ELLERBE — Thar’s no gold at that thar flume, but thar’s emeralds, sapphires and amethyst.
Or, rather, there will be when the new flume at the Rankin Museum of American Heritage cranks up next weekend. (Thar’ll be fools’ gold, too, so folks should be mindful of bein’ bamboozled.) The first 100 students who register will be able to take up seines to look for treasure during the flume’s public debut.
“It’s something that we’ve talked about for five or six years,” museum curator Gail Benson says of the 30-foot flume — also called a “sluice” — just built in back of the museum. So when state Sen. Tom McInnis pointed the way to a $25,000 educational grant, she said, the museum board leapt at the chance.
The flume went in this summer.
Materials and guidance came from the Sandy Creek Mining Co. in Fostoria, Ohio, which has installed 450 such flumes in 20 countries. (A Google search shows nothing similar in these parts, but many in western North Carolina.) Southern Builders of Rockingham installed the flume and a shelter to fend off the Southern sun.
From 9 to noon next Saturday, July 29, students from preschool age to 16 will be able to seine for 20 kinds of precious and semiprecious stones. Openings are available for four sessions — 9, 10 and 11 a.m., and noon. Because the flume is multilevel — and because Benson built something for “little-bitty” miners to stand on — all ages can be accommodated each session.
This area has a history of gold mining near Mount Gilead and Troy, Benson said Friday. Now, Vulcan mines for granite, but that’s about it for mining in or near Richmond County.
Still, mini-miners will get the whole experience when the flume opens. Each will receive a wooden seine and a bag of “mining rough” — also known as dirt — salted with minerals. As the flume sends water down its chute and back up through underground pipes for recirculation, miners will pour a small amount of rough into the seine, wash out the dirt in the flowing water and retrieve their finds.
Benson promises that each bag of rough will contain gemstones.
“(Students) could cut them and buff them and make them into jewelry,” she said. Among the gemstones that could be in each miner’s bag are amethysts, carnelian, citrine, emeralds, garnets, onyx, opals, quartz, rubies and sapphires.
“The kids love anything blue or red or green,” Benson said of previous geology events at the museum. “I’ve seen kids go crazy with a piece of pyrite (fools’ gold).”
In September, the museum will use the flume again — this time for a day of fossil-sleuthing. (Or sluicing, as the case may be.) A date for that has not been set.
Benson says she has sluiced herself, using a 5-pound bag of dirt, and found 83 fossils.
The local Farm Bureau and Rotary Clubs are covering the cost of the dirt for the mining event. The DeWitt Foundation will finance the fossil event.
Those interested in registering or in more information on either the gemstone or fossil event may call Benson at 910-652-6378.
Reach Christine Carroll at 910-817-2673.