Number Eight Turquoise: Field Guide to Nevada's Vanished Spiderweb Mine

Number Eight turquoise is also written #8, the form the Indian Arts and Crafts Board uses. Start with the fact that governs every Number Eight purchase you will ever make: the source is closed and the ground itself is gone. Lowry and Lowry record that the last production of turquoise from this area was by Dowel Ward in 1976, and that after a mining conglomerate bought the Number Eight area and began working it for copper and gold, the ground where the best turquoise was mined no longer exists.¹ Every genuine Number Eight stone on the market today came out of the earth before that. There is no new supply, and there cannot be one.

The second thing to carry into a purchase is the name. These same claims were also known as Royal Blue, Royal Blue No. 1, and Blue Star.¹ A historical reference to "Royal Blue" material therefore does not, on its own, point at this mine — and as set out below, the record attaches that name to two different Nevada counties.

Field Notes by Mateo James

The deposits sit about thirty miles north of Carlin, Nevada.¹ Lowry's plate caption places the mine in Eureka County.¹ The turquoise lay above copper and gold outcroppings — a detail that turns out to be the reason the mine has the history it does, because the metal underneath was ultimately worth more to its owners than the stone on top.¹

Why the matrix is the whole story

Number Eight is, in Lowry's words, "famous for producing what is considered to be some of the best golden and black spiderweb matrix turquoise in the world."¹ That is the identifier. Not the blue — the web, and specifically a web that runs golden and black together.

The Indian Arts and Crafts Board defines the pattern precisely: "The rarest matrix, 'spider web' turquoise, has a natural and uniform matrix that is evenly laced throughout the gemstone."² Evenness is the test. A stone with a coarse, blotchy, or interrupted pattern is not what the term describes, whatever the listing calls it.

The ownership chain — the most completely documented in this guide

Most mine histories in the Southwest arrive as fragments. Number Eight's does not, which means a claim about the mine's history can be checked against the record. A claim about a particular stone still cannot.

1925 — discovery. A town barber originally discovered the deposits.¹
1925–1935 — speculation. The claims changed hands multiple times and were sold for their copper- and gold-ore content, not for turquoise.¹
1929 — active mining begins, under claim owners Earl Buffington and Lawrence Springer.¹
1930 — Ted Johnson bought out Buffington. Several owners worked the deposits after him, including Lee Hand, Doc Wilson, Myron Clark, the Edgar family, and Dowel Ward.¹
c. 1959 — the sale that ended it. The ten claims were sold to a large metal mining outfit by the Edgar brothers, who did not know that gold deposits lay below the well-known turquoise and copper outcroppings.¹
1976 — last production, by Dowel Ward.¹

Doc Wilson, one of the names in that chain, worked Number Eight, Blue Gem, Lone Mountain and the Copper Basin area, and eventually opened the American Gem Company in Los Angeles.¹ Lee Hand appears in this guide as well, in the Royal Blue entry.

On the name itself, Lowry is careful and so are we: it is said that the name "Number Eight" originated because the best turquoise was found on the eighth claim.¹ That hedge is in the source. We keep it rather than repeating the story as settled fact.

What happened to the ground

A mining conglomerate that had purchased the Number Eight mining area in Nevada began mining it for copper and gold, and the area where the best turquoise was mined no longer exists.¹

We are not going to give you a year for that. The passage carrying the date is damaged in our scan — the year renders as "In 19%" — and the surrounding lines are column-interleaved. The event is legible and unambiguous; the date is not. We paraphrase this passage rather than quoting it for the same reason. A page that supplies a confident year here is supplying something its sources do not contain. What can be said is that it appears to have followed the c. 1959 sale to the metal mining outfit, and that turquoise production ended in 1976.¹

"Royal Blue" points at two different counties

This is the one genuine unresolved conflict in the Number Eight record, and it sits inside a single book.

Lowry records that the Number Eight claims were also known as Royal Blue, Royal Blue No. 1, and Blue Star — in Eureka County.¹
Lowry also lists Royal Blue as a marketing name in the Royston District, Esmeralda County, and states that the Royal Blue site is the largest there.¹

Two counties, the same name, the same volume. Our corpus does not resolve it, and we are not going to resolve it for you. It is either a real historical reuse of a common name or an inconsistency in the source. Either way the practical consequence is the same: a stone marketed as "Royal Blue" needs its district specified before the name means anything. Our Royal Blue entry treats the name as a colour grade, a Royston-district mine, and a former name of this mine, without asserting a county; read the two together.

Collector's Handbook

All genuine Number Eight is old stock. Last production was 1976 and the ground is gone.¹ A seller offering "newly mined" Number Eight is describing something our sources say cannot exist.

Judge the web, not the blue. The mine's reputation rests on golden-and-black spiderweb matrix.¹ The government definition asks for a matrix evenly laced through the stone.² Uneven blotching is a different thing wearing the same word.

"Royal Blue" is not an attribution. It names this mine's former claims in Eureka County and a Royston-district mine in Esmeralda County in the same book.¹ Ask which district is meant.

Ask for the receipt. For any turquoise purchase, the Indian Arts and Crafts Board asks a seller to put in writing the artist's name and Tribal affiliation, the mine of origin, whether the stone is natural or stabilized or treated, the place of purchase, the price, the date, and the business address.² Mine of origin is on that list for exactly the reasons this page describes. More on this in How to Tell If Turquoise Is Real.

Treat any "current status" claim as dated. The most recent reference work we hold is from 2010, and 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

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. Hold a claim record, a dated photograph, or documentation that settles the year the Number Eight ground was worked out — or the Eureka/Esmeralda "Royal Blue" question? Get in touch — corrections are welcomed and credited.

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. Covers the Number Eight entry (discovery by a town barber in 1925 about thirty miles north of Carlin, Nevada; active mining from 1929 under Earl Buffington and Lawrence Springer; Ted Johnson buying out Buffington in 1930; subsequent owners Lee Hand, Doc Wilson, Myron Clark, the Edgar family and Dowel Ward; the c. 1959 sale of the ten claims by the Edgar brothers; last production by Dowel Ward in 1976; the alternate claim names Royal Blue, Royal Blue No. 1 and Blue Star; and the "it is said that" account of the name's origin); the plate caption placing the mine in Eureka County; the description of the mine as famous for some of the best golden and black spiderweb matrix turquoise in the world; the separate Royston District entry listing Royal Blue as a marketing name in Esmeralda County; the 1925–1935 change-of-hands passage; the Doc Wilson biographical note; and the standing observation that which mines are active changes year to year. Scan condition: the passage describing the loss of the ground is column-interleaved and its year is destroyed in our scan, so that passage is paraphrased and no year is asserted from it.
U.S. Department of the Interior, Indian Arts and Crafts Board. Indian Arts and Crafts Act / Turquoise consumer brochure, GPO document gpo58769. Born-digital, clean text. Covers the definition of "spider web" matrix as evenly laced through the gemstone, and the written-receipt checklist including mine of origin. Note on independence: this brochure states that the Indian Arts and Crafts Board collaborated with Mr. Joe Dan Lowry of the Turquoise Museum in Albuquerque to provide its turquoise information. Joe Dan Lowry is the lead author of reference 1. Where this brochure and Lowry agree, that is one voice speaking twice and not two-source corroboration; it is cited here only for the matrix definition and the consumer checklist, neither of which is used to confirm a Lowry claim.