The rock hounds looked around the table, each at the other, a pregnant pause, before one offered an answer as to why they trek through the woods turning over soil and sifting through gravel.

“To find a plain old rock and make something beautiful out of it,’ said Ted Robles.

The men, members of the Gem and Mineral Society of Franklin, are rock gatherers, semi-precious stone cutters, and jewelry makers who get out to the mountains around the Cowee Valley in Macon County when the mood strikes. There are rubies, sapphires and precious garnet in those mountains, and despite extensive mining at the turn of the century there is still the allure of finding buried treasure.

“Tiffany’s mined all over, but they never found the mother lode,” Robles said, his eyes twinkling with the prospect.

“Ted and I have been looking for it for years,” said Quentin King, a society member and chairman of this year’s Gemboree.

The Gemboree (July 25-29) in Franklin, known as the rock hounds gathering of the clans, is an annual event that helps to foster

 

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The Smoky Mountain News