Today we wrap up our exploration of the primary sources of Arizona turquoise with a look three remaining turquoise mines. Over the last century and a quarter, there have, of course, been many smaller claims. Some developed into full-fledged mining operations; some were tiny “hat claims” (a vein so small it was said you could fit it under your hat). Most are, of course, now defunct.
There are three mines, however, that are significant enough for a mention here. The first, Castle Dome, shut down years ago; what is on the market now is all there is. The second, Ithaca Peak, is now owned and operated by the heirs to the Kingman mining operation. The third we’ll look at today, Turquoise Mountain, is still producing, and refers to the Turquoise Mountain Mine in Arizona’s Mineral Park (i.e., Kingman), not to any of the smaller claims that borrowed the same name.
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.
With that in mind, please view today’s photos as providing examples of what turquoise from the relevant area looks like. They may indeed be from the mines in question, but after the passage of so many decades, their provenance is murky enough that the most we can say with any assurance is that they are old enough to be original Castle Dome or Ithaca Peak, or older Turquoise Mountain, and bear all the visual hallmarks of turquoise from those sources. Turquoise Mountain is also more widely variable in appearance that the other two, and so we’ve chosen nuggets and cabochons that will provide some sense of just how broad that range is. In the photo above at the top of this post, the free-from cabochon at the extreme lower right is believed to be Turquoise Mountain: classic robin’s-egg blue with the wisps of white in the stone common to Arizona turquoise, and with a hard but delicate webbed matrix in a dark coppery red, which is one the hallmarks of Turquoise Mountain stone.
CASTLE DOME
The old Castle Dome Mine is located just west of the town of Miami, in southeastern Arizona’s Globe district and about a half-hour away from the Sleeping Beauty mine. The town actually sits east of Phoenix and west of Globe along Highway 60, and its appearance on maps is marked chiefly by the fact that virtually all of the water in the area consists of tailings ponds from mining operations. It, and the area that includes the tailings ponds, likewise sit just west of the San Carlos Apache Reservation.
The Castle Dome mine first opened in 1943, a wartime commercial operation intended to supply American military forces (and the manufacturers of arms and equipment) with copper. Turquoise was essentially little more than a pretty byproduct. The mine remained open for a decade, but in the post-work War II years, the commercial demand for copper dropped steeply, and in 1953 the owners closed the mine.
The lease was bought up by none other than L.W. Hardy, the “King of Turquoise” who owned the Kingman operation as well as numerous other turquoise mines around the state. He re-opened Castle Dome as the Pinto Valley Mine, and began stripping the wide swaths of deep blue-green stone out of the earth. Reportedly, mine workers were initially permitted to visit the mine on their days off and dig out what they could carry with them, but that practice was eventually stopped. By the 1970s, Castle Dome/Pinto Valley was reported to be the state’s second-largest producer of turquoise (first, of course, being the massive Kingman operations at Mineral Park in the northwest, owned by the same operator). In those days, the mine is recorded as producing some 9,000 pounds of turquoise per month. It was closed permanently at the end of the 1970s, with the entire pit bulldozed.
A lot of what was mined at Castle Dome/Pinto Valley was not high-grade, and thus not valuable for gemwork. Nonetheless, is was receptive to treating, and it was popular among area dealers for cutting and cabbing on a mass scale, providing cheap treated beads and cabochons that could be sold in bulk for making inexpensive, easily saleable Indian-style jewelry.
The good veins, though, were quite good indeed, made more valuable now by the fact that the mine is defunct. Like much other turquoise from the area, such as Sleeping Beauty and Globe, it tended toward intense colors and a relative dearth of matrix: more blue than green, in shades ranging from a clear dark robin’s-egg blue to a deep sky blue so dark that it looked dyed even when it wasn’t. The three old cabochons shown above are examples of what Castle Dome turquoise looked like at its best: bright, deep, clear blues, with small bits copper and iron pyrite matrix in it. The matrix in Castle Dome often appears more red, with a bronze tinge, than the matrix in most other turquoise from the area; the copper’s presence is more obvious.
