I’m excited to let you know that I have a new series called The Sapphire Brides.
Book 1 – A Treasure Concealed comes out in March.
Book 2 – A Beauty Refined comes out in July
Book 3 – A Love Transformed comes out in October
One of the really neat things about this series is all three are set in Montana and all three have Yogo sapphires as a point of interest. Otherwise – this is an independent series where all three books stand alone. I know some of you readers will love that as 3 book series tend to frustrate you until you have all three in hand. While others will hate this because you want that continuation of characters. But I hope you’ll enjoy the series nevertheless.
The Yogo is only found in Montana. In the 1860’s gold miners in Yogo Gulch (an area just south of Utica, MT) found their sluices were often clogged with these pesky blue stones. It wasn’t until the 1890’s however, that a man named Jake Hoover figured they must be some kind of gem stone and sent them off to be analyzed and sure enough–they were sapphires. A man from Tiffany’s in New York declared them to be the “finest precious gemstones found in the United States.”
An interesting side note on sapphires – the sapphire is made of corundum. When corundum is blue – it’s a sapphire. When corrundum is red – it’s a ruby. Neat huh?
Sapphires in the raw look like this. Sometimes they were found loose in the sluices or pans of the gold miners, but often they were attached to rock.
Through the process of refinement they were faceted, but not heat treated. Yogo’s don’t require heat treating to enrich their color. This made them very attractive to those working with them. Most of the time they are a beautiful cornflower blue, but they can be violet and various shades in between.
The Yogo debuted at the Paris Exhibition in 1900 and enthralled the folks there with it’s beautiful cornflower blue. At that time, most prized sapphires came from Ceylon or Burma, but it wasn’t long before the Yogo gained popularity and began to be much sought after.
Mining for these pesky blue stones started in a gulch and today continue with mining that extends into the hillsides and underground. The Vortex Mine is one that operates underground and sadly in 2012 the owner was killed in a mining accident.
I hope you’ll enjoy this interesting bit of history woven within the Sapphire Bride’s series. I had a lot of fun researching it and have met some amazing folks along the way.
Soli Deo Gloria
