Where to Find Smoky Quartz in Maine

Standout smoky quartz spots in Maine

Hand-picked from the full list below, with the reason each one earns a trip.

• Catherine Mountain (Donnell Pond)

  Hancock County County

  Catherine Mountain holds a nineteenth-century molybdenite prospect where molybdenite occurs in granite pegmatite, rare vugs, and fractures, alongside reported scheelite and wolframite. The peak sits inside the state-administered Donnell Pond Public Reserved Land, where the Maine Geological Survey allows casual hobby collecting without a permit.

• Tunk Mountain

  Hancock County County

  Tunk Mountain is carved from the Tunk Lake pluton, a concentrically zoned alkali granite that grades into rapakivi granite, producing smoky quartz, perthitic feldspar, and dark hornblende-bearing rock. The peak sits on Donnell Pond Public Reserved Land, where the Maine Geological Survey allows casual hobby collecting without a permit. It is a granite-and-quartz site rather than a gem pegmatite.

• Edgecomb Quarry (Schmid Preserve)

  Lincoln County County

  The Edgecomb pegmatite pits sit inside the 766-acre Schmid Preserve, town land laced with more than seven miles of public trails, where 1880s feldspar and mica workings exposed almandine garnet, beryl, and aquamarine. The preserve is free and open to the public. Smoky quartz and muscovite occur in the same pegmatite.

• Harvard Quarry (Noyes Mountain)

  Oxford County County

  The historic Harvard Quarry on Noyes Mountain produced the gem green tourmaline that gave the Harvard green color its name, and its dumps still yield schorl, beryl, smoky quartz, rose quartz, and purple apatite. The quarry acre is held open to the public by its private owner at no charge, and the surrounding Noyes Mountain Preserve permits rock hounding under the Western Foothills Land Trust.

• Lord Hill (White Mountain National Forest)

  Oxford County County

  Lord Hill is a granite pegmatite in the White Mountain National Forest where more than 50 minerals have been recorded, most famously large white topaz and smoky quartz crystals encrusted with rare phenakite. The US Forest Service runs it as a designated collecting area open under a no-fee day permit. Feldspar and garnet round out the finds.

Best counties for smoky quartz in Maine

Ranked by the number of mapped smoky quartz spots. County links open the full rockhounding page for that county.

• Oxford County4 spots
• Hancock County2 spots
• Lincoln County1 spot

Every smoky quartz spot we track in Maine

Sorted by county. Coordinates open in Google Maps.

Where else to find smoky quartz

• North Carolina9 spots
• Colorado8 spots
• New Hampshire6 spots
• South Carolina6 spots
• Connecticut5 spots

More minerals to hunt in Maine

• Quartz15
• Feldspar13
• Beryl12
• Almandine Garnet9
• Garnet8
• Albite6
• Mica6
• Aquamarine5
• Muscovite5