Turquoise

specimen number:
2063841

location:
Bishop mine, Lynch Station, Virginia, USA

description:
Sparse blue crystallized micro turquoise across the top of a massive quartz matrix.

The Bishop Mine, located near Lynch Station in Campbell County, Virginia, is world-famous among mineral collectors as the primary source of rare, micro-crystallized turquoise. Discovered in the early 20th century, the site was initially prospected for manganese, but in 1953, fine turquoise crystals were discovered within fractures of the local quartz-mica schist. Unlike almost all other global turquoise occurrences, which form purely as massive, cryptocrystalline veins or nuggets, the Bishop Mine yielded distinct, minute, bright blue to blue-green triclinic crystals growing on matrix. These unique hydrothermal formations created some of the finest known crystal clusters of the mineral, making Lynch Station specimens highly prized classics in mineralogy and micro-mount collecting despite the mine no longer being actively worked.

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