Today, we return to Nevada’s southwestern border, this time, to Esmeralda County. We’re going to v isit the former Blue Jay Mining Lode, known for nearly a century now as the Lone Mountain Turquoise Mine.
First, though, I want to reprise something I said here a few weeks ago, when we wrapped up our look at Arizona’s turquoise mines:
A couple of caveats about today’s photos: Wings has some truly extraordinary old turquoise nuggets and old natural turquoise cabochons from a variety of mine sources and regions. Some of these were given to him by his late father, who was likewise a self-taught silversmith, from his own very old collection. Others he acquired over the years through pawn, trade, and outright purchase. Some were identified by their mine source at the time he acquired them; others were not, and we’ve had to analyze themselves to try to identify the source. We’ve done our best in that regard, using a combination of the look and feel of the stones, the colors and matrices or lack thereof, the hardness and texture, and any information that remains available from their acquisition. In some cases, however, there is considerable overlap in the characteristics of turquoise from different mines.
All of this is to note that the nuggets shown here may or may not have been pulled from the earth of Lone Mountain. Our best guess, based on age, physical characteristics, other data, and our own experience that the nugget shown above is an old Lone Mountain stone. It’s one that was part of his father’s collection for decades, and that Wings inherited from him many years ago. The color and matrix patterning fit, as do the nugget’s hardness, general feel, and extraordinary high quality. Its obvious value and large size also make it unlikely that it will be cut and cabbed. [Yes, I know that for most people, those would be precisely the characteristics that would make cutting and cabbing most attractive; it could be turned into a great deal of money by way of a great many individual stones. But for traditional people, there is much to be said for preserving the spirit of — and in — the stone, and doing so likewise preserves value of a different sort.]
THE REGION
The Lone Mountain mine sits in Esmeralda County, Nevada, located along the angled southwestern border of the state, near the town of Tonopah. Tonopah itself sits at roughly the midpoint between Las Vegas and the older Reno, less glitzy but with far more character, and to this day bills itself as Queen of the Silver Camps.
Silver and Tonopah are said to have been “discovered” together in 1900 — on May 19th of that year, to be exact. Of course, as any honest history makes clear, the person credited with those discoveries, one Jim Butler, no more “discovered” the area than Columbus “discovered” what is now called America. But this country’s dominant culture has never heeded Iñigo Montoya when it comes to the persistent misuse of certain words, and “discovery” is a perennial.
At any rate, Butler noticed, shall we say, what appeared to be silver on an outcropping in the area of the Tonopah Springs (whether he found it by virtue of a runaway mule, as the probably-apocryphal history tells it, is another matter), took samples, and returned to his home base to try to convince the powers that were of the importance of his find. The area assayer remained unpersuaded, convinced that the silver color was nothing more than iron. Butler had little luck with his new venture until he partnered with Tasker Oddie, then-governor of Nevada. Oddie reportedly stopped by Butler’s ranch one day, noticed the samples, and offered to pay for a new assay in exchange for a stake in any find. The assayer Oddie used in the town of Austin valuated them at as much as $600 per ton — an extraordinary find. Butler is said to have been busy with such daily chores as bringing in they hay, which, as we know firsthand, must often trump all other tasks. eventually, on August 27th of that year, he and his wife made the trip to the tow of Belmont to stake their own claims, filing eight of them. According to local records, six them turned into some of the greatest producers of silver in the state’s history: the Buckboard, Burro, Desert Queen, Mizpah, Silver Top, and Valley View Mines. He hired men to begin working the Mizpah claim in October, and the mining camp they set up came to be known as Butler. By Christmas Day, fourteen men lived in the Butler camp full-time, and by January, that number had grown to forty. By now, it was no longer simply a mining camp, but beginning to be called the town of Butler, and the area’s first stagecoach run made a stop there on March 24th, 1901. Two weeks later, on April 10th, the Butler post office opened. The town retained that name for nearly four more years, until March 3rd, 1905, when the post office officially changed the site name to Tonopah.
Meanwhile, Butler had sold off his original silver claims. In 1902, their holders consolidated these into the Tonopah Mining Company, which controlled some 160 acres’ worth of surface land area (and the mineral-rich deposits below) in the greater Tonopah district, as well as lands with mining operations in two other states, Canada, and Central American. That same year, another company formed, the Tonopah-Belmont Mining Company; it held eleven claims spread across more than 160 acres, situated at the eastern edge of the Tonopah Mining Company’s holdings.From 1900 to 1921, the mines collectively brought in $121 million worth of precious metals, peaking in 1913 with a single-year take of nearly $10 million worth of silver, gold, copper, and lead. The great Depression struck the mines hard, though, and by the start of World War II, only four major companies continued operations in the area. In October of 1942, a fire swept through what was known as the Tonopah Extension, destroying the mill and other properties. By war’s end in 1945, all four companies had departed, and in 1947, the railroad followed suit. Despite the 1968 purchase of several of the claims by Howard Hughes’s corporation, subsequent efforts were anemic, to say the least. By the 1970s, the only significant artifact of Tonopah District Mining was the turquoise mining industry, and chief among them was the Lone Mountain Mine.
