As Interstate 90 gives way to State Route 28, the road winds through the glacial hills of Central New York.
The Italian restaurants and parkways of Utica give way to a rural landscape of farms, homes and open fields once owned and mined by the Mohawks.
A little boy stares widely at the rock he’s just pulled from the mine wall. It’s a Herkimer diamond; a clear quartz crystal prized for its natural shape and clarity.
Ezekiel Sehmoyeo says it’s one of the biggest he’s ever found.
“If you're not talking about expensivest, probably this one's my most biggest I've ever found,” Ezekiel said with a shy smile.
Herkimer diamonds are quartz crystals known for their natural double points and faceted surfaces.
They aren’t actual diamonds, but that doesn’t seem to matter to the thousands of people who come to the mines each summer to search for them.
Renee Shevat is the second-generation owner of the mine. Her family has been connected to the property since her father bought it in 1979.
The history, she recalls of the stones, goes back centuries.
“There’s a tapestry of people,” She said, “it’s really a story about human curiosity and economic enterprise across all six centuries. The Native Americans started first. They were some of the first to find them.”
The Mohawks used the stones as wampum beads in trade. European settlers later found the crystals in their fields.
During the American Revolution, Gen. Nicholas Herkimer came up with a plan to use the stones to help fund his army.
The mine as a public attraction came much later. In the early 20th century, a local farmer began allowing people to search his land for the crystals for a few cents.
Shevat’s father bought the property in 1979 and turned it into the tourist attraction it is today.
“I like to say that they democratized gem hunting,” Shevat said of her parents’ stewardship.
Today, the mine is both a tourist destination and a place for geological research and lapidary work.
“The reason why these are so interesting and so famous internationally is that the crystal is the oldest material in the world. It's a half a billion years old,” Shevat said. “The second is that it's the clearest crystal … The third is it's the hardest.”
On the Mohs scale, which measures mineral hardness, diamonds rank a 10. Herkimer diamonds rank a 7.5, while most crystals top out at 7.
“The problem is most people can't use material that's that light in a lot of economic commodities. At 7.5, that extra one point gives us so much opportunity to use them in a whole bunch of economic commodities,” Shevat said.
Amateur miners come from around the country to search for crystals in the dolomite rock at the mine.
Some specimens can sell for hundreds of dollars, and an on-site lapidarist can turn prized finds into jewelry. It also draws professional miners like Jordan McDaniel.
He has been mining Herkimer diamonds for 15 seasons. His grandmother first brought him to the mine as a child, and he eventually turned his childhood interest into a full-time job.
He calls the pull of the work “diamond fever.”
“It usually starts on your first day and then when you go home and you try to sleep, all you can see is sparkles in your eyes. It'll keep you up all night,” McDaniel said, and from there, "as soon as the sun comes up, you got to run right to the mines and get some more.”
He sees a spiritual connection to the stones.
“Mother Nature put it there. They come to me,” McDaniel said. “Maybe it's my grandma.”
But for miners like Ezekiel, beaming with glittering hands, it’s no job, just a gem of a way to spend a summer day in Central New York.
