Cerrillos Turquoise: Field Guide to Mount Chalchihuitl and Turquoise Hill
Part of the Turquoise Mines of the Southwest field guides and The Southwest Jewelry Guide.
Los Cerrillos, in the Cerrillos Hills of New Mexico, is the district Pogue ranked first among United States turquoise deposits for its history and past production. This page is built from the most detailed early study of the district, Joseph E. Pogue’s The Turquois, published by the National Academy of Sciences in 1915. Every statement below is quoted from it, with page numbers, so you can check each one. Anything Pogue describes as current describes 1915, not today.
Why Cerrillos comes first
Writing in 1915, Pogue ranked the district first:
“The most important deposits of turquois in the United States, from the point of view of their history and past production, are within the Cerrillos mining district, Santa Fe County, in the north-central portion of New Mexico.”
— Pogue (1915), p. 52 [1]
Of Mount Chalchihuitl, Pogue wrote in 1915 that it
“is the site of the most extensive prehistoric mining operations known on the American continent.”
— Pogue (1915), p. 52 [1]
Pogue argued in 1915 that Cerrillos fed a continent:
“Indeed, this deposit must have supplied much of the turquois which was so widely used in pre-Spanish times, not only in the Southwest but in Mexico as well, for no other sources are now known at all adequate to account for the quantities employed.”
— Pogue (1915), p. 52 [1]
Mount Chalchihuitl: the ancient workings
Pogue (1915) cited Sterrett's 1911 survey:
“the main pit is about 130 feet deep and 200 feet across”
— Pogue (1915), p. 52 [1]
Pogue (1915) quoted the geologist Silliman's reaction to the site:
“The observer is deeply impressed with the enormous amount of labor which in ancient times has been expended here.”
— Pogue (1915), p. 52 [1]
Pogue (1915) on the tools left behind:
“Many stone hammers (see Fig. 2, Pl. 3) and other primitive implements have been found in the debris of the ancient workings.”
— Pogue (1915), p. 52 [1]
Turquoise Hill and the Tiffany mine
Pogue (1915) described the two main centres; the first
“is situated on Turquois Hill, 6 miles east of north of Cerrillos, and includes the Tiffany and Castilian mines owned by the American Turquois Co. of New York.”
— Pogue (1915), p. 52 [1]
On the Spanish period, Pogue (1915) noted that Jones
“found in the archives at Santa Fe the record of a chalchihuitl (turquois) grant bearing the date 1763. Evidently, then, at that time the excavation was again worked,”
— Pogue (1915), p. 53 [1]
Pogue (1915) on the modern claims:
“In 1889 the Muniz claim, one of the most important in the district, was located by F. Muniz, a Mexican. Other claims were located in 1891. The following year the combined holdings were purchased by the American Turquois Co., which proved very successful in their operation.”
— Pogue (1915), p. 53 [1]
Of the best-known claim, Pogue wrote in 1915 that the
““Tiffany mine” is reputed to have produced a higher proportion of high-grade gem material than any other deposit in the United States;”
— Pogue (1915), p. 55 [1]
As of 1915, Pogue reported:
“The total yield from the holdings of the American Turquois Co., coming chiefly from the “Tiffany mine,” is said to exceed $2,000,000 in value.”
— Pogue (1915), p. 55 [1]
The stone
Pogue's 1915 description of the stone:
“Its color varies from green through greenish-blue to fine sky-blue.”
