Today, we’re going to take a explore the Lander Mining District and its environs, learn about the original Lander Blue turquoise, and take a look at some of its neighbors, spectacularly fine stones in their own right.
Some caveats apply again today. As I’ve said on other occasions:
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.
I’m including photos of one old, long-sold piece, and some nugget turquoise lacking documentation that Wings has recently acquired. With regard to the nuggets, we can make educated guesses based on their qualities and our knowledge (and with regard to the greens, with certainty), but in the end, their absolute provenance remains unestablished. With regard to the sold item, it’s a question of our best guess among two basic possibilities, with only memory and the photos to support it. We have no photos of our own that are definitively of Lander Blue turquoise (although I will link to some sources where you can see exactly what it looks like), so the usual cautions apply: The photos will provide examples of what the various types of turquoise being described look like, but proving beyond question that they are from those sources is impossible now.
For lovers of the Skystone, Lander County is a very special place. We’ve visited it already, here and here and here, each of those visits was focused on other mines. Geographically, it is the source of not only the world’s most expensive turquoise, but of one of the most diverse arrays of stunningly beautiful stones in existence: Lander Blue, Indian Mountain, Carico Lake, Damele, Nevada Blue, Fox, Godber-Burnham, both Dry Creeks, and even variscite in the form of Damele and what is known as New Lander, to name a few of the major players.
We’ve taken at least a brief look at all of the turquoise types mentioned above, with the exception of Lander itself. It is an incredible stone, manifesting in intense shades of blue with a webbed matrix that manages to be both bold and fine simultaneously. It is also the most expensive turquoise on the market today — the most rare, and therefore the most valuable, turquoise in the world.
LANDER COUNTY
We have visited Lander County several times already, so rather than paraphrase everything I’ve already written, I’ll quote liberally from previous entries. The county, situated in northwest-central Nevada, appears in red in the image above. At one time, it was double its current size, encompassing its mirror-image parcel immediately to the east, now known as Eureka County. As I noted here in a previous edition of Turquoise Tuesday:
Prospectors had struck silver in the Cortez area in 1862, more than 100 miles from the nearest town (Austin) in Lander County. The residents of the mining camp tired of the long journey to conduct official business and demanded formation of their own government; the area officially broke off from Lander and reconstituted itself as Eureka County in 1873. The county itself has a geographic area of just under 4,200 square miles, with water constituting less that one-tenth of one percent of that area. The population is small — with fewer than 2,000 residents total counted in the 2010 census (an increase of more than 300 people since the 2000 census), it works out to less than half a person per square mile. It’s a drastic drop from the numbers of its heyday: The first area census was recorded in 1880, and counted nearly 7,100 residents. The county was, of course, named for the precious metal strikes in the area, as was its eponymous county seat.
While Eureka established itself as an independent county, residents of Lander were going about their business. What is now known as the Fox Mine (formerly Cortez, and a part of the Cortez Mining District that straddles the county line) sits on the Lander County side of the line. The county seat is an unincorporated community called Battle Mountain, discussed in a bit more detail below.
The Lander Blue Mine is located between the peak known as Battle Mountain and Mt. Tenabo, a location we’ve likewise explored before:
The meaning of the mountain’s name varies: Some accounts identify it as a word from the Shoshone peoples indigenous to the area, meaning “Lookout Mountain”; others insist that it comes from the language of the similarly-indigenous Paiute people and translates to “dark-colored water”; still others posit a bizarre and exceedingly unlikely connection to “New Mexicans” and the Spanish word pueblo. The last explanation appears to be a corruption of the identities of the prospectors who struck silver there in 1862, and probably contains layer upon layer of uninformed speculation by people with no knowledge of Spanish and even less of the Native cultures and languages.
It’s apparently unknown whether the area was first named Cortez by the initial prospectors, but it seems likely; at any rate, there is no small amount of irony in the fact that once again, an area inhabited by and sacred to Native peoples was invaded, “conquered,” colonized by those of European ancestry in a quest for gold (and other precious metals). Hernán Cortés would no doubt have approved wholeheartedly. Oh, and about that whole “conquering” thing: It still isn’t quite so successful as those invading might have hoped. The current occupiers of the Cortez District have encountered an indigenous roadblock on their road to expansion, with area Shoshone tribes who hold the mountain area sacred battling them in court.
We covered Lander County from a the perspective of some of its top mining districts only last week:
It’s home to a great many mining operations, both current and defunct, for a wide array of metals and minerals. It has produced some of the most extraordinary turquoise in the world (and some deposits still do). Much of it comes from the Battle Mountain area, which is also home to the Battle Mountain turquoise district (perhaps better regarded as a subdistrict within the Lander County groupings of mining operations). The unincorporated community of Battle Mountain is the Lander County seat, and the most recent census listed a population of a little more than 3,600 residents. Lander County itself boasted fewer than 6,000 residents total as of the same census.
