Distinctly Montana Magazine

D I S T I N C T L Y M O N T A N A M A G A Z I N E • F A L L 2 0 2 1 74 As I waited and wandered the store, a tiny lady—short in stature but with a commanding presence—came up to me and introduced herself as Shirley Beck. I followed her through the store into a back area, where I met Dale Siegford, her partner. Shirley was someone I could tell was on a mission and time meant everything to her, so I quickly got down to business setting up for the interview. Dale was already one step ahead of me, talking about sapphires and laughing. He was the lighter side to this partnership, and he would often belt out a hearty guffaw, making the mood lighter. Dale spoke of how back in 1895 a local rancher by the name of Jake Hoover was mining for gold, and sapphires kept messing up his operation. He would keep picking them out and setting them aside in a cigar box, which he later sent to Tiffany's to find out if he had something of value. Tiffany's in return sent him a check from New York and said: "Send More." So began the lucrative trade of the sapphire and the demand for the rare yogo sapphire. The yogo is the only sapphire in the world that does not need any type of treatment. Yogos maintain their high clarity and brilliance under artificial light. Their color is usually a cornflower blue coming from trace amounts of iron and titanium. They have a high price because of the difficulty of mining them and their scarcity. As I looked around the gallery and pointed out a beautiful pendant, I asked how much it was. Dale smiled and said, "Oh…that one is about $10,000." I told him maybe I would get it next time I was in town and we both laughed. He said he gets a lot of people coming into the gallery looking for the famous yogi sapphire. He has a hard time keeping a straight face and not correcting them right away. Shirley got a big smile on her face and said, "I know this isn't yogo-related, but did you know that sapphires from the Rock Creek area by Philipsburg were part of the 17-jeweled watch of the railroad when it started?" The standardized watch in the early 1800s had to have 17 jewels adjusted to a minimum of five positions, each jewel used as a bearing within the watch. Each railroad employee had to have one, and most had to buy it out of their own wages. Sapphires from the Rock Creek area were shipped to Switzerland to be used as the bearings. Shirley was excited to show me a shipment that never went out from the early 1930s, still intact and in the original boxes with all the sap- phires cut into the bearings. As she carefully opened each HE SHOWED ME A MAP FROM THE 1930S. THE SAPPHIRES OCCUR ALONG A FIVE-MILE STRIKE DEEP WITHIN THE EARTH. THE ONLY COMMERCIAL YOGO MINE OPERATING TODAY IS THE VORTEX MINE.

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