King's Manassa Turquoise: Field Guide to Colorado's 'Lick Skillet' Mine

King's Manassa Turquoise: Field Guide to Colorado's Green Stone

The King mine near Manassa, Colorado produces the deep green turquoise the trade calls "Manassa Green." It is also the mine with the best-documented disagreement in this field guide — three sources, three different origin stories, and one of them comes from the mining family's own descendant.

Field Notes by Mateo James

Branson's account is the one most often repeated. He records that the King Turquoise Mine near Manassa was among the many turquoise deposits mined by Indigenous people before the arrival of white men, and that it was rediscovered by I. P. King in 1890 while he was prospecting for gold. The original name was Lick Skillet, "due probably to the poor picking at the time."¹

Schiffer independently gives the same rediscovery and the same year: the King turquoise mine near Manassa, rediscovered by I. P. King in 1890, producing turquoise that varies from light to sky-blue and a very attractive green with light brown matrix.²

On the stone itself, Branson is specific: one type, "Manassa Green," is an attractive deep green tinted with blue and mottled with a golden brown matrix, with colours ranging from very light blue through deep sky-blue into bluish-greens and deep greens.¹

A grid of twelve turquoise close-ups, the top row showing green stones veined with brown and black matrix, the middle row bright blue stones with dark and metallic-flecked matrix, and the bottom row pale blue stones with almost no matrix — Green turquoise with brown matrix — the general appearance both Branson and Schiffer describe for this mine — sits in the top row here.¹² **These are general reference stones, not photographs of King's Manassa material.**

The contradiction, presented three ways

Chambless and Ryan interviewed the family. According to Bill King, great-grandson of J. P. King, Israel P. King came to Manassa in 1894 from North Carolina with his family; while searching for minerals he came across indications of a prehistoric Indigenous turquoise mine; and in 1895 he filed claim on the Lick Skillet — so named, in the family's telling, "because the family was so poor they licked the skillet after every meal."³

That is a different date, a different origin state, and a completely different explanation of the name. Set the three accounts side by side:

	Branson / Schiffer	Chambless & Ryan (via the King family)	Lowry & Lowry
Date	rediscovered 1890¹²	arrived 1894, filed 1895³	—
Family came from	—	North Carolina³	Texas⁴
"Lick Skillet" means	poor picking at the time¹	the family licked the skillet after every meal³	—

We are not going to collapse this into one clean sentence, because the sources do not support one. What can be said about relative weight: the Chambless and Ryan version is attributed to a named descendant of the mining family speaking about his own great-grandfather, which is the strongest provenance of the three for a family matter. That is a reason to take it seriously, not a reason to delete the others — Branson and Schiffer agree with each other on 1890, independently, and that agreement is itself evidence.

A page that shows you this disagreement is more useful than one that hides it. Anyone selling you "Manassa turquoise, discovered 1890" is quoting one branch of a genuinely contested record.

Close-up of a teardrop-shaped bright blue turquoise cabochon set in a silver ring with a serrated bezel and twisted rope border, the stone carrying dark grey matrix flecks with metallic pyrite glints — Matrix pattern read in a finished piece. Branson's description of the Manassa material turns on matrix colour — golden brown against green — so matrix is the first thing to look at when assessing an attribution claim. General reference piece; not attributed to a named mine.

Working the deposit

Branson records that mining was carried on intermittently by members of the King family, that tunnelling was the method used up to the time of his writing, and that Bill King had by then moved to an open-pit operation.¹ Lowry and Lowry place the deposits on Pinon Mountain in Conejos County, and name neighbouring claims including the Nellie Bly, Lajara and Sunset.⁴

A horizontal strip of six turquoise close-ups progressing from an almost clean pale stone through increasingly dense brown webbing to a dark, tightly packed nodular cluster — Branson notes that a quantity of very attractive spider web with brown-red matrix has come out of the King mine alongside the better-known greens.¹ General reference stones showing the webbing range.

Collector's Handbook

"Manassa Green" is a described type, not a guarantee. Branson defines it as deep green tinted with blue, mottled with golden brown matrix.¹ That description is repeatable by other deposits, so the colour alone does not establish origin.

Expect the date to be contested. 1890 in Branson and Schiffer;¹² arrival 1894 and filing 1895 in the family's own account.³

The name has two stories. "Poor picking" and "licked the skillet after every meal" are both in print, from different sources.¹³

Colour range is wide. Very light blue through deep sky-blue into bluish-greens and deep greens, plus spider web with brown-red matrix.¹ A narrow "this is what Manassa looks like" claim is narrower than the source.

We strive for accuracy. This field guide entry is compiled from the published references cited below and is continuously updated with new information from the artists, their families, and the community. If you hold King family records or documentation bearing on the 1890 / 1894–95 question, get in touch — corrections are welcomed and credited.

Sources

Branson, Oscar T. Turquoise: The Gem of the Centuries. Treasure Chest Publications, Santa Fe, 1975. The King's Manassa entry: rediscovery by I. P. King in 1890 while prospecting for gold; the original name Lick Skillet, "due probably to the poor picking at the time"; intermittent working by the King family; tunnelling and the later open-pit operation under Bill King; "Manassa Green" as deep green tinted with blue with golden brown matrix; the full colour range and the spider web with brown-red matrix. Cited without a page number: the book's illustrated mine map indexes some entries by page, but the King's Manassa pin is not legible in our scan and this entry carries no readable printed folio, so no page is asserted.
Schiffer, Nancy N. Turquoise Jewelry, revised 4th edition, 2008. Printed p. 11 (the King turquoise mine near Manassa, rediscovered by I. P. King in 1890; colour from light to sky-blue and green with light brown matrix).
Chambless, Philip, and Mike Ryan II. Turquoise in America, Part One: The Great American Turquoise Rush 1890–1910. Callais Press. Printed p. 170 (Bill King, great-grandson of J. P. King; the family's arrival at Manassa in 1894 from North Carolina; the 1895 claim on the Lick Skillet and the family's explanation of the name). The founder's middle name is printed in a form our scan cannot resolve reliably, so he is given here as Israel P. King.
Lowry, Joe Dan, and Joe P. Lowry. Turquoise: The World Story of a Fascinating Gemstone. Gibbs Smith, 2010. Cited without a page: 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 (deposits on Pinon Mountain in Conejos County; the family's migration from Texas; neighbouring claims including the Nellie Bly, Lajara and Sunset).