. . .
First, the old Godber-Burnham Mining District and its Dry Creek Mine: These are located northeast of Austin, Nevada, and sit along the actual Dry Creek. As with so many other mining camps of the day, a town sprang up around it, propelled in this case by its siting first as a stop on the Pony Express, and subsequently as of one leg of the Overland Stage Route. The town of Dry Creek became famous, or perhaps infamous, as a site of what the dominant culture’s so-called “historical record” euphemistically calls “Indian troubles.”
It seems that at least one source of these “troubles” occurred in 1860, and involved an instance of one of the town’s white men having an Indian woman of the local tribe living with him. [And whatever he and the dominant culture prefer to call it, odds are there was nothing consensual about it; mores of the day and the balance of power in any such “relationship” dictate that conclusion. Dances With Wolves is not, after all, anything more than “Great White Savior” fiction.] At any rate, a group of Indians reportedly tried to retrieve the woman and return her home, sparking a gunfight between them and four male pillars of the community. Returning fire, the Indians killed shot two, killing one outright and wounding a second, who ultimately took his own life to avoid capture. The other two white men, including the one the record treats as having possession of the Indian woman, fled; the Indians gave chase for a a while, but eventually returned home. I will not link to the sites that report on the incident, since they all quote the reports of the day, which use a virulent racial slur and contain clear anti-Indian racism, wholly unredacted and without any clarifying context. Suffice to say that the town died out fairly rapidly, despite the ongoing mining in the area: The telegraph came to Dry Creek the following year, in 1861, shutting down the Pony Express Line. The route was taken over by the Overland Stage in that same year, but it, too, folded in 1869. The community died not long after, and other than the mining operations, the broader area has been put to ranching use. The town of Dry Creek now exists as one of many on Nevada’s tour of historic ghost towns.
Indian Mountain turquoise is likewise found in Lander County, but in a slightly different locale: Numerous sources report it as sited on the south end of Bald Mountain, a few miles southwest of the other mines discussed here, although the sourcing seems to be merely a repetition of the exact same information, all from one original source and simply paraphrased. It appears that it is actually on a peak in the Toiyabe Range, which runs through most of central Lander County on a diagonal from the east-central portion down over the county line and on into Nye County to the south. It’s high country, and access is difficult, making the stone extracted more valuable yet. There’s also very little information about the area. This is not the “Bald Mountain” of either the Nevada town or the protected wilderness area; this is actually not far, as the crow flies, from Battle Mountain and the Shoshone and Paiute historic lands. which no doubt explains both the turquoise source and the name of the mine.
Mile for mile, Lander County has become perhaps the most valuable parcel of land for the world turquoise market.
THE LANDER BLUE MINE
Sometimes called simply the Lander Mine, the Lander Blue was a johnny-come-lately, as turquoise mines go. Known as a “hat mine” (because the deposit was so small that you could fit it under your hat), its claim was staked in 1973, by one of the relatively few women involved in the turquoise mining industry.
Rita Hapgood was a blackjack dealer at a casino in nearby Battle Mountain. One day, so the story goes (with her sisters, according to some versions of the story) along Crescent Valley’s Indian Creek next to the Lander Ranch. She found small nuggets of hard, dark-blue stone, realized what she had, and filed the notice of claim under the mine name of the Mary Louise (reportedly named after her mother). Within a few years, she sold the claim for $10,000 to a partnership of Marvin Symes, who we have met before, and Hank Dorian. Symes and Dorian brought in a third partner, on Bob Johnson, to do the actual working of the claim, and they organized the operation under the name of the Lander Blue Turquoise Corporation.
Both Symes and Dorian returned to their respective home bases to pursue other mining interests, leaving Bob Johnson and his wife Dixie to manage the Lander Blue claim. The Johnsons reportedly mined the entire deposit until it was tapped out, and sold all of what was extracted. Eventually, ownership of the mine itself passed to Dowell Ward, who we have also encountered before, part of a large group of mines, both active and defunct, owned and operated by him. Ownership of the actual claim today is murky, although it is reportedly entirely mined out. Several dealers in the Southwest offer what they say are Lander Blue cabochons, as well as jewelry allegedly made with them, but buyers should be very careful: The mine produced only a scant 100 pounds of turquoise total, and there seems to be far more than that on offer in cut and cabbed form (i.e., reduced in size and weight) on the market today.
