Philip Chambless

Philip Chambless

Soon after receiving a bachelor’s degree in studio art and history from Troy University in Southern Alabama, I hit the road for the romantic American Southwest. It was a move I have never regretted. In 1974 I moved to the Zuni Mountains of New Mexico where I built a log cabin and soon found a part-time job working at the Ice Caves Trading Post south of Grants. It was the Turquoise Boom of the 1970s, and jewelry traders and Native silversmiths were a daily encounter. Turquoise and silver were readily available in New Mexico, and I utilized my time developing my skills.

Years passed and I moved to Santa Fe in the late 1980s to participate in the art jewelry boom that was taking place there. I will always remember the night at El Farol on Canyon Road when my old friend Doug Magnus was celebrating his recent acquisition of the old Tiffany turquoise mines. As happy as I was for him, I was so jealous I could spit! Well, again fate would come into play and an old, terminally ill miner from Cerrillos/Madrid started giving away his Cerrillos mining claims in the Mine Shaft Tavern. One claim he gave to my friend, jazz musician Doug Lawrence, had a problem, and Doug asked me to go to the BLM and find out what was going on. It was a minor issue but while I was there, I asked about the procedures for locating mining claims. I soon learned the process and acquired my first claims in the Cerrillos Hills.

With my growing volume of research material, people started saying I should write a book, and I had already discovered how sparse and incorrect the history was concerning turquoise mining in the final days of the Wild West. This book works through the tangled stories and miscommunication and reveals who was really behind that great but short-lived rush to the turquoise fields at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It was an exciting time, and I hope you enjoy this trip back into the past to discover the story of America’s original gemstone.

Mike Ryan

This book began for me in 2011 when I retired after a 30-year career as a financial planner and investment advisor. Family and career were my priorities until I retired, and then an interest in turquoise, dormant since the 1970s, reawakened. I began to collect turquoise and became an avid student of the different types and the history of the different mines. As my research continued I was told again and again: “Ask Philip Chambless. He knows more about the old mines than anyone.” I met with Philip and we decided to work together using the research, notes, photos, and text he had accumulated in 25 years, which were stored in more than 20 Bankers Boxes. Throughout 2016 this trove of information, along with additional research, was organized and developed into the narrative of The Great American Turquoise Rush: 1890–1910. After working on this book, I am probably the second most knowledgeable person regarding all of the old mines. Philip knows twice as much.

Most of the information available on the history of turquoise has focused on specific mines and the miners who worked them. Seldom has the story gone past the 1940s. The complete story of the first turquoise mines of the modern era has not been told in its entirety until now. Knowing about the beginning of turquoise mining in the United States gives a solid foundation for understanding how the story of turquoise unfolded during the twentieth century. With any story, it is always best to start at the beginning.