Gemstones San Diego

The Himalaya Tourmaline Mine is located in Mesa Grande just across the valley from Mt. Polomar in San Diego County, California. Open year-round Thursday-Monday, the mine offers fee digging for $75 per person each day. If you don’t want to spend the whole day screening for gems, you can purchase a bucket of high grade gem ore for $50 and take the bucket home with you.

While this is more of a commercial site and gets a lot of tourist traffic, it’s just the kind of thing for someone new to the treasure hunting hobby to try out. You’re welcome to bring your own equipment, but you can also just use that which is available on site. This and the fact that experts are on the scene can help you get acclimated to the mining environment without investing a lot of money. Although the commercial setup makes it unlikely that you’ll find something fantastic, you may find some nice souvenirs and you’ll get some experience learning how to recognize tourmalines when you find them as well as learn more about how to mine in general.