It closed. It was sold several times. It reopened in 2024.
Ruggles Mine is an open pit 40 miles northwest of Concord, in the town of Grafton, New Hampshire, a short distance from Route 4 at the village green. The pit is spacious and takes in tunnels and underground chambers, some of them flooded. Visitors may keep whatever minerals they find on the mine floor or hammer loose from the walls, which is the whole reason to go.
There is a great deal to find. Over 150 minerals have been identified here. Mica is the most abundant, but the list runs through feldspar, beryl, amethyst, rose and smoky quartz and garnet, and specimens of the rare uranium minerals uranophane, torbernite and autunite have come out of it. The deposits belong to the Littleton Formation, Devonian in age, which geologists put at roughly 350 to 400 million years old.
The mine is named for Sam Ruggles, who lived from 1770 to 1843 and started the first commercial mica mine in the United States here. Mica then was used for things like lamp chimneys and stove windows. Ruggles was a Boston grocer and merchant of West India goods who was never a New Hampshire resident at all: he was born, lived and died in Boston, and hired local men in Grafton to work the mine for him.
Its recent history is a small local drama. New Hampshire Public Radio reported in July 2023 that two New Hampshire residents had bought Ruggles Mine hoping to reopen it to the public, which they did.
Check opening times before you drive out. This is a place that has been shut before.
Beryl, mica, quartz
Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
