Today, we head back up to Lander County, Nevada, to take a look at a stone still being mined today: Fox turquoise.
Before we begin, I need to repeat my caution of last week with regard to many of the old stones that appear in these photos, and the difficulty in identifying them with complete precision:
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.
The photo of above is of a piece made with cabochons that were clearly identified to him as Boulder Fox turquoise. Of the photos that appear below, the first is of a very old natural stone that was unlabeled at the time of use, but gives every appearance of being a Fox cab. The stones used in the concha belt shown in the last photo were, as I recall, identified as Fox, but it’s been too many years for me to be 100% positive anymore. I can say definitively that they bear the trademark colors and patchy bits of green “matrix” that are hallmarks of much Fox turquoise.
THE REGION
The Fox mine is found in what is now known as the broader Cortez District, straddling the adjoining border in the upper half of Lander and Eureka Counties in north-central Nevada. It sits in an area called Crescent Valley (a basin between the Cortez and Shoshone Mountains, just south of the mouth of Cortez Canyon. On the Eureka County side of the district, there today sits a community that is also called Crescent Valley; it’s tiny, with a recorded population of 392 in 2010. It’s so small that the only school there is an elementary school; junior and senior high school students are bused over the Lander County line, into the Battle Mountain district — with a population of more than 3,600, it’s about ten times the size of Crescent Valley. We’ll visit the Battle Mountain area itself in the weeks to come; the region is known for some of the finest (and most expensive) deposits of turquoise (existing and tapped out) on the planet.
Despite its location substantially farther north, the story of the region that is home to the Cortez-turned-Fox mine is very much like the story of that of the Candelaria mine. And like the town that bore the Candelaria name, Cortez itself is now a ghost town.
The history of the area’s “discovery” is strikingly similar: In 1862, a small group of Mexican prospectors were searching for evidence of precious metals in the area of Mt. Tenabo. 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.
Now, the area is best known as an active mining district. As noted above, the actual town of Cortez is a ghost town, part of the state’s historic ghost-town tour.
THE MINE
The Fox operation began its life as a gold mine (which continues today), under a name long associated with gold: Cortez. The Cortez Mining Group, a multinational, still owns and runs gold-mining operations in the area. When I say “life,” of course, I refer to organized, corporatized mining operations. As with mines all over the country, “life” is like “discovery”: It’s a misnomer that refers to the point at which the now-dominant culture first took notice of it. What is now called Fox turquoise has been mined and used culturally and artistically for centuries, probably for millennia, by the peoples indigenous to the area.
Like their counterparts further southwest at Mt. Diablo would do two years later (and who knows? they may have been the same group), the Mexican prospectors who arrived in 1862 struck silver. By 1865, three separate mining companies had moved in, and before the decade’s end, some 20 mill operations were reportedly up and running. The area attracted fortune hunters rapidly, and silver would remain the primary target of mining operations for the next 70+ years, although overall interest had begun waning as early as the late 1920s, with a sharp decline in silver prices and the Great Depression looming.
In 1914, however, turquoise assumed a more prominent role in the area prospectors’ pursuit of wealth. In that year, Charles Schmidtlein and Johnnie Francis jointly filed a notice of claim on a section of land on the Lander County side of the Cortez District, under the name “Fox Lode Mining Claim.” This appears to be the first point at which the “Fox” name appears; up to this point, it appears that most operations referred to and were generally known by the Cortez District name, although it’s likely that small individual claims bore discrete names chosen by their stakeholders. Where the Fox name came from is anybody’s guess; it may have been a family name; it may have been a metaphorical play on the animal’s reputed slyness; perhaps a fox appeared at the site the day Schmidtlein found the site. For some Native peoples, Fox plays a role similar to that of Coyote, that of trickster, and if indeed the old (possibly apocryphal) story is true — that Schmidtlein was first shown the site by a local Indian — the Natives of the area may well have found that the new name fit the occupying population.
Over the next quarter-century-plus, the claim would pass through a variety of hands, until it was purchased in the 1940s by Dowell Ward, a name well-known in turquoise mining circles. At one point, at least part of the claim was renamed the White Horse Mine, but Ward himself apparently retained the trickster’s name; he also expanded operations significantly. Most of the more modern efforts have been via open-pit mining; the area was reportedly bulldozed in the 1970s, as was the case with many of the country’s turquoise and metal mines during that period.