LANDER BLUE TURQUOISE
Lander turquoise is extremely hard, and extremely intense in color. Stone shades range from robin’s-egg blue at the lighter end to a deep, dark marine blue that approaches indigo at the other. Real Lander turquoise is also heavily webbed, usually in a telltale circular pattern. The spiderwebbing often appears black at first glance, but the broader, bolder lines come through clearly in dark coppery red shades. Much of the webbing forms roughly circular shapes, creating closed patterns in rounded forms rather than sharp, jagged lines. The earrings in the photo at the top show similar matrix patterning.
The turquoise itself is, as noted above, the most expensive turquoise in the world. The least expensive Lander cabochon I have ever seen offered for sale (from a dealer I consider reputable, where I’m confident that the turquoise was as represented) was $150 per carat. Today, it’s not unusual to see real Lander Blue offered for $180 a carat at the “low” end, all the way up to $220 per carat for really exceptional stone. The thing about Lander turquoise is that it’s all really exceptional; among what’s left on the market, it’s simply a matter of degree.
You can see examples of Lander Blue turquoise cabochons for sale here, here, and here, and jewelry (both older and contemporary) made with it here.
The earrings shown in the photo above were a pair that Wings made many years ago. At the outset, I need to clarify that the photo is misleading: Too much flash lightened the color of the stones up considerably; the actual color was closer to a robin’s-egg blue, still light by the standards of the Arizona turquoise so popular at the time, but more intense in color that they appear here.
It’s been so long that he no longer remembers how he came into possession of them; they may have been part of the stash of stones his late father gave to him all those years ago. At the time they were sold, we didn’t know what we potentially had: If we had realized, we would have taken steps to establish provenance as best we could. We do know that we sold them for far, far less than they were worth. It was partly that realization, years ago, that prompted us to begin cataloguing his inventory of stones and establishing, to the extent possible, the source of each.
The telltale pattern of the matrix makes the idea that the stones were robin’s-egg Lander a possibility. However, Lander County is home to a number of other mines that produce finely-webbed turquoise in similar shades and patterns, such as Battle Mountain and Indian Mountain. Our personal belief is that these cabochons were more likely to have been Indian Mountain turquoise (discussed last week, and below). Still extremely valuable — on average, perhaps second only to Lander Blue — but generally in the $40- to $60-per-carat range, rather than $200.
OTHER LANDER COUNTY BLUE-BLOODS
There are a host of other turquoise mines in Lander County, and despite their product not being Lander Blue, they still turn out (or in the case of now-defunct mines, have turned out) stone that is nevertheless top-quality stuff. Much of what comes out of this region is unusually hard, as turquoise goes, and stable enough that the complex spiderwebbing in it doesn’t tend to create many fractures.Moreover, depending on each mine’s individual location, the stone produced often runs a very long spectrum of color, from blues that are nearly indigo to brilliant kelly green; from electric lime-green and yellow to ivory and white; and with matrices that run the gamut from black to inky blues and purples to gray to bronze and copper and red and gold and even bright yellow and white.
Indian Mountain is roughly tied with Sacred White Buffalo as my personal favorite: the latter, as much for the rarity and symbolism as anything else; the former, not merely for the name attached, but more, for the great diversity of color and matrixing in the stone it produces. We covered Indian Mountain here last week. It is my personal suspicion, and my best guess (although I cannot prove it, obviously), that the earrings in the photo at the top of this post were actually made with a matched pair of Indian Mountain turquoise cabochons. Sadly, if I’m right, they sold for several times less than the value of only one of the stones, because gem-grade Indian Mountain averages in the neighborhood of $50 per carat (you can see some truly incredible cabochons in the darker blue shades, priced, as of this writing, at $48 per carat, here).
Stone from the Godber-Burnham collection of claims, including its old Dry Creek Mine, have also been covered here. Much of this stone that remains on the market is very, very old, and thus expensive in that regard alone. It’s also beautiful, tending toward brilliant clear sky blues shot through with bold black spiderweb matrices (and sometimes with coppery or bronze matrices, as well). Stone from these mines makes for gorgeous classic Indian jewelry. Contemporary cabochons from this area are modestly priced, but still expensive: $6 to $8 per carat on average.
We’ve talked about the Sacred White Buffalo turquoise and the difficulty in making a proper identification and valuation. We’ve also looked at some of the electric greens, like Carico Lake and Damele. We’ll have occasion to revisit them all briefly below. But there’s one small mine we haven’t yet had occasion to discuss: It’s a small mine known as the Nevada Blue.
First mined in 1901 by Jim Watts, who called it the Watts Mine, the Nevada Blue produces another spectacular form of turquoise. The claim sits high up in the peaks of the Shoshone Range, and it’s another mine with very limited access, particularly in winter. The stone extracted from the deposit is worth the effort, though: clear, hard, and with beautifully complex matrices, it tends toward intense sky blues with a matrix that ranges from inky black to coppery red-brown. The mine changed hands, of course, and at one time was known as the Pinto Mine (not the only southwestern turquoise mine with the word “Pinto” in its name). As with much else in the Indian jewelry market, its use in such jewelry reportedly peaked in popularity on the 197os. I’ve seen high-quality cabochons from this mine now running as little as $10, or as much as $20 or so, per carat. You can see contemporary Nevada Blue cabochons here.