— Pogue (1915), p. 54 [1]
How Cerrillos turquoise formed: the 1881–1915 debate
Pogue gathered every published explanation of the Cerrillos deposits up to 1915. They did not all agree:
According to Pogue (1915, p. 61), Silliman in 1881 was the first to offer an explanation for Cerrillos turquoise, tying it to hydrothermal (hot-water) alteration of the surrounding rock. [1]
Pogue (1915) reported that Clarke and Diller, studying the stone in 1886,
“found the turquois under the microscope to be composed of fibers, which in one specimen were arranged at right angles to the vein walls”
— Pogue (1915), p. 62 [1]
According to Pogue (1915, p. 62), Herrick's 1900 idea that molten syenite had acted on copper-bearing Jurassic sandstone was untenable, because no copper-bearing Jurassic sediments were known near Cerrillos. [1]
Writing in 1915, Pogue summarized Johnson's detailed 1903 study of the Cerrillos deposits:
“The turquois originated during the alteration of the country rock; its alumina and phosphoric acid were derived from the feldspar and apatite of the original rock, while its copper was supplied by copper-bearing solutions, which also produced the copper-bearing ores of the region”
— Pogue (1915), p. 62 [1]
Pogue (1915) gave Lindgren's later view: once the altered rock was exposed by erosion,
“when the altered rock was brought by erosion within reach of surface waters kaolin was developed by the action on the sericite of sulphuric acid from the pyrite, and the turquois found congenial conditions to form.”
— Pogue (1915), p. 62 [1]
Pogue (1915) also flagged a mineral found near both Cerrillos and the Burro Mountains:
“The presence of fluorite near the deposits of the Burro Mountains and the Cerrillos Hills is suggestive, inasmuch as the components necessary for its formation are left if phosphoric acid be subtracted from apatite.”
— Pogue (1915), p. 64 [1]
From the Library: Branson, Turquoise: The Gem of the Centuries (1975)
1975 primary source. Anything described as current here describes 1975, not today.
According to Branson (1975, p. 43), Indigenous miners worked very extensive workings here some 300 years before the first Spaniards settled at nearby Santa Fe. His account is an outside observer's record, and the Pueblos are the authority on their own history. [3]
According to Branson (1975, p. 43), the old workings yielded large quantities of medium-quality soft blue turquoise, used mainly for beads, with some larger pieces made into jewelry. [3]
According to Branson (1975, p. 43), that quality of Cerrillos turquoise turns green over time, sometimes to very pleasing shades, when exposed to skin oils. [3]
As of 1975, Branson (1975, p. 43) reported that no active mining had been carried out for many years. [3]
From the Library: Chambless & Ryan, Turquoise in America, Part One (2021)
2021 primary source. Anything described as current here describes 2021, not today.
The name is not an ownership record. Chambless & Ryan (2021) write that
“neither Charles Lewis Tiffany nor the company he founded ever owned a turquoise mine, though he probably had a small equity holding in and some debt from one company, the American Turquoise Company (ATC).”
— Chambless & Ryan (2021), p. 20 [2]
Chambless & Ryan (2021) caution against giving Cerrillos all the credit:
“Although the source of Chaco turquoise has often been assigned to the mines in the Cerrillos Mining District near Santa Fe, New Mexico, many other areas were explored by Native American people.”
— Chambless & Ryan (2021), p. 28 [2]
According to Chambless & Ryan (2021, p. 29), an isotope study of 29 turquoise artifacts from Pueblo Bonito linked 13 of them to deposits at Cerrillos, the Jarilla Mountains of New Mexico and Villa Grove, Colorado. [2]
According to Chambless & Ryan (2021, p. 28), William P. Blake explored Mount Chalchihuitl at Cerrillos in 1857, and many more sites of American Indian turquoise mining were found after that, often by prospectors looking for other minerals. [2]
According to Chambless & Ryan (2021, p. 26), turquoise from the Cerrillos area traveled in early times through trading exchanges between the Hohokam, Mogollon and Sonoran peoples. [2]
According to Chambless & Ryan (2021, p. 32), the geologist William Phipps Blake learned of the stone in August 1857, when Navajos on the Santa Fe Plaza told him of a highly valued green gemstone they called "Chalchihuit" and wore as personal adornment; he set out to find its source. [2]
According to Chambless & Ryan (2021, p. 34), Blake found in 1857 an immense pit about 200 feet deep and more than 300 feet wide, dug with Stone Age tools and fire, with hundred-year-old pine trees and lichen-covered rocks on its dumps as evidence of its age. The only activity he saw was local Native people working the ancient dumps in small groups, breaking gem material from rock extracted centuries before. [2]
Chambless & Ryan (2021) give D.B. Sterrett's June 1911 USGS measurements of the main ancient working:
“The pit is 105 feet deep on the upper side, 35 feet deep on the lower side; nearly 100 feet across in the bottom and over 200 feet across the rim.”
