Bisbee Turquoise: Field Guide to a Top-Five Collectible

Bisbee is the one mine in this guide that Lowry says “every collector in the world should be able to identify.”¹ It is also the one where our two independent sources describe the stone differently — and that disagreement is more useful to you than either description alone.

Where it comes from

“The now-iconic Bisbee turquoise came from open-pit copper mining operations in Bisbee, Arizona” — Cochise County — and specifically from the ‘Lavender Pit’ area, about 1,200 feet within the Cole Shaft.¹

Schiffer, independently, also puts the best material at the Lavender Pit: the Bisbee mine “has been an important producer of dark blue turquoise… Here, the best quality comes from a section of a copper mine known as the Lavender Pit.”³ Two books, two authors, same pit and the same base colour. That is real corroboration.

Our two sources describe the matrix differently

This is worth slowing down on, because most pages state it flatly and only one of the two descriptions.

Lowry calls Bisbee “a classic for its unique smoky- and lavender-colored matrix and deep blue color,” and restates it later: the turquoise mined at Bisbee “is famous for its smoky- or lavender-colored matrix.”¹ That is one book saying the same thing twice, which is not the same as two books agreeing.

Schiffer describes it as “dark blue turquoise with black or red veining.”³

Smoky-lavender and black-or-red are not the same description. We are not going to pick one for you. What both agree on is the deep blue base and the Lavender Pit as the source of the best material, and those are the two things you can rely on. Expect real Bisbee to vary more than a single-sentence identifier suggests.

The waste-dump story, corroborated twice

“Initially, in the late 1950s, the copper miners collected the uncovered turquoise deposits during their daily copper-mining duties or from along the waste dump, and then they sold it to turquoise dealers on the open market.”¹

Chambless corroborates this from an entirely different direction — in his own preface, describing a colleague whose father had driven trucks taking turquoise-laden muck to the dumps at Bisbee.² Two books, two unconnected accounts, same story. This one is safe to rely on.

“In the early 1970s, Bob Matthews acquired a contract with a copper mining company to exclusively collect and sell the turquoise.”¹

On the tailings: Lowry writes that the large overburden from this production “is still located at dump-site #7,” and that “turquoise legend says” there is still much Bisbee turquoise within it.¹ We reproduce that as legend because that is the word Lowry uses for it.

Bisbee also turns up in the jewellery record: Bedinger plates a cast bracelet set with Bisbee turquoise.⁴

Why it is collected, and why it is graded on its own scale

Lowry places Bisbee among “the top five collectible turquoises in the world,” and records that Americans list “Number Eight, Bisbee, Lander Blue, and Lone Mountain” as the best.¹ The Indian Arts and Crafts Board brochure likewise names Bisbee among mines “highly regarded for the color, matrix, and history” of their turquoise⁵ — noting again that this is not an independent voice.

A practical consequence collectors miss: Bisbee has its own grading system. Lowry writes that it is important to develop knowledge of each classic mine because “Bisbee, Number Eight, Persian, and other famous mines each have their own grading system,” and that “a high grade Bisbee cabochon’s color and matrix are graded differently from a high-grade Number Eight cabochon.”¹ A grade is not portable between mines.

And one line that tells you something real about how the market values provenance: “a stabilized Bisbee stone is more desirable than a stabilized Kingman stone of similar grade because the Bisbee Mine is more rare and famous.”¹ Mine provenance survives treatment.

Current status

Our sources imply it has ended and never say when.

Lowry writes about Bisbee turquoise consistently in the past tense — it “came from” the open-pit operations, it “produced” its colour and matrix, and the overburden from that production “is still located” at the dump site.¹ The tense implies production has ended. No source we hold states a closure date, and we are not going to infer one from grammar.

So the honest statement is the narrow one: the turquoise came from open-pit copper operations at Bisbee, our sources describe that production in the past tense, and they do not date its end.

As Lowry puts it, “which mines are active can change year to year depending on whether someone invests the money to reopen an old mine or discovers a new one.”¹

Field Notes by Mateo James

The matrix disagreement in the second section is the most useful thing on this page and it is the thing most likely to be missing from any other page you read about Bisbee. If someone tells you flatly that Bisbee means smoky-lavender, or flatly that it means red veining, they have read one book. The deep blue and the Lavender Pit are what two books agree on; the matrix is where they diverge, and a real Bisbee stone is allowed to look like either account.

How this page is sourced. Every factual claim above is drawn from the printed reference works listed below and is footnoted to the book it came from. Where our sources disagree we say so and do not pick a winner; where they are silent we say that too, rather than filling the gap. Nothing on this page comes from general web knowledge.

Sources

Lowry, Joe Dan, and Joe P. Lowry. Turquoise: The World Story of a Fascinating Gemstone. Gibbs Smith, 2010. Cited without page numbers: the printed folios in our scan of this title are not legible enough to pin a page honestly, so this reference is given at the book level only.
Chambless, Philip, and Mike Ryan II. Turquoise in America, Part One: The Great American Turquoise Rush 1890–1910. Dallas Press LLC, 2011. Cited at the book level. Scan condition: this volume is a multi-column scan whose columns interleave, so passages from it are paraphrased rather than quoted verbatim unless stated otherwise.
Schiffer, Nancy. Turquoise Jewelry. Schiffer Publishing. Cited at the book level.
Bedinger, Margery. Indian Silver: Navajo and Pueblo Jewelers. First edition. Cited at the book level for a single plate caption recording a cast bracelet set with Bisbee turquoise — the only mention of any mine in this guide anywhere in that volume.
U.S. Department of the Interior, Indian Arts and Crafts Board, consumer brochure on the Indian Arts and Crafts Act and turquoise (GPO document gpo58769). Independence note: this brochure states that the Board “collaborated with Mr. Joe Dan Lowry, of the Turquoise Museum” to produce its turquoise information. Joe Dan Lowry is the lead author of the Lowry volume above, so where the two agree that is one voice speaking twice and not independent corroboration.