Hunting Montana Sapphires

One of my most favorite things to do is get my hands dirty. An easy way to do so is hit Glass Beach in Fort Bragg, California. It used to be the town dump (in those days when "ecology" was a dictionary word) and the waves would pulverize glass bottles into little nuggets of color.

Took my offspring there-- great way to while away an October afternoon, sifting through sand and tide pools.

When a trip to the coast isn't feasible, there's awesome things such as ordering gravel from sapphire mines in Montana. There are two "types" of sapphires: those from the Yogo gulch (flat and cornflower blue) and those from Gem mountain and surrounding areas. Those sapphires come in many colorations from clear, pink, purple, blue, green, brown, and two tone. Impurities in the stones give them various shades.

If you have the time and inclination, order some gravel, wet it to reveal the colors and claim your stones. I ordered from two different mines; one was augmented with other stones (such as amethyst, citrine, topaz, emerald and ruby (such as this stone with the ruby skunk stripe) and even fossilized shark teeth.

The other mine had concentrate (gravel from the mine screened so it contains more gems than mere gravel) and furnished some GORGEOUS stones!

I used my gold panning classifying screens (70-170 micron) to clean the gravel with a wash pan of water -- you do not want to wash them in the sink since the silt can clog drains. It's a fun activity-- especially for kids!