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The Hunt for Red Sunstone is Bigger than Ever

By Evelyn Tucker of Rogue Gems, LLC, Portland, Oregon

Rough Oregon sunstones from the Outback Mining Company.

“Red Sunstone really is the king of feldspars,” I think as I sit across from Don Buford sorting a pile of naturally colored, red rough sunstones from the Dust Devil Mine in Rabbit Basin, Oregon. Even though it’s November, late in the mining season, Don will enthusiastically head back to the desert tomorrow to continue mining.

I understand why he so readily warms to the idea of winter mining. First of all, Oregon is once again the world’s sole source for transparent, natural-color red and green feldspar marketed as sunstone. TV and Internet andesine-labradorite sold as natural has been pretty much proven artificially colored using copper diffusion. So despite the harsh elements, miners in the Rabbit Basin area, home to the Dust Devil, Outback and Spectrum Mines, have every incentive to dig for more rough.

Sorting through to find Oregon sunstones.

Secondly, fuel costs are down significantly from last summer when they hit all-time highs and pushed recovery costs sky high. Now savings from back-to-earth fuel prices can be passed along to the jewelry industry. So Don and his mining brethren are going to mine for as long as temperatures permit morning start-ups of their machinery.

An ideal bi-colored Oregon sunstone.

Some Background on Sunstone
Sunstone is found in the high desert of Southeastern Oregon. It is found in ancient lava flows that cover much of the area. Millions of years ago a magma chamber below the earth’s surface supported the correct conditions for the growth of sunstone (labradorite) crystals. A small amount of copper was also present and it accounts for the color and schiller of sunstone. The crystals were eventually brought near the earth’s surface by magma outflows.

The Dust Devil Mining Company has been mining sunstone for about 15 years, but there have been gemstone claims in the area long before that. In the early 1900s Tiffany’s had gemstone claims in many parts of the world, one of which was a mine in the Rabbit Basin. They held that claim into the 1950s. Today there are at least a dozen active commercial mines, and that number has been steadily growing with the increase in popularity of Oregon sunstone.

Oregon’s largest sunstone mining area is in Lake County in an area known as the Rabbit Basin. [Editor’s note: The largest single sunstone mine, the Ponderosa, operated by Desert Sun Mining, is located about 100 miles away in the heart of the Ochoco National Forest in Northwestern Harney County near Plush.] Most of the mining takes place in an 8 to 9 square mile area of the basin. The commercial miners use heavy equipment which runs on diesel.

The miners at Outback Mining Company sunstones.

More Brutal Than the Weather: Fuel Costs
Alas, the price of gems is tied to the price of energy, a fact which consumers don’t know but miners know all too well. You want to hear lively conversation? Listen to miners talk about energy prices. Chris Rose of Spectrum mines has been mining in the Rabbit Basin for 12 years. He said high fuel costs were a big hurtful factor this season. Nonetheless he remains “upbeat” about sunstone, especially now that fuel costs have plummeted.

The miners are familiar with the area’s extreme conditions, 110 degrees in the summer, 20 below in the winter. Miners are tough. They’re also smart, adaptable, and always optimistic. They’re looking forward to a good year and continued growth in demand for sunstone. So they’re out mining: braving in the heat of July or the snow of November.

Outback Mining Company digs for Oregon sunstones.

This year the Dust Devil Miners or the” Dusties”, as they are affectionately known, plan to dig during the winter. If they get clear weather with temperatures between freezing and 20 degrees, they will be out mining. But if it’s below 20 degrees, they’ll have to wait for warmer weather, because at that temperature their equipment won’t start.

When I asked Buford “Why mine in the winter?” he answered, “Demand is up, thanks to people like Robert James of ISG, David Federman of Colored Stone, and John Emmett of Crystal Chemistry for exposing the treatment of the feldspar that’s been marketed as Andesine/Labradorite.”

Turning Bad Fortune to Good Fortune
The increase in demand for sunstone has lured other commercial miners to the harsh conditions of the desert. Some have been exceptionally successful. Derek Lusk, one of the partners in the Outback Mine was delighted to let me select from a pile of golf ball sized red stones he mined this season.

Caught in an Oregon thunderstorm.

17 ct. Dust Devil sunstone cut by Dalan Hargrave. Photo by Jim Lawson.

Another hardship for the miners is living without electricity or running water. But Lusk shrugged me off when I expressed sympathy for his determination in hard conditions. “It’s no problem,” he said. “We’re hard-core guys. We’re used to camping and doing without. On the other hand, weather can be a problem. In May, thunderstorms shut us down most afternoons. We had snow and temperatures dropped down to 15 degrees. In June, the weather broke and we had four warm days of 90 degrees and woke up on the fifth day to snow on the ground. Then it got hot, like 108 to 115. I was dunking my shirt in a bucket of water and putting it on wet so that I could keep on mining.”

After buying the rough I need, I head back to the comfort of my office in Portland to send these stones off to be cut. I still have time to get them back before Tucson. I appreciate the miners for the job they do. Their hard work made it possible for me to secure an excellent supply of high end, red and green sunstones for our customers at the AGTA Show in Tucson and in the coming year. Thankfully I was able to do my part without having to brave the cold or wear a wet tee shirt to keep cool.

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