Experts disagree as to whether the Fox mine is Nevada’s most productive turquoise mine, or merely its second-most productive. Regardless, as of nearly a half-century ago, more than half a million pounds of the blue and green had already been extracted from the earth there, and the veins still yield turquoise today.
Today, most of the area is being pillaged for gold by large multinational corporations. The most significant such operation is the Cortez Gold Mine, comprising two open-pit works and one underground mine. It is owned by Barrick Gold Corporation, which acquired a majority stake in the Placer Dome Corporation some eight years ago and Rio Tinto’s 40% share two years later, consolidating Barrick’s ownership of the area gold-mining ventures. Barrick has long had a . . . shall we say, unfortunate environmental record, a record about which I’ve written elsewhere in the past. Now, the company seeks to expand its operations in pursuit of what are projected to be a wealth of gold deposits; such expansion would include parts of Mt. Tenabo and the surrounding environs, which are sacred to Shoshone peoples. The Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshone, who comprise four bands and whose administration is based in Elko, have been especially focused on the need to preserve their heritage and their sacred lands in the face of the mining conglomerate onslaught. at the moment, the status of Barrick’s proposed expansion is tied up in litigation, and our hope is that the Shoshone succeed in blocking the effort permanently. it’s an effort that could probably use outside help via political contacts and social media (and perhaps funding).
THE TURQUOISE
Fox turquoise comes in both blue and green shades, indicating the presence of both copper and iron in the host deposits. The blues range from a light sky blue to a solid dark shade much like that of high-qaulity Candelaria turquoise. A good example appears in the photo at the top of this post, of a necklace made with Boulder Fox turquoise (i.e., the cabochons are cut from boulder,” or host rock containing bits of the turquoise from the vein in question; you can read about boulder turquoise here). The greens run a gamut from a pastel seafoam shade with a hint of aqua to a shade between lime and grass greens to nearly emerald green.
Matrices vary in both quality and quantity: Much Fox turquoise is relatively free of matrix, and some of the lighter bits of stone bear the white matrix flecks and whorls found in some Arizona turquoise, such as Sleeping Beauty and Kingman. The pale inclusions are likely due to the presence of limestone, which constitutes a great deal of the host rock in the entire region. Others are darker, intense shades.
Where a matrix is evident, it often ranges from a silvery gray to bronzed tones that range from gold- to copper-colored; the matrices are often surrounded by deep green splotches. On some of the Fox stone, those splotches constitute the “matrix” — especially evident on the blue stone, they appear as blocks or bands of bright or dark green color, almost like a second layer of turquoise:
Fox turquoise tends to be very reasonably priced; most of the cabochons I’ve seen run in the range of $2 to $7 or $8 per carat. Only rarely have I seen it run as high as $10 per carat or more. That said, it can be expensive to buy from some sources, merely because of the size of the stones: Because a supply remains available in sizeable deposits (both in veins and in nugget form), Fox turquoise is sometimes cut into unusually large cabochons. Even at $3 per carat, a large, heavy cab will set you back a decent amount.
And Fox turquoise is solid enough to be a bit on the heavy side (in relative terms, of course). as turquoise goes, it’s very hard, very stable, and a good choice for people who want natural (i.e., unstabilized or otherwise untreated) stones, but who also want to be able to wear their Indian jewelry on a regular basis without having to worry overly much about the occasional bump or knock creating a fracture. Much of it is also a good choice for people who aren’t terribly fond of a lot of matrix in their stones, especially of the spiderweb variety, but who don’t want the unrelieved blue found in Sleeping Beauty turquoise.
And after all these years, Fox turquoise has evoked new connections in my own mind. While it’s still the case that, when I think of “green turquoise,” I think of more obvious choices, such as Royston or Carico Lake or Damele (all of which will get to in the next few weeks). But now, when I think of Fox, the animal, I think of him as having brilliant turquoise green eyes.
Up next: For October, we’re going to look at some of Nevada’s most spectacular forms of turquoise — colors, matrices, and value.
~ Aji
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