Julian Mining Company — Local services in San Diego Country Estates

Went here on Sunday. Started with the gold panning, no lesson, and the small bucket of gem stones. Great activity for the younger kids and older kids. Went back to get one lesson and a pay dirt package, which is guaranteed to have some gold in it. Lesson was 10 seconds long, and left us looking up videos on Youtube. Pay dirt did produce some flecks that my daughter found and enjoyed panning for. We came away with lots of gems which we sift in the same water that you can pan for gold. Without the paydirt, you are sifting through this left over sand, which I am guessing has ZERO gold in it, and the more people that add this sand to the sleuth boxes are making it harder to find this supposed gold, if you don't pay for the paydirt package. Overall, great experience. Now, in looking at the other reviews, I am seeing that we missed the Eagle Peak and High Peak mines. Not sure where they were on the property. The mine train was temporarily broken, so we didn't ride that. We will be back. The toilets on the side of the red house are better than porta-potties, but...

Came solely because my toddler wanted to be a miner for the day. The lady who was helping us suggested a bucket of dirt we could sift and find gems and geodes. The sifting section was under this huge tree so we were very comfortable even though it was literally 90 degrees out. The bucket had a really good amount of cool things to find. The train ride has a short track but they go around three times and it was very exciting and a long enough ride for my three year old. The seats were spacious. I only deducted a star because I only found out about the mine you can walk into after reading through the reviews. I would have loved to know about that since we kept mentioning how my son really wanted to go mining and no one mentioned that option to us. Maybe it was closed though I think it’s a perfect place for a toddler. I don’t see older kids being entertained for very long here or being impressed...

I was on a trip last week to learn about Julian and find out what there was to do besides eating apple pie. I had no idea that this place was even here. I loved it! The owners are so nice and hard working. Their goal is to provide a place where families or groups or individuals can get together and have fun gold mining or picking raspberries or petting their animals or just relaxing. I especially loved picking the raspberries. They were so tasty and very easy to pick. I'm excited to go back when the apples will be ripe and ready to pick. And to go gold mining again (I found it to be a little addictive). Even though the name is the Julian Mining Company, it's located in Wynola, just 3 miles west of Julian. When you come in to Wynola, the gold mining is on the left and the farm and fruit picking is across the road....