Blue Gem turquoise comes from claims about six miles south of Battle Mountain in Nevada's Bullion District, in Lander County. The mine became famous for stones that mix blue and green in a single cabochon, and it produced some of the largest quantities of turquoise in all of Nevada from the early twentieth century until the early 1980s.
The site was worked long before any claim was filed — the Lowrys record it as a prehistoric mining area — and in the modern era the ground sits inside an open-pit copper and gold operation. What made Blue Gem matter to the jewelry trade was timing and volume: it was, per Lowry, "a great influence during the infancy of the Indian jewelry industry in the mid-twentieth century," and it kept producing into the early 1980s. Rough from these claims went out to lapidaries who cut hundreds of thousands of cabochons, and a striking share of first-half-of-the-century jewelry carries Blue Gem stones cut into perfect ovals, rounds, and squares. (Lowry & Lowry 2010, p. 224)
The ownership roll reads like a who's-who of Nevada turquoise: Lee Hand, Doc Wilson, and Lem Edgar all held these claims, with the Elquist family the last-known miners. The workings have carried the names The Contention, Pedro Lode, Turquoise Tunnel, and Battle Mountain. Doc Wilson worked Blue Gem alongside Number Eight and Lone Mountain — the same handful of miners moved between the mines that became the American classics. (Lowry & Lowry 2010, pp. 134, 224)
You see Blue Gem constantly once you know to look for it in period photographs. Rosnek and Stacey caption a circa-1935 Navajo bracelet whose "gradations in the color of the stone are typical of turquoise from the Blue Gem mine," an entire selection of early-1930s Zuni channelwork where "the turquoise is all Blue Gem," and a 1930s squash-blossom necklace with unusual "pine cone" blossoms set with Blue Gem stone. Dubin likewise documents 1930s squash-blossom pendants in silver and Blue Gem turquoise. This was the working stone of the pre-war bench. (Rosnek & Stacey 1976; Dubin 1999)
Doc Wilson's other mines: Number Eight and Lone Mountain. For the blue-green color family, compare Royston turquoise. Color context: how turquoise is graded.
Ready to shop authenticated turquoise? Browse turquoise at T.Skies →