Elijah Mountain Gem Mine

This is a great place to spend a couple of hours. There are so many things to do here. Something for everyone. The gem mining is the best we've ever done. The owners are super nice. They have the best prices on gems and stones we have seen in a while also. And they stock some rare stones we haven't yet seen. The goats are the cutest and you can feed them too. Birds are everywhere and so friendly. Lots of chickens and peacocks and ducks, oh my!! We easily spent two hours here!! We will be back.

I can see why they were voted #4 best things to do for family fun! While I don't have any kids, I enjoyed the amount of kid-friendly and adult friendly things to do! Their inside shop has so much to look at and they have a bunch of options to choose from for gem mining bags. They even have an at-home option. I also loved the goats and birds! Their prices were more appropriate than other places I've seen like this for gems and other items in the shop. The koi pond going throughout the floor in the building was one of my favorite parts!

Granddaughter enjoyed feeding the goats. We took a bucket home and she loved looking for gems! So fun!

This place claims to be the largest in the state. I don't know if that is true, but we had a blast! The store has so many crystals to choose from! Some are certainly fake of course, but lots of pieces seemed pretty legit. As for the mining, we did the check-in offer and had a fun time of it as a family. You're guaranteed to get some nice gems in the bucket, and the kids really had a good time checking out all the crystals within their buckets. Worth the trip over if you're going to Asheville!

We spent two entertaining hours at Elijah Mountain today. Our kids each mined their own bucket and found lots of nice size stones. We browsed the large crystal selection in the shop, feed the goats, and had ice cream. A great family activity if you are staying in the Asheville area.

This was our first visit to this establishment and our kids were incredibly excited. Just a look of their faces as they found hidden gems in the buckets and explain to each other what each was by looking at the charts was exciting to me. Then going over to the Goat Petting area as well as looking at the beautiful birds and free-range chickens was a comfortable moment to pass the time away. The staff was eager to help and did an awesome job making us feel welcome. This is definitely something we want to come back and see every year!

We loved it here!! Kids had a blast, and it really is worth it to go big or go home! We got the big bucket for my 3 littles and 4 adults to share and we spent a good 1.5-2hrs going through it!

The GEM store is filled with great reasonable items. Gem mining was fun, the grounds are great. The big disappointment was after actually gem mining, I was expecting someone to assist with viewing our finds with us to let us know what we found. Yes, they had laminated visuals placed thorough out the mining area, but I was expecting a more personable experience. No one working that day acted like they wanted to be there. I have been gem mining for years and this is the weirdest experience I have ever had. I will try a different place in the future.

WARNING this is a crappy little tourist trap. Do not believe any B.S. about this being the largest gem mine or goat farm or #4 worldwide anything. Its all lies. What you get is 4 unhappy goats in a noninteractive pen, and three peahens in a small cage. The mine doesnt exist....its actually just a pre-filled bucket of sand in which you get to pan for predetermined treasures.The gift shop is nice,but there are larger and better ones in town. Also, if you are looking to get rid of a child or two, there is an unsupervised deathtrap playground outside. Nearest hospital is about 15 miles that-a-way, FYI. TLDR if you have very young kids who don't actually know what a mine is, and are passing by, and need to pee, by all means stop by, otherwise avoid.

this was horrible there was chickens everywhere and sand and also no place to wash my feet. my feet were covered in sand and my hotel was cleaning not to mention the building was run down.