Emerald Hollow Mine, Hiddenite

Thomas Edison sent a mineralogist to North Carolina to look for platinum. He found a gemstone nobody had described.

The man was William Earl Hidden, who lived from 1853 to 1918, and in 1879 he identified in mines near here the green spodumene that was named hiddenite after him. The community took the same name; before Hidden arrived it appears on an 1871 map as White Plains. Hiddenite is a census-designated place in east-central Alexander County with a population of 507 at the 2020 census.

For a long time hiddenite was a one-county mineral, found nowhere on Earth but Alexander County. Only in recent decades has it turned up in Madagascar and Brazil as well.

The ground gives up more than that. The Hiddenite gem mines and the area around them also yield emeralds, sapphires and a good many other precious stones, and the US Geological Survey records the Adams Hiddenite and Emerald Mine here as a past producer of emerald and semiprecious gemstone, listing cassiterite, hiddenite, microcline, monazite, muscovite and pyrite among its materials. Sluicing and digging for gems is a popular thing to do here and it brings a lot of visitors.

The town itself is small and has been several things. It was incorporated in 1913 and had its charter repealed in 1919. It was once known as a health resort on the strength of its sulfur springs. It is a poultry producer. The Lucas Mansion went onto the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, and the Hiddenite Celebration of the Arts runs on the fourth Saturday in September from nine in the morning until four.

Getting here is straightforward. Hiddenite sits on North Carolina Highway 90, five miles east of the county seat at Taylorsville and fifteen miles northwest of Statesville, with US Route 64 bypassing to the south. Check bridges after storms: the Hiddenite Bridge split apart during the heavy rains of Tropical Storm Eta in 2020.