This has been helped by a growing appreciation for natural unheated gems and the wide variety of colors they come in before being altered by humans. However, the growing popularity of colored gemstones in general and American gemstones in particular have helped raise the profile of these gorgeous gems in recent years. While some of the Montana sapphires can be heated to produce more desirable shades of blue, many cannot due to the chemistry of the sapphires. Most of the sapphires from Montana are a pale green to blue-green when they are mined, with very limited numbers of deep blues and other fancy colors such as yellow, orange, violet and pink.

Part of this is no doubt due to the fact that the most desirable blue sapphires are not common in the Montana deposits. However, even with all of that history they still do not have the recognition I feel they deserve. Sapphires have been known to occur in Montana for over 150 years and have been actively mined there for more than 100 years. All of the sapphires in this image are unheated and the sizes range from just under one carat to 19 carats. Sapphires found in this deposit exhibit a wide array of mostly pastel colors of low saturation, but they typically have high clarity. In this image I’ve arranged a mix of rough and cut sapphire from the El Dorado Bar on the Missouri River in Montana.

Yogo sapphire