Bisbee Turquoise Jewelry

Bisbee Turquoise Jewelry for Sale

Our online inventory of jewelry with Turquoise from the Bisbee Turquoise mine in Arizona.
The Phelps Dodge Company was mining for copper in Bisbee, Arizona. In an area of the mine called “The Lavender Pit” they found turquoise in 1950. The brilliant blue stone seemed to be of no use to them. During the time that the largest quantities of turquoise were being extracted from the mine, the company made no organized effort to recover it. Bisbee Turquoise simply (and sadly) got loaded into large dump trucks and hauled off to the “dumps”; or the turquoise was carried home as ‘lunch bucket rocks’ by company employees known as ‘dumpers’. Then, in March of 1972, a miner named Bob Matthews was given the only lease ever granted for rights to mine Bisbee Turquoise. Bisbee is found in a wide range of blue colors, and very rarely in green. Bisbee turquoise is a very high-end stone, known as a hard turquoise with intense deep blues and black matrix or a uniquely distinctive smoky matrix. The Bisbee Turquoise mine is no longer in production, making Bisbee Turquoise jewelry highly collectible.