Lone Mountain Turquoise (Nevada) Graduated 4-6mm Nugget Chip Beads, 18 inch Strand
This is beautiful deep blue/green, High Quality, material.
The Lone Mountain turquoise mine near Tonopah, Nevada has been one of the larger producers of fine turquoise in Nevada. It was discovered by Lee Hand in 1920 and filed under the name of Blue Jay Mining Lode. At first it was called the Blue Jay Mine on Lone Mountain and later just the Lone Mountain. It is presently closed. As with many turquoise mines it was first operated as an underground tunnel and shaft operation, including over 1500 feet of underground workings, reaching a depth of 250 feet below the surface. However, when Menless Winfield bought the mine it was made into an open pit operation. Considerable surface mining was done here in the 1970s and quite a bit of turquoise recovered. A large but long and narrow open pit oriented in a north-south direction now marks the primary mine excavation. The turquoise from this mine is mostly good to high-grade and is usually in the form of nuggets although there is good a quantity of vein material as well. A very interesting occurrence of turquoise found here is a condition where the turquoise was deposited in cavities or molds left when parts of fossil plants were dissolved out of a harder rock. The turquoise is graded into golden matrix, black matrix and spider web. In the past most of it was cut and polished or the nuggets drilled and polished at the mine and very little rough was sold. No material is currently being mined. It is considered a very collectible turquoise, probably second only to the Lander Blue. The nearby Blue Silver turquoise mine is located about 1 mile north of the Lone Mountain Mine. The Livesly turquoise mine is just east of Paymaster Canyon, a few miles to the south, but not far away.
