Montana is America's sapphire state, home to the nation's only major deposits of gem-quality sapphires. Most are found in four classic localities: Yogo Gulch, Rock Creek, Dry Cottonwood Creek, and the Missouri River gravels northeast of Helena. The Missouri River deposits quite literally extend through the property on which I constructed my house. Given my feral obsession with rocks and my proximity to precious gems, I am regularly compelled to purchase bags of sapphire pay gravel from one or another of the nearby mining operations so I can glean a few stones.
Just
yesterday, we poked through a bag of gravel processed from the Spokane Bar
Sapphire Mine.
Good
stuff.
We
found several larger sapphires I like to think of as "tink-tinks"
because of the distinctive sound they make when dropped into a holding bottle.
Most of the gems ranged from green to blue. The largest, though not of perfect
quality, I would estimate to be around 4 carats. I'm sharing a photograph of
the gems we found.
—Mitchell
Hegman
No comments:
Post a Comment