Collection: Fox Mine

The Fox Turquoise Mine, originally known as the Cortez Mine, is located near Crescent Valley in Lander County, Nevada, and stands as one of the state’s most historically productive turquoise sources. Long before contemporary operations began, indigenous peoples extensively mined the area for prehistoric trade. In 1914, ranchers Charles Schmidtlein and Johnny Francis filed the first official mining claim, but it was under the leadership of Dowell Ward in the 1940s that the site truly excelled. Ward cleverly marketed the mine's massive yields under separate trade names—including Fox, White Horse, Green Tree, and Smith—to distinguish between varying color deposits and captured a massive share of the market. By 1968, the open-pit operation had pulled over 500,000 pounds of turquoise from the ground, yielding immense volumes of mid-to-high-grade stone used extensively in Southwestern and Native American jewelry. Known for its hardness and dynamic range of color, Fox turquoise varies beautifully from deep forest greens and aqua teals to vivid sky blues, often segmented by a prominent, distinctive dark webbed matrix.