This museum is located in the old Macon County Jail in the heart of downtown Franklin, NC.
The area in and around Franklin, NC is known as the Gem Mining Capital of the World. Gem Mining is a popular tourist activity at many places, where you buy a bucket of dirt, pour some of the dirt into a sifter into a trough of running water. The water washed away the dirt, leaving behind some interesting rocks, hopefully including some rubies, sapphires or emeralds. The dirt in this part of the country must be the most enriched with precious stones, as there are many tourist spots that specialize in this activity here. If you're somewhere else that offers this activity, there's a good chance the bags of dirt came from one of the distributors near Franklin.
The kinds of gems and/or minerals you'd find in Middle Tennessee would likely be phosphate. While it's an important industry, the Phosphate Museum in Mt. Pleasant just doesn't sound as interesting as one about rubies and emeralds. (However, my mom visited the Phosphate Museum in July and liked it.)
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