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Turquoise part of gem mining history
Centuries before Monty Nichols came along, turquoise was
being mined on the slopes of Sleeping Beauty Mountain.
The Salado and other ancient peoples mined the beautiful blue stone here
and from several other local surface outcroppings, including Pinto Valley.
By Bob Zache Friday, January 19, 2007 found at silverbelt.com
It is believed some Spanish explorers made it up a few of the Salt River
tributaries, including Pinal Creek and Pinto Valley. Bill Boheme, an old time
local rancher and mining claim owner, told of finding a Spanish lance point
while riding his range one day. So it's possible that the Spanish carried off
some turquoise before other Europeans arrived in the late 1860s. By the 1870s
small underground mines pock-marked the hills surrounding Globe.
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As late as the 1930's there were the remains of a little mine town where
Copper Cities Mine open pit benches are now. Named Louis De Ore (or maybe Louis
d'Ouere), most of the old buildings were torn down and hauled away during the
Great Depression, used for building material by out-of-work miners.
Cities Service Company started the Copper Cities Mine (commonly called the
Sleeping Beauty Mine) there about 1952 and it operated until Pinto Valley mine
opened in 1972. During that period, L.W. Hardy had the contract to mine
turquoise, both at Sleeping Beauty and at Castle Dome, later the Pinto Valley
Mine. Formerly a meat cutter at a market in Miami, Hardy recognized early on
that turquoise was more valuable as a gem stone than for it's copper content.
This was before turquoise jewelry became immensely popular starting in the
1960s. By the time the turquoise boom began, Hardy had contracts with mining
companies in Miami, Kingman and elsewhere. He also developed a method for
stabilizing low-grade porous turquoise with pressure -impregnated hot acrylic
resin, hardening and improving the color for use in jewelry.
Hardy's mining methods were pretty primitive, compared with current
operations. Workers would sit out in a ditch ripped by a bulldozer and hand pick
the stone from the waste-rock. He mined turquoise at Sleeping Beauty for 22
years, getting about 45 percent recovery and leaving the rest in waste dumps.
Monty Nichols got the contract to mine in 1988 and began using modern mining
methods to develop the property. He drills and blasts the overburden, hauling it
to the abandoned Copper Cities pit now containing the recycled tailings from
Miami Copper Company's old No. 5 tailing dam that dominated the eastern skyline
of downtown Miami until a few of years ago.
In 1998, Nichols started the two-year project to remove five million tons of
overburden. Located half way up the side of an open pit mine, the narrow
turquoise-bearing zone has about 400 feet of hard waste rock on top of it. In
order to move sideways into the orebody, a whole slice of the mountain had to be
removed.
As he removes the overburden, Nichols is careful not to blast too near the
turquoise-bearing strata below; he doesn't want to fracture any of the valuable
blue gemstone. That layer is more friable -- crumbly -- so his miners can rip it
and dump it over screens, separating the material by rock size. No crushers are
used, again to avoid fracturing the gemstone, and the different sized rock is
hauled up to a wide mine bench where conveyor belts move the material through
three buildings. There workers hand pick the turquoise from the broken rock. The
buildings are vented with filtered air to eliminate workers' exposure to dust,
and well insulated to keep them comfortable in any weather. It's a far cry from
the old methods of mining, Nichols points out. Anywhere from 30 to 40 people
work at the mine, Nichols said, depending on how much mining they have to do.
Fifty years ago, mine workers filled lunch buckets with the colorful rock, even
though it was a firing offense. And old habits die hard, Nichols lamented; some
people still think it's okay to sneak in and try to pick turquoise. As a result,
security is tight in and around the mine. Motion detectors, night vision cameras
and 24-7 roving patrols are very effective, he said, so the only turquoise
leaving the property now is being shipped to markets around the world.
Italy is their best customer, though Germany and Hong Kong also buy a lot,
Nichols said. And they buy the best grade for the high-dollar jewelry made
there. Jewelry makers in India and Spain also receive Sleeping Beauty turquoise,
while in the U.S., Gallup and Albuquerque buy the most.
Worn by pharoahs and Aztec kings, turquoise is believed to be one of the
oldest gemstones. Its name may come from “Turquie,” French for Turkey, where
it was believed the gem was mined, though ancient miners actually dug it in Iran
and Egypt, two of the world's oldest known turquoise mining areas. For thousands
of years, the finest intensely blue turquoise came from Persia (Iran), though it
is believed those deposits have been mined out.
The best of Monty Nichols' Sleeping Beauty turquoise is comparably beautiful
and, he believes, much of his gemstone is being hauled overseas and smuggled
into, then out of, Iran and sold as “Persian” turquoise.
But that's okay, he's happy to sell it to them, he says. And he plans to be
mining at Sleeping Beauty for many years to come. First mined by humans almost
1,000 years ago, it has a long mine life.
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