— Chambless & Ryan (2021), p. 36 [2]
On the popular legend that a mine collapse at Mount Chalchihuitl set off the Pueblo Revolt of 1680, Chambless & Ryan (2021) conclude:
“A mine collapse and forced slavery at Mount Chalchihuitl was not likely the prime provocation.”
— Chambless & Ryan (2021), p. 37 [2]
According to Chambless & Ryan (2021, p. 39), Major D.C. Hyde and New York investors acquired claims covering the ancient Chalchihuitl pits in late 1879 and began work on January 1, 1880, as the Grand Reserve Consolidated Gold and Silver Mining Company. As the name suggests, they were looking for gold and silver, although Blake had reported in 1858 that turquoise was the only mineral the ancient miners had sought there. [2]
According to Chambless & Ryan (2021, p. 40), very little turquoise was mined during Hyde's 1880-1882 operation; false precious-metal assays were used to sell stock, and the turquoise he shipped to New York was marginal in quality. [2]
Chambless & Ryan (2021) quote George Kunz's 1882 USGS report on how American turquoise was then sold:
“All the American turquoise is sold to either tourists or collectors or to the jewelry trade only as oddities.”
— Chambless & Ryan (2021), p. 41 [2]
According to Chambless & Ryan (2021, p. 41), in the 1880s turquoise found in the Cerrillos District was ignored because its price was too low to bring it to market. USGS estimates of U.S. production then jumped from $28,675 in 1890 to $150,000 in 1891, an increase of almost 500 percent; they caution that the figures were understated because mines were taxed on production. [2]
According to Chambless & Ryan (2021, p. 43), the Santa Fe Daily New Mexican of July 31, 1890 reported that Kunz, Tiffany and Co.'s gemologist, was in Santa Fe with Adolph F. Bandelier to visit the turquoise mines. [2]
Chambless & Ryan (2021) date the start of the boom to that visit:
“This was an important visit and may be regarded as perhaps the beginning of The Great American Turquoise Rush.”
— Chambless & Ryan (2021), p. 43 [2]
According to Chambless & Ryan (2021, p. 46), Hugh Marshall and James Franklin Callender located the Old Castilian on Turquoise Hill on December 5, 1879, as part of a group of claims on what became known as the Marshall Hill. [2]
Chambless & Ryan (2021) add of the Old Castilian:
“This was perhaps the first staked turquoise mining claim in the United States”
— Chambless & Ryan (2021), p. 46 [2]
According to Chambless & Ryan (2021, p. 48), Chauncey G. Story deeded five claims to the American Turquoise Company (ATC) in March 1892: the Old Castilian, the Muñiz, the Morningstar, the Sky Blue and the Gem. Only the Castilian and the Muñiz were mined for turquoise, and the Muñiz became known as the Tiffany; the others served as a buffer. [2]
According to Chambless & Ryan (2021, p. 48), the Muñiz ground had been worked on and off during the 1880s and was then abandoned until January 31, 1890, when the Muñiz brothers, Faustin and Pedro, worked the mine; they sold the part holding the shaft to the Storys in 1891 and the rest afterwards. [2]
As of 2021, Chambless & Ryan (2021, p. 48) report that the Muñiz (Tiffany) claim, patented by the ATC in 1915, was owned by Douglas Magnus, a Santa Fe artist and jewelry designer. [2]
According to Chambless & Ryan (2021, p. 50), the ATC hired James Patrick McNulty as mine superintendent in 1892. The company was financed with $250,000 in bonds through Farmers' Loan and Trust Company of New York, and the bondholders included the sons of Allan Pinkerton, the banker James Stillman, and Charles Lewis Tiffany himself. [2]
On the "Tiffany" name, Chambless & Ryan (2021) are direct:
“Tiffany and Co. bought a lot of turquoise during The Great American Turquoise Rush, but neither he nor his company ever owned a claim or operated a mine.”
