In 2003, Lewis & Clark Sapphire Mine start- ed with the vision of Neal Hurni, who bought 109.45 acres of property, drilled a well for water, and hand-made jigs. Since the early days of build- ing and design, much has changed.This mining operation is a hard-earned, small-scale operation scratching an existence out of the ground. Lewis & Clark Sapphire does not dredge the tails on the property. Instead, the operation con- centrates on digging the ten-foot virgin gravel seam at a depth of 35 feet.The material is then screened, washed, and jigged to produce the Sap- phire-rich concentrate that is searched by hand to recover the Sapphire rough along with some very nice red Garnets.The mine also recovers gold us- ing spinning high-G concentrators.All of the land is reclaimed after mining is completed. Lone Mountain Mining, LLC: Las Vegas, Nevada The Lone Mountain Turquoise Mine is an active open pit mine located in Esmeralda County, Neva- da. It has been mined since the 1920s and is one of the fewTurquoise mines still being actively mined in the United States. Lone Mountain is known for producing a wide array of colored stones varying from pale to bright hues of blues and greens, with and without matrix. Lone Mountain Turquoise tends to be harder than most Turquoise; as such, it takes on a beautiful luster when cabbed and polished which makes it highly sought after as a natural Turquoise stone. Mining Turquoise in the U.S. is a labor-inten- sive, multistep process that involves a blend of new and old.While the Turquoise form may vary from mine to mine, Lone Mountain Turquoise is usually found as small nuggets. Modern equipment enables us to excavate tons of ore and then separate and stockpile ore that shows the promise of Turquoise. The stockpiled ore is then run through a grizzly screener. Once the ore is sized to remove larger stones and gravel, it is loaded into a cement truck and tumbled from the mine site to Tonopah for initial cleaning using a trommel.The washed ore drops from the trommel to a conveyor belt, down through a hopper, and on to another conveyor belt where the Turquoise stones are handpicked. The stones are then transported to LasVegas where they are further cleaned by tumbling, sized, and then sorted by color. Finally, the stones are sorted by quality with the best of the stones being separated for cabbing to create the prized Lone Mountain cabochons. Lone Mountain currently produces about 2,000 pounds of Turquoise per year. North Star Turquoise: Florissant, Colorado America’s highest Turquoise mine at an elevation of 10,000 feet, the North Star Turquoise Mine, located in the Pikes Peak batholith, is owned by
Top Down: LoneMountain TurquoiseMine. Photo courtesy of LoneMountainMining LLC. A Turquoise seam at North Star Mine. Photo courtesy of North Star Turquoise. North Star 2 . Examples of North Star Turquoise. Photo courtesy of North Star Turquoise.
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