1935

PRECIOUS STONES BY THE TON. "Follow the muddy stream" were the directions given us several times when we asked how to find the sapphire mines in the Sapphire Mountains of western Montana near Philipsburg.

So we followed the muddy stream to its source, and found a man actually washing away the side of a mountain, in a fireman's outfit of hip boots, rain coat, and helmet rubber caps with a powerful stream of water dashing with terrific force against the gravelly wall.... and that basically all there is to the process of mining sapphires. Practically all the sapphires produced in the United States are mined by two men to a shift, and three shifts a day for about 8 months of the year.

But. of course, there are other factors to be considered to keep these six men at work. As the soil of the mountain is washed away to bed rock, the muddy water is augmented with a stream of freshwater, and all this runs through a series of troughs which slows the speed of the water and allows the sapphires as well as the larger stones to fall to the bottom. Here they remain until they are cleaned out by the foreman of the mine, which at the present rate of operation, is once a day.

The rest of the water runs through a series of check dams each of which retards the speed of the water enough to drop more sand and mud.

Even though the process of mining sapphires seems insignificant, the work of building ditches for the conduction of the steam from higher elevations to where the mining operation is in progress, and the construction of the check dams is considerable and increases the cost of production.

At the other end, is the final process of separating the sapphires from the heavier particles of gravel, and that of grading them for color and size. This work is done by one man with the aid of a home made machine called a "gig', a series of sieves for the grading process.

Here we saw a pan of shiny sapphires of all colors and sizes drying on a stove before the final step of separating the precious stones. Many of the stones were a pale green in color, but most used for cut stones are blue, white, or yellow. Some were the size of a pin head, others almost the size of a marble.

The owners of this company have literally tons of stones in storage. Their largest production during one season was 16,000 pounds or 8 tons. But these tons of sapphires are not very valuable. A few of them are used for cut stones in costume jewelry, but one can purchase large cut sapphires of good quality for as little as two dollars. Mostly sapphires are used in motor bearings, in meters, and in such apparatus where high heat endurance is essential.