after the initial screening. There are a lot of good quality small gems and mining labels.

Unlike many other mines, this is actually a freshly baked mineral soil for you to sift through, and many of the gems are still growing in the associated ore, which you can't see without looking closely. There is a black stone we thought was black crystal, home to wash the light a look only to find that it is red tourmaline. This rough stone is polished and cut to reveal the beauty of a gem.

Also, you can take a ride in their little Jeep to visit all the mines that are being mined here.



Harvest:

This time we found a lot of precious stones - watermelon tourmaline, powder crystal, aquamarine, black tourmaline, purple lithium, purple lithium mica, crystal, and so on. At first, we would carefully pick out the crystals and put them away, and then there were too many crystals and we threw them away. We took away a whole barrel, and the larger ones were mainly white crystal, violet mica, and black tourmaline crystal symbiont. In addition, there are three pieces of aquamarine, a watermelon tourmaline, a red tourmaline, several small pieces of tourmaline crystal, a purple lithium, countless white crystals, powder and tea crystals, several green mica and so on.




Fee:

$75 each. More expensive than many mineral parks but the best value!

Address:

37304 Magee Rd, Pala, San Diego

Tips:

The mountain road into the mine is a bit rough and unfriendly to low-riding cars.
Wear clothes that aren't afraid to get dirty, you'll get mud all over you.