Graves Mountain, Georgia

Three hills, each about 400 feet high, have been mined away into a desolate canyon.

Graves Mountain sits about 54 miles southeast of Athens, just inside the Lincoln County line, and the University of Georgia calls what is left some of the most unique geologic features in the state. It is an abandoned mineral mine now, and nearly every weekend geologists and rock enthusiasts are out on it looking for specimens.

Tiffany's started it. From the 1920s the jeweller mined the site for rutile, which was used for polishing diamonds, and rutile is still the headline mineral here: an angular, blocky mineral of gemstone quality, recognisable by its unusually high density and its mirror-like lustre. Aluminum Silicates, Inc. came in afterwards for kyanite, which goes into heat-resistant products. In the mid-1960s Combustion Chemicals, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Combustion Engineering, was formed to buy the site and carry on kyanite mining, and it worked the ground until 1984.

The species list is long and strange. Alongside rutile and kyanite the Georgia Mineral Society lists lazulite, iridescent hematite, pyrophyllite, pyrite, ilmenite, fuchsite, barite, sulfur, variscite, woodhouseite, crandallite, strengite, phosphosiderite, cacoxenite, blue quartz and quartz crystals.

Come equipped or do not come. The Society's advice is a hand truck to move buckets and tools, scratching tools for surface collecting, and a rocker screen to sift for rutile at the top of the mountain. For the lazulite and kyanite you are breaking quartzite boulders, so gloves, safety glasses, a sledge hammer and chisels are needed, with a shovel and pry bar useful.

Two warnings, and both are serious. The quarry has very high and unstable walls, and loose rocks can and will be dislodged from above, sometimes by nothing more than the wind. And the place becomes unbearably hot in a Georgia summer, which is why most local mineral societies confine their trips here to September through May.

It is PRIVATE and the only ordinary way on is the Rock Swap and Dig, run twice a year by the caretaker: spring 2026 is 17 to 19 April, 8am to 6pm, and no sign-up is needed, you just turn up.