Most Castle Dome/Pinto Valley turquoise on the market today is not especially expensive. You can find it semi-regularly on e-Bay, already cut and drilled into beads or sold in lots of cabochons or nuggets, several carats’ worth for less than $20. Most of that is likely treated — stabilized, at a minimum. If you’re lucky enough to find old, verifiably untreated nuggets or cabs, the price increases significantly, but it’s still not exorbitant. Found in old Indian jewelry, though, it becomes very pricey indeed: Vintage Indian jewelry (actual Indian jewelry, not “Indina-style”) containing old Castle Dome cabochons can run into the thousands, and worth every penny.
ITHACA PEAK
The Ithaca Peak Mine is a small adjunct to the Kingman operations in northwestern Arizona. Next to the Kingman mine itself, it produces the same sorts of turquoise, including the higher-end variants found at Kingman proper: black spiderweb; waterweb; and bird’s-eye forms of turquoise.
An aside: You will find dealers who will sell “Spiderweb Turquoise,” “Waterweb Turquoise,” and “Birds-Eye Turquoise” as though they are independent types of turquoise — i.e., from mines of those names. They are not; they are simply descriptors applied to variants found in mines all over based on matrix patterning. The photo above shows cabochons from the Kingman district, which includes the Ithaca Peak mine, in black spiderweb and waterweb patterns (so named for the softly webbed, almost misty-looking inclusions caused by the entry of water into the vein of turquoise). Birds-eye is a relatively rare phenomenon, found most often in Arizona turquoise but appearing in stone from some parts of Nevada, as well.
The term comes from the appearance, within a larger spiderweb matrix, of roundish bits of matrix that resemble a bird’s eye, like those shown in the vintage buttons above from Wings’s personal collection (not for sale).
As noted last week, most Kingman turquoise is not especially valuable, but there are exceptions, and these three variants are chief among them. Ithaca Peak tends toward the hard black spiderweb matrix, punctuated by bright swatches, flecks, and flakes. The matrix itself is usually pyrite, which can look silvery, bronze, and even slightly gold in color when it appears in wider flecks; when webbed, it’s a dark and intense inky black, the contrasting blue of the stone sometimes appearing to give it a purplish cast. In the photo at the top of this section, the cabochon at the top is a good example of what a good webbed Ithaca peak cabochon might look like: clear, hard sky blue; bold black webbing; blocky bits of silvery-black matrix on the sides of the cab. I should also note hear that the coppery-red appearance of the matrix in the cabs in this photo is merely a trick of the lighting; in natural light, it appears decidedly black.
You often see Ithaca Peak turquoise described as “very valuable,” “very pricey,” “very collectible,” but in truth, its value is quite variable, and like most Arizona turquoise, “valuable” is relative. Old vintage cabs of great hardness and clarity of color with a good bold matrix can run $20 and more per carat, but compared to Indian Mountain or Lander (or even some high-grade Bisbee), that’s not particularly expensive. Most of its value likely comes from its history, its relative scarcity compared to its “sister stone,” Kingman, and its use in genuine vintage Indian jewelry. The best of it is, however, a beautiful stone, and like Morenci turquoise, it has that iconic look of “real Indian turquoise.”
TURQUOISE MOUNTAIN
Turquoise Mountain is a bit unusual among types of Arizona turquoise in that it appears in a broader range of colors, both stone and matrix.
The Turquoise Mountain Mine is a part of the Mineral Park complex of mines in northwestern Arizona, where the Kingman operation is located. It’s a separate mine, however, and experts distinguish it from Kingman because its characteristics are quite different. Proportionally, more of what it produces tends to be higher quality, as well.
There are numerous stories as to how the mine came by its name. A modern but apocryphal favorite is that it is named for the mountain sacred to the Diné (Navajo): Tsoodzil, the Turquoise Mountain, one of the boundaries of Diné Bikéyah (Navajoland), and a site of major cultural and spiritual significance to the people. Unfortunately, the mine is not merely in the wrong location but the wrong state; Tsoodzil is far to the east, in New Mexico, where it is known to the dominant culture by the wholly inappropriate name of Mount Taylor. From a Native perspective, there is also something (many things, actually) unseemly (and by “unseemly,” I mean utterly repellent) about the idea of naming a mine that rips up a mountain and its earth to take from it after a mountain that is among an indigenous people’s most sacred and sustaining lands. In the old days, it was sometimes called the “Old Man” Mine, also likely of apocryphal origin.
