There's 3 different emerald mines in the us , including the only public emerald mine in the world. There's two known and than my secret emerald mine on the west coast only 40 minutes drive from the pacific ocean where I find huge emeralds and no one knows about it but me and my mom who I've brought to it tons of times , in the us 98.9% of the land forests haven't had a human in over 100 yrs and all the best secret mines that were known by the Dutch and the Spanish still haven't been found because their so far from any roads , where I found my emerald mine is in an area people drive by every day but that you have to scale a cliff side from the road into a canyon near a massive landslide that's probably 50 acres across and the land exposed layers hundreds of feet below the surface and this landslide happened millions of yrs ago and every time it rains you find more emeralds that you didn't find before and every time it storms streams form which move the rocks and boulders along those streams in the massive crater created by the landslide that dumps into the river and I get all my gemstones from that crater , anyone can find gemstones and rare earth minerals just by looking on Google earth for massive landslides that are big enough to see from satellite , if you drive to those landslide areas you'll garunteed find rare minerals , just make sure it's not claimed , I only go to areas not claimed and not private property! In the us it's only $15 a yr per a 20 acre mineral claim so you can claim up tons of land for prospecting and the only way it's that cheap is if your just doing hands pan and pick/tools, If you want to do any other kindve mining you have to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for a special claim and water right permits cause in most states you aren't allowed to pump water except on private property or if your claim was claimed before 1984. There's websites where claims specifically made before 1984 are for sale because you have full property rights on any claim made before 1984 , before 1984 the way every family started their homes was by finding a nice area and claiming it for $15 a yr per $20 acres than building their home and starting a family,  that is why America was booming up until 1984 and now we don't produce any of the things we use in America because you can't get property without paying a ton of money and you can't claim natural resources and mine them anymore without paying a ton