SIGN IN YOUR ACCOUNT TO HAVE ACCESS TO DIFFERENT FEATURES

FORGOT YOUR PASSWORD?

FORGOT YOUR DETAILS?

AAH, WAIT, I REMEMBER NOW!
Need Help? Call 800-421-0200
  • MY ACCOUNT
  • COMPANY
  • BLOG
  • LOGIN

Jewelry Factory - North Hollywood, CA

Build your Custom Jewelry
  • No products in cart.
  • Home
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • News
  • Police & Fire Dept. Jewelry
  • Engagement & Wedding
  • Motorsports Jewelry
  • Jewelry Cleaning
  • Categories
  • Cart
  • Home
  • Uncategorized
  • Smithsonian’s ‘Steamboat’ Tourmaline Is an Amazing Example of October’s Birthstone
 
Howard
Tuesday, 12 October 2021 / Published in Uncategorized

Smithsonian’s ‘Steamboat’ Tourmaline Is an Amazing Example of October’s Birthstone

Hailing from San Diego County, CA, and standing 11 inches tall is “The Steamboat” tourmaline — a truly amazing example of October's birthstone.

The specimen’s two parallel crystals — which resemble steamboat stacks — display a range of vibrant colors that start at vivid reddish-pink at the bottom and transition to a bright bluish-green at the top. The tourmaline crystals rise out of a base of Cleavelandite, which is perched atop a large quartz crystal "hull."

Frank Barlow Schuyler is credited with discovering the fascinating formation at the Tourmaline King Mine in 1907. Three years earlier, Schuyler and a partner, D.G. Harrington, literally stumbled upon an enormous pocket of tourmaline crystals while searching for pegmatite in the Pala Chief Mountains.

Schuyler soon discovered that the tourmaline-rich pocket extended 30 feet in length and 10 feet wide, a single zone that would yield about eight tons of beautiful pink tourmaline. Schuyler would eventually sell most of the bounty to the Imperial Chinese government for $187.50 per pound. The $3 million worth of tourmaline that was pulled from the mine more than a century ago would be worth more than $86 million in today's dollars.

By 1915, Schuyler was still riding the wave of his tourmaline-based good fortune. At the Panama Pacific International Exhibition in San Francisco, the owner of the Tourmaline King Mine marketed his gems with the slogan, “Wear a tourmaline for luck.”

The “Steamboat” tourmaline was later purchased by master engineer Washington A. Roebling, who included it in his collection of 16,000 mineral specimens. Roebling was most famous for supervising the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Roebling’s son, John A. Roebling II, donated “The Steamboat” to the Smithsonian Institution, where it is has been on permanent display at the Janet Annenberg Hooker Hall of Geology, Gems, and Minerals, which is part of the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC.

According to the Smithsonian, the tourmaline family consists of more than 30 distinct minerals, but only one — elbaite — accounts for nearly all of the tourmaline gemstones. Varieties of gem-quality elbaite include rubellite (red-pink), indicolite (blue), Paraiba (neon greenish-blue) and the multicolored watermelon (pink surrounded by green).

Tourmaline shares the spotlight with opal as the official birthstones for the month of October.

Credits: Photos by Dane A. Penland / Smithsonian.

What you can read next

Gemfields Announces the Publication of ‘Sapphire,’ the Third in the ‘Big Three’ Trilogy
December’s Newest Birthstone Was Heralded as the ‘Gem of the 20th Century’
Gem Diamonds Announces Back-to-Back Fabulous Finds at Its Lesotho Mine

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent Posts

  • Nearly Perfect 118-Carat Sapphire May Fetch $4.5MM at Phillips’ Hong Kong Sale

    0 comments
  • Archaeologists Unearth UAE’s Oldest Pearling Village; Site Dates Back 1,300 Years

    0 comments
  • Record-Setting Julius Caesar ‘Assassination Coin’ Has Been Returned to Greece

    0 comments
  • Bahrain Gem Lab and MIT to Explore New Methods of Classifying Natural Pearls

    0 comments
  • Music Friday: ‘You Worth More Dan Diamonds, More Dan Gold’ in Sia’s ‘Cheap Thrills’

    0 comments

NEWSLETTER

Stau updated with our latest offers.

CUSTOMER

  • Shipping
  • 30 Day Return Policy
  • Blog

COMPANY

  • About Us
  • Police & Fire Dept.
  • Engagement & Wedding

FEEDBACK

We would like to hear from you with any feedback about our website or products.

SUBMIT YOUR FEEDBACK

FOLLOW US

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Pinterest
© 2019 Jewelry Factory | All rights reserved.
  • About Us
  • Police & Fire Dept.
  • Engagement & Wedding
TOP