THE MINE
The Lone Mountain vein was “discovered” (again, we know what that really means) in 1920, by a prospector named Lee Hand. He staked a claim and named it the Blue Jay, but the name didn’t stick. Explanations vary, but one suggests that multiple stakeholders in the area around the same time had named their [unrelated] mines “Blue Jay,” and so Mr. Hand, so this version of the story goes, changed the name himself, to “Lone Mountain.” Later in the 1920s, Hand would lease the mine to a man named Bert Kopenhaver, who is credited with the actual strike that made Lone Mountain turquoise famous, in 1927. Kopenhaver reportedly dug some forty feet deep, and there found the beautiful clear dark-blue spiderwebbed stone that represents classic high-grade Lone Mountain turquoise.
The mine expanded, but remained an underground operation until the 1960s, when Menless Winfield bought it and over the next decade converted the entire operation to open-pit mining. Decades of multiple successive owners working the veins while focused solely on extracting the valuable blue stone had reportedly rendered the tunnels and shafts, which descended to a depth of as much as 250 feet, unsafe for further excavation. Winfield razed them and opened the area up to larger-scale open-pit works. It was during this period that Lone Mountain produced its greatest volume of turquoise.
Some sources report that the mine is closed; it was for a time in recent years, despite having been purchased in 1979 by a partnership consisting of the Waddell and King families. Owner Gene Waddell notes that, despite having a number of other partners in the venture over the last 35 years, it has only been mined a fraction of that time. It is open at this time under the ownership of Waddell and the operational management of Chris Lott, who oversees small-scale open-pit works. On its Facebook page, the company is now advertising itself as implementing changes that will permit it to mine the area in a more “eco-friendly manner.”
THE TURQUOISE
Lone Mountain turquoise is one of the types of turquoise that frequently is mislabeled “Tonopah turquoise,” because the mine is found in the greater Tonopah area. [To be clear, there is no such thing as “Tonopah turquoise,” insofar as there is no mine of that name producing the stone. The only applicability of the label is geographic, and even then, only of the larger area, but it’s often used by non-experts to refer to Nevada turquoise generally, even types from elsewhere in the state that look nothing like what’s found in mines closer to the town of Tonopah.]
Lone Mountain has been, and remains, consistently one of the highest-grade forms of turquoise in the nation. It’s unusually hard, and stands up well to cutting and cabbing despite the common presence of a significant amount of matrix.Very little of the stone from Lone Mountain is green; indeed, even very old pieces of vintage Indian jewelry made with it remain blue despite decades of wear. It’s usually a sky blue stone, the blues very clear and intense, ranging from the sky blue found in a box of crayons to a deeper shade approaching a paler form of indigo. Some of it tends to be relatively matrix-free, and looks a bit like the best of Arizona’s Kingman and Sleeping Beauty turquoise, but with more intensity to the color. The best Lone Mountain has to offer, though, is its spiderweb turquoise, which is the same intense blue, but shot through with delicate yet strong webbed matrices, mostly apparently chert.
Lander and Indian Mountain turquoise are both more valuable than Lone Mountain, but they’re unusually beautiful, and unusually rare. In terms of turquoise that’s readily available even today, Lone Mountain is largely in a class of its own. Had I not seen it last night with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it possible to buy Lone Mountain cabochons for as little as $4 per carat, but apparently it is doable. The cabs in question are small, and my guess is that they 1) represent the lowest end of the mine’s quality spectrum, and 2) are stones that the seller has put “on sale,” so to speak, in order the clear their inventory. Even so, at that price, it’s a steal. [Some sources report that the turquoise the mine currently produces is lighter in color (and implying that it is of lesser quality), with some describing it as “blue-gray”; for the most part, the cabs I’ve seen on the market thus far are the usual brilliant sky blue, with varying matrices.]
It’s much more common to find Lone Mountain cabochons at substantially higher price points, generally more than $20 per carat, and often in the $40- to $60-per carat range. Indian jewelry made with Lone Mountain turquoise commands a higher price point virtually automatically, and is more apt to be used by established and highly skilled artisans, no doubt in part because of its cost. Vintage Indian jewelry made with Lone Mountain turquoise, particularly that dating from the 1930s through the 1950s or so, virtually by definition falls into the “collector’s item” category, and can be extraordinarily expensive. Some dealers don’t even bother posting price points, instead requiring potential buyers to call for information, in part as a way of weeding out inquiries that are not serious. And while most natural turquoise of that vintage today appears more green than blue, a product of years of wear and absorption of natural skin oils and other substances, Lone Mountain holds its original sky-blue color unusually well, even nearly a century later. A few dealers are in possession of some spectacular pieces of the stone, such as this exceptionally large one held privately, for sale at a price exceeding $11,000.
I’ve looked through years’ worth of photos of Wings’s old pieces, and have found none that are demonstrably made with Lone Mountain turquoise. Of course, in earlier years, we were not as rigorous about photographing every item, and I have no doubt that among those we missed were some such pieces. That said, they were probably also woefully underpriced, considering the value of the stones. In reviewing the historical data and re-examining the pictured nuggets, he’s fallen in love with the stone all over again, and is planning this week to contact a prospective source for it (as well as for some other spectacular forms of turquoise that we’ll be covering in the weeks to come). If you’re interested in owning a piece made with Lone Mountain turquoise, one of the most valuable collector’s-grade forms in existence, simply send me an inquiry via the Contact form at left.
Next week: New colors.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2016; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
