Two awesome stones to share

Here are two more stones to share the view of The awesome stones that come out of the Wintergreen Turquoise mine. As they say a picture is worth a thousand words.Well here are two thousand words worth. I do take pictures of my stones as I post them and when I find ones that offer new looks or are just awesome I will post them.

Two webbed stones

Here are a couple of nice webed stones showing some of the matrix difference from this mine.The webbing and shades of green are limitless from the Wintergreen.

Two more stones

Here are a couple more stones from this mine. These are in the green shades and are a medium grade from this mine.These were cut from small nuggets that formed next to larger vien.

The Wintergreen mine

The Wintergreen Mine

Here again is another of the many turquoise mines in Nevada. The wintergreen mine lies about half way between Reno and Las Vegas back in a little mountain range. This mine had been lost for most of the 1900’s. But was rediscovered by an old turquoise mining hermit that lived out in the old Ghost town of Columbus. He was also the owner of the Candelaria mines. He was not much into mining but more into keeping people out of the mines. He passed away back in the early 1990’s and again this mine was lost. Curtis Barlow rediscovered this deposit and named it the Wintergreen mine about 1992. It was winter time and the stone was green. That was the story he told me anyway. The original owners back early 1900’s would ride out to this mine from Tonopah on a buck board . They mined this deposit and sold the stone to Tiffany’s. I do not know the name from that time or when they stopped selling to Tiffany. After this the mine went dormant and was lost for most of the 1900’s.

When I first came across rough from this mine I was in awe. I bought some and when I cut it, I was very impressed with the quality and the ease of cutting it. It took me another two years to get any more of this awesome material. The rough forms mostly in viens,running very thin to over an inch thick. There seems to be nuggets and nugget formations that form next to these veins in the looser material. The green colors that come from this mine are awesome and run from a vibrant emerald green with all shades of green and into the yellow and burnt yellow and brown shades. Much of the material has very nice webbing patterns that run Black but also some nice reddish brown and golden colors of webbing also. There are also some occurrences of a very dark high grade spider web that is totally unique. Most of the material from this mine has a unique look that I have only seen from this mine. The mine is a small producer but what comes from it is mostly high grade.
Copyright 2010 @ James Saunders