The Montana Blue Jewel Mine

Minerva Kraushar

Great place. We really appreciated how helpful our guide Matt was. He took the time to inspire our budding geologist and really invested in sharing his experience and knowledge with the kids. We came on a cloudy day which made the entire classification process much more pleasant. Bring water and snacks. Plan to make an afternoon out of the experience. (This review is written on behalf of my 11-year old son) Finding sapphires and garnet was the best part of our trip to Montana. Matt was very helpful and I hope to come back here one day. In total our group came home with 40 sapphires and a few garnets. We also found some pyrite, fossils, and lots of magnetite. If I could give them a 100 star review, I would.

Wendi d

What a fun day! Loved learning about sapphire mining from Bruce & Eric! Highly recommend this place.

Laura Lindberg (Wild West Detectorist)

The best sapphire mining experience in Montana. Sometimes you get lucky and find a clean 8+ carat sapphire, sometimes some that are smaller. You screen the gravel from a pile of dirt which is the same material the mine runs. Your chance of finding a nice gem or two is the same as for the mine owners. I've been here 5 or 6 days of "mining" and always go home with something I can cut. You will also likely find a few garnets. Also note not all of the Blue Jewels sapphires are blue. You will also find pink, yellow, clear and kind of a pale green. They are all pretty!

jason utas

This place is loads of fun. Bruce and Eric were helpful and accommodating. I don't know if this place is for everyone -- if you like using a pair of tweezers to pick through some clean, nicely sorted gravel for teeny-tiny sapphires, you're probably better off going to Philipsburg. If, on the other hand, you're willing to do some hard labor to pull out some bigger rocks that might actually be good cutters, this is the place for you. You're outside shoveling gravel. It might be hot, it might rain, and you'll definitely get a little wet and dirty, but this place is hands-down awesome. You can watch Bruce use a bulldozer to move dredge tailings through a grizzly, and then right over to the digging area. This stuff isn't pre-sorted. And you can see his industrial mining set-up where he processes tonnes of the same material per day. Really cool. Thank you!