— Chambless & Ryan (2021), p. 45 [2]
According to Chambless & Ryan (2021, p. 52), a 1962 letter from a Tiffany and Co. spokesperson said the firm had never owned or operated a turquoise mine, and that it had once taken a few shares of American Turquoise Company stock in partial payment of a debt. [2]
Chambless & Ryan (2021) conclude:
“It is clear that the ongoing use of the Tiffany name throughout the Southwest had no connection to either the individual or the company.”
— Chambless & Ryan (2021), p. 52 [2]
According to Chambless & Ryan (2021, p. 52), the bond trustee foreclosed on the ATC early in 1897 for $85,481.52, after the company had already paid the original $250,000 debt down by $164,518.48. They estimate the Tiffany mine generated at least $250,000 to $300,000 in cash over those five years. [2]
Chambless & Ryan (2021) on the color the company was chasing:
“Obtaining the desired robin-egg blue turquoise with no matrix was difficult for the ATC and contributed to their financial problems.”
— Chambless & Ryan (2021), p. 55 [2]
According to Chambless & Ryan (2021, p. 57), Mariano F. Sena sued in 1899 to confirm the Spanish-era José de Leyba land grant, which he claimed covered the Turquoise Hill claims. The courts, up to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1911, ruled against him, after 16 years of trials. [2]
Chambless & Ryan (2021) on what the lawsuit cost the company:
“In spite of the favorable verdict, the company never recovered financially and never resumed full-scale mining operations.”
— Chambless & Ryan (2021), p. 59 [2]
According to Chambless & Ryan (2021, p. 59), Rio Grande pueblos including Santo Domingo (now Kewa), Cochiti and San Felipe did not share the Euro-American idea of private ownership of the turquoise mines, and kept exercising what they felt was their ancestral right to gather turquoise there. Their account draws on the court and newspaper records of the time; the Pueblos are the authority on their own history. [2]
According to Chambless & Ryan (2021, p. 60), McNulty sometimes allowed Pueblo miners to work the Castilian, though the Tiffany was always off-limits, and trespass cases went to court more than once. On the night of December 16, 1910, four men from Cochiti Pueblo were arrested entering the Castilian; they pleaded guilty, served part of a six-to-nine-month sentence from March 1911, and were paroled on August 8, 1911. [2]
According to Chambless & Ryan (2021, p. 62), Michael O'Neil and Ed E. Bennett staked the Persian Lode claim on April 11, 1892, next to the Old Castilian. It became the property of the New Mexico Turquoise Company, organized in April 1893 with territorial governor L. Bradford Prince as secretary and treasurer, which produced little and ceased business in 1907. [2]
According to Chambless & Ryan (2021, p. 66), the Blue Bell claim was located on January 15, 1892, by Michael O'Neil and Adam Herlich on original American Indian workings in the Cerrillos Hills, near the old diggings on Mount Chalchihuitl. [2]
Chambless & Ryan (2021) warn buyers and researchers about the name:
“It is confusing because there are Blue Bell claims in the Cerrillos Hills and Turquoise Hill.”