More likely, the name originally came from what the area produced: turquoise. there are reports of numerous smaller mines and hat claims all over the American Southwest that have been given the name “Turquoise Mountain”; the same is likely true, in the local languages, of deposits in Asia and the Middle East, as well. Our discussion is confined to the mine known in the American turquoise and jewelry worlds as Turquoise Mountain, that of the Mineral Park District mines.
The photo above shows several examples of stones bearing the hallmarks of Turquoise Mountain, and though the lighting is deceptive, it shows substantial variation in types and colors of matrix. The Turquoise Mountain stone itself varies from a robin’s-egg blue to a deep sky blue, and sometimes appears in a rich teal shade with a decidedly green cast. Some of it bears a bit of pyrite matrix, but copper is heavily present in Turquoise Mountain, and it’s most of what you’ll see in the matrix.
The matrix itself is widely variable: It manifests in everything from the most delicate tracery of spiderweb lines to bold blocky chunks, and colors range from a soft golden-bronze shade to a brick red so dark that it appears black in certain lights. Like its neighboring Kingman and the other forms of Arizona turquoise, it also frequently features swirling, shadowy bits of white, like pale wisps of smoke.
With regard to the photo above, I’m going to describe what you would see in the stones if you were to view them in natural light. The large free-form cab at the top and the two nuggets suspended from heishi strands at the bottom all bear golden-colored matrices. The nuggets are a medium sky blue, with little variation in shade in the stone itself, and the bronzey matrix occurs in a spiderweb pattern that would be apparent if they were cabbed and polished (they will not be; they are old natural nuggets that should remain in their existing form). The stone shown at the top is more variable in color, bearing a slight gradient effect from very pale to medium robin’s-egg blue. The matrix in it and the other free-form cabs Wings has from the same source all bear a matrix of widely-spaced webbing, zigzagging lines and fissures and blockier stripes that appear in a golden color tinged with a coppery red.
The row of small oval cabochons and the round center cab all have a delicate spiderweb matrix. In each case, it’s a reddish color, ranging from a delicate coppery shade to a dark brick red. The two round cabs on either end of that row likewise have a reddish matrix, but it’s a bit bolder, with a swirly effect. It’s also darker, and although in bright natural light you can tell that it’s red, indoors, it looks charcoal to black.
Turquoise Mountain is a good-quality turquoise, modestly priced. Decent gem-quality cabochons, suitable for jewelry, can be had for anywhere from $2 to $5 a carat. High-end cabochons with significant dark webbing go for $12 to $20 per carat, generally speaking (follow the link above; the “Collector’s Corner” section sometimes includes high-end black-web Turquoise Mountain cabs). Occasionally, you’ll find a high-grade cab of superb quality and color variation that is more expensive, but that’s rare. It’s relative affordability coupled with its natural beauty make it attractive to Native silversmiths and jewelers and their customers alike.
Wings does not have any Turquoise Mountain among his current inventory of pieces. He has used it in the past, but it’s not sold by dealers in the area as commonly as Kingman and Sleeping Beauty, and often when he’s looking for cabochons with widely variable color and bold matrices, turquoise from the Nevada mines provide much more striking options. Over the years, however, there have been a few pieces with the telltale clear sky blue of the stone coupled with the golden-bronze matrix:
In this pair, the copper is clearly evident — and the delicate golden color of the matrix lends the stones themselves a gentle greenish cast over the clear blue. And it’s a good example of another feature of Turquoise Mountain: These were relatively large earrings. Despite the presence of a significant amount of webbed matrix throughout the stone, it’s hard enough and stable enough to use in cabochons large and small. For buyers in the market for beautiful Indian jewelry made with Arizona turquoise, but who don’t want to spend a small fortune, Turquoise Mountain is a good option.
Next week: Turquoise from another state.
~ 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.
