Bisbee--the turquoise mine that isn"t

It is a well known fact that turquoise is mined in many arid areas of the world, including Iran, Afghanistan, China and Mexico. For mot readers of these words, the most famous turquoise mines are those located in the American Southwest, with names like Lander, Blue Gem, Cerrillos and Lone Mountain. There are dedicated turquoise mines in all of these places, some still producing gorgeous turquoise, others sadly depleted and inactive. However, one of the most beloved types of turquoise is not actively mined, and in fact never has been--Bisbee, from Cochise County, Arizona.

This wonderful blue turquoise with a distinctive "chocolate" matrix has been on the market since the 1950s, but oddly, there is no true "Bisbee" turquoise mine. Instead, the turquoise deposits were located in the "Lavender Pit" area of the Cole Shaft copper mine. The money from copper mining in Bisbee dwarfs any profits to come from turquoise, so most early Bisbee came from "lunch pail" mining, where copper miners would take turquoise that had been loosened by blasting and put it in their lunch pails, to be sold later. Some even came from the waste dump, a casualty of the copper mining operations of then (and now).

In the early 1970s, a contract was awarded for a collecting and selling the turquoise, thus ending the lunch pail mining of earlier days. It is said that the overburden of the copper mine contains a great deal of turquoise, though extracting it may never happen for economic reasons. (Information courtesy of TURQUOISE: THE WORLD STORY OF A FASCINATING GEMSTONE by Lowry and Lowry.)

A bracelet containing five very fine Bisbee turquoise stones.