mt. apatite

If you like the outdoors and like to hike with your other half. This place offers many trails and rock hounding. Love the woods and picking at rocks! You'll find diamonds, garnets and many other gem stones here. Worth a look!

I went to Auburn for work and wound up bringing a Garnet home as big as a gum ball, to me it was as big as a 3kt Diamond, being the rock hound that I am I had read there were Turmaline, Garnets and such at Mt. Apatite mines and one weekend I was dropped off there and stayed all day looking at the beauty and digging for stuff, low and behold ..there it was , incased in gipsum, a beautifil 10sided octagon shaped Garnet! I was so happy, it was like I just won the lottery, I had to show and tell my co-workers and they all ended up coming back with me the next day to search, I definately will go back and highly recomend for the rock hounds all over the world.

We had an awesome time hiking around the park at Mt. Apatite last Friday!!We found a few small pieces of black tourmaline, a few tiny garnets and tons of mica. We didn't dig, everything we found was right on the surface or found by flipping over rocks.We had only a few hours to visit as we were heading from Acadia to the Philly area, so we didn't get to check a lot of the quarries out.We're definitely planning to go back on our next Maine trip! If you go, take plenty of bug spray. The mosquitoes are very persistent.

It was a little tricky finding the entrance to the trail- we felt like we were trespassing on government property! However, the hike was very pleasant and the quarries were very interesting.

I had to literally drag my wife out of the rock pits on 2 different occasions. She would have been there until 10 or 11 pm and we would have needed SEARCH and RESCUE. She is a Rock HOUND / AHOLIC. If you are coming to get rich forget it. If you want to enloy nature and take something home (we took enough mica rocks to make a merry go round) and do geocaching and try your luck in the quarry ponds come on up

Go in at the ball field and national guard station off Garfield Rd. and park BEFORE the gate, take a hike up through some amazing trees and into an unused mine. Beware; on hot weekends there are lots of teenagers drinking and cliff jumping so going with small children might be best on weekday mornings. Keep a close eye, there is unsure footing and loose gravel. But, it's a super fun way to explore. The "hike" up is an access road and is easy. Bring picks and eye protection to chip away at the rock. Lots of mica and different kinds of rock, haven't found any tourmaline yet but I often see people up there with mining gear finding things. Good luck!Also, if you drive around the back side of the mountain on Hatch Rd. then turn into Mine Rd. of Small rd. there is a trail that goes up to the top and connects all around there with a system of trails. many people use this, in the winter it connects to the snowmobile trails.