Yogo Sapphires

Rumors of gold in the Little Belt Mountains was enough to cause a stampede by hundreds of miners into the Pig-eye Basin and Yogo Gulch southwest of here in the spring of 1879. Although the placer mines soon played out, there was still enough gold in the area to hold the interest of prospectors and settlers for years. In 1895, Jake Hoover and Frank Hobson established a small placer mine on Yogo Gulch. When they cleaned their sluice boxes, they didn’t find much gold, but they did find a lot of small blue glassy pebbles, which they threw away. It wasn’t until later that they discovered that stones were high grade, gem-quality sapphires. Yogo sapphires have a distinctive deep blue cast to them that is found nowhere else in the world. Commercial mining of the gems began around 1900 and continued until about 1929 when synthetic sapphires became readily available, causing the Montana mines to close down. Since then, sapphire mining has only been sporadic. When combined with Montana gold, Yogo sapphires make a mighty pretty and unique combination for rings, cuff links, pins and similar fancy doo-dads.