And there is one mine in the area that doesn’t produce turquoise at all, but another stone.
THE NEW PRETENDER
Today, there is a new-ish stone on the market called “New Lander.” It’s clearly an attempt to trade on the Lander turquoise name to increase prestige and value, but it looks nothing like Lander Blue. It’s not even turquoise; it’s variscite (although some dealer will insist on marketing it under the “turquoise” label). It’s an interesting stone in its own right, but it is not “Lander turquoise.”
Turquoise and variscite are indeed part of the same family, for lack of a better word, of stones, but there are differences in chemical make-up. There are also differences in appearance, if you know what to look for. Polished variscite usually possesses a slight overall translucence not found in turquoise. It is true that some forms of turquoise (Royston in particular comes to mind), when cut, cabbed, and polished, display a certain translucence in a “layered” pattern on the stone, with bits of color or matrix seeming to swirl over the top, but the stone itself remains opaque. With variscite, there appears to be less overall opacity, throughout the stone. Three of the most popular forms of variscite (every one of which I’ve seen on offer from various sources as “turquoise”), are Broken Arrow (bright green), Damele (off-white with lime-green to yellow-brown coloration), and New Lander (off-white with hints of yellow-brown or icy blue).
Wings recently acquired some old nuggets of turquoise (and likely some variscite):
The bright green ones are unquestionably Carico Lake; the flat little blue rough nugget in the center is likely blue Carico Lake, considering the matrix and texture.
The whites? Much harder to say.
What we think we’ve got here are nuggets from three separate mine sources, all mixed together over time on the basis of superficial stone color. They’re clearly from the Lander County region of Nevada, and they bear a family resemblance, which is to be expected, but there are some unique differences among them. We believe, but cannot definitively establish, that we have here a collection comprising 1) Sacred White Buffalo turquoise; 2) Damele turquoise; and 3) New Lander variscite. I’ll try to break down each one so that you can see the differences that we see.
First, the possible Sacred White Buffalo:
Look at the pale blue nuggets at left and upper right. In real life, they’re hard, strong, opaque, with an icy blue color that is the hallmark of the Dry Creek-area stone that constitutes the real Sacred White Buffalo turquoise. It also has the typical coppery-to-black webbed matrix that is another of its markers. They’re also high-grade stone.
The possible Damele:
The larger ivory nuggets at lower left and upper right may be Damele turquoise. The color is certainly right: off-white with yellow-brown and dark gray matrices in wild patterns. In real life, they look and feel too opaque to be Damele variscite, but polishing may tell a different tale. There is also a possibility that they are more of the our third example, below.
Finally, the possible New Lander Variscite:
The stone at lower left is a good example of what we believe to be New Lander variscite. Its contrasts with the blue nugget, above left, and green Carico Lake, lower right, make the differences in the stone’s qualities clear. As you may be able to see, the white of the stone is a bit more translucent, even in its barely-tumbled form, than the other two, and the inky dark blue webbing appears to “bleed” into the white of the host rock. That’s common with New Lander, which tends to manifest in three basic colors: icy white; white like the one shown above, with a blue-black matrix that appears to bleed into the stone, giving it a bluish cast; and in an ivory-to-bronze spectrum that makes the stone appear yellowish. You can see an example of the bluer version here; of the yellowish version, here; and of the mostly white version, here. As you can see among the linked pieces, they all bear a strong resemblance to turquoise, but there are clear differences between them and even the similarly-hued Damele and Sacred White Buffalo turquoise.
All are lovely (and valuable) stones, and make for beautiful jewelry, but they are most definitely not $200-per-carat turquoise. [And, yes, I know that there are people in this business who will disagree with me vociferously. But I will say it again: I have never seen a New Lander cabochon that was turquoise rather than variscite.]
A word about the nuggets shown above: Wings will eventually cut and cab some of them into stones suitable for use in his work. Do not expect that to happen soon, though; these nuggets are valuable, and need to be handled carefully and respectfully. When he does decide to do it, he will take whatever time is needed to do it right, which means that it will likely not be until sometime next year.
There are many, many more mines in Nevada than those covered in recent weeks. We may cover a few more of them here before moving on to our next state, but we’ve introduced you to many of the major Nevada mines already. Between now and next Tuesday, we’ll revisit what’s left, and decide whether and how many more to explore, or when it’s time to hit the road for Colorado.
~ Aji
Note: As always, links are for informational purposes only, and do not imply endorsement.
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.
