Where to Find Garnet in Vermont
Vermont has 5 mapped collecting spots that report garnet, spread across 5 counties. 5 of the spots are on land mapped as publicly accessible.
Every garnet spot we track in Vermont
Best spotGassettsWindsor County, VermontPublic access · Quartz, Garnet, Tourmaline +7
Best spotBenningtonBennington County, VermontPublic access · Blue Quartz, Garnet, Feldspar +2
Best spotLake WilloughbyOrleans County, VermontPublic access · Muscovite, Beryl, Garnet +1
Ely MineOrange County, VermontPublic access · Chalcopyrite, Pyrrhotite, Pyrite +7
EdenLamoille County, VermontPublic access · Asbestos, Vesuvianite, Serpentine +4
Standout garnet spots in Vermont
Hand-picked from the full list above, with the reason each one earns a trip.
Bennington
Bennington County
A Precambrian road-cut on Route 9 east of Bennington yields cabochon-grade blue quartz along with garnet, feldspar, biotite, and hornblende, set in the Green Mountains along the Molly Stark Trail.
Lake Willoughby
Orleans County
The Route 5A road-cuts along the east shore of Lake Willoughby expose granite pegmatite carrying beryl, garnet, vesuvianite, and books of plumose muscovite, set beneath the fjord-like cliffs of Mount Pisgah and Mount Hor.
Gassetts
Windsor County
The Route 103 road-cuts at Gassetts slice through silvery garnet-mica schist, one of Vermont's classic metamorphic mineral localities.
Best counties for garnet in Vermont
Ranked by the number of mapped garnet spots. County links open the full rockhounding page for that county.
Before you go
Read the garnet identification guide so you know what a keeper looks like in the field: Garnet in the encyclopedia.