— Chambless & Ryan (2021), p. 66 [2]
According to Chambless & Ryan (2021, p. 68), former territorial governor L. Bradford Prince paid $25,000 for a one-fourth interest in the Cerrillos Hills Blue Bell in 1897, acquired the rest in 1902, and had it patented in his name in 1906, the only turquoise claim patented in the Cerrillos Hills. O'Neil later reacquired it; when USGS geologist D.B. Sterrett visited in 1911 it was known simply as the Mike O'Neil turquoise mine, and after O'Neil's death in 1930 it passed to his grandson Vern Byrne. [2]
Chambless & Ryan (2021) reprint Tiffany and Co.'s notice in The Jewelers' Circular, denying any role in the North American Turquoise Syndicate of 1899:
“Tiffany and Co has denounced unauthorized and absolutely untrue reports in newspapers associating their name with the management of the North American Turquoise Syndicate.”
— Chambless & Ryan (2021), p. 70 [2]
According to Chambless & Ryan (2021, p. 68), investor James Hess wrote in 1899 that McNulty claimed the Old Castilian had paid Tiffany $2 million since 1892; they suggest Hess either misunderstood a figure for the ATC's total production, almost all from the Tiffany mine, or was misled. [2]
Chambless & Ryan (2021) add a caution about the era's figures:
“Reported production numbers were often suspect.”
— Chambless & Ryan (2021), p. 71 [2]
Chambless & Ryan (2021) on what happened when the boom ended:
“New Mexico was the epicenter of production during The Great American Turquoise Rush, but when the boom ended, production in the state soon came to an almost complete halt.”
— Chambless & Ryan (2021), p. 183 [2]
According to Chambless & Ryan (2021, p. 183), the ATC produced little after 1907 and production had halted by 1930, though Vern Byrne took several hundred dollars' worth from the Blue Bell in the 1930s, as did Herculano Montayo from the Tiffany. [2]
According to Chambless & Ryan (2021, p. 183), the ATC patent claims for the Tiffany and the Castilian were sold in the 1930s to the Gerard family, who never developed them; around 1980 the land and a half-interest in the mineral rights went to Frank Rapstine and D.E. "Skip" Stahl of Amarillo, who sold in the late 1980s to Douglas Magnus, the owner as of 2021. [2]
As of 2021, Chambless & Ryan reported:
“Some small-scale miners maintain claims in the area and continue to produce turquoise.”
— Chambless & Ryan (2021), p. 183 [2]
Field Notes by Mateo James
Pogue wrote that the Cerrillos deposits were worked 'under Spanish rule also,' and even his own footnote gives Bandelier's view that the Spaniards did no mining there before 1725. Chambless & Ryan think 'it is doubtful they worked the area for turquoise.' When the books disagree, I tend to side with Chambless & Ryan.
See also the other New Mexico districts: Hachita and Jarilla, and our overview of New Mexico turquoise, and how Cerrillos turquoise may have reached ancient Mexico.
Pogue dates the Muñiz claim to 1889 and credits a single F. Muniz; Chambless & Ryan have the ground abandoned until January 31, 1890, when the Muñiz brothers worked it. The books also differ on the main pit: Pogue gives about 130 feet deep, while the 1911 Sterrett figures Chambless & Ryan print give 105 feet on the upper side. When the books disagree, I tend to side with Chambless & Ryan.
How this page is sourced. We strive for accuracy: every factual statement above is quoted from the printed works listed below, with page numbers, and this page is continuously updated with new information as we read more of our library. See something we should correct? Contact us.
Sources
- Pogue, Joseph E. The Turquois: A Study of Its History, Mineralogy, Geology, Ethnology, Archaeology, Mythology, Folklore, and Technology. Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. XII, Part II, Third Memoir. Washington, 1915. Public domain. Cited by printed page. Statements describe conditions in 1915.
- Chambless, Philip, and Mike Ryan II. Turquoise in America, Part One: The Great American Turquoise Rush, 1890–1910. Revised first edition. Callais Press, 2021. Cited by printed page. Statements describe conditions as of 2021.
- Branson, Oscar T. Turquoise: The Gem of the Centuries. Santa Fe: Treasure Chest Publications, 1975. Cited by printed page. Statements describe conditions as of 1975.