Jarilla turquoise comes from the Jarilla Mountains near Orogrande, New Mexico, about fifty miles northeast of El Paso. Native miners worked at least ten locations here between roughly A.D. 1150 and 1400; in 1892 the mineralogist William E. Hidden reopened the ancient diggings and staked the Shoo-ar-me claim, recovering some fifty kilograms of turquoise.
The Jarillas were first mined for copper in the late 1870s, but the remoteness killed the interest — the nearest rail was in El Paso or Las Cruces, and water had to be hauled in like every other supply. What brought the area back was turquoise. In March 1892, William E. Hidden — the man hiddenite is named for — was prospecting New Mexico for turquoise. After eight disappointing weeks at Hachita, he continued to the Jarillas and found what the copper men had walked past. (CHAMBLESS ~lines 5911–5960)
Hidden documented at least ten locations "the Indians had worked," citing stone hammers, pottery fragments, and shallow trenches whose long-overgrown debris piles evidenced their age. Archaeological references cited by Chambless and Ryan date these diggings to roughly A.D. 1150–1400, across several phases of occupation. Hidden also recorded the words for the stone itself: the Pueblo term he rendered "shoo ar me," the Apache "steh," and the Mexican "char-chu-a-tey," recalling the Aztec "chal-chi-hui-tl." He named his claim the Shoo-ar-me. (CHAMBLESS ~lines 5960–6000)
Hidden filed the claim in the names of Lippman Tannenbaum, the Block brothers, and himself — he had likely been scouting for Tannenbaum the whole trip. He built a house from timber hauled thirty miles from the Organ Mountains, worked the mine for six months, and recovered at least fifty kilograms of turquoise, "some of which found a ready market in New York and London." He declared himself optimistic about turquoise "as beautiful and as large as the world has yet seen" — but little was mined in the years after, and when work resumed it was under other hands. (CHAMBLESS ~lines 6000–6060)
Hidden's 1892 New Mexico circuit also covered Hachita and the Burro Mountains. The great pre-contact source story continues at Cerrillos.
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