Hidden in the mountains above Pala, Calif., in northern San Diego County, lies a treasure trove of gems and network of mine tunnels steeped in tales of wonder and woe that helped make the Golden State what it is today.
Though the gem fever that hit the Pala region more than a century ago pales in comparison to the California Gold Rush of 1849, the gem mining boom in Southern California was every bit as rich and colorful.
The gem comes in an array of colors so dazzling, it was often mistaken for other gems, such as rubies, emeralds, or jade.
By the early 1890s, China had become the biggest market for tourmaline.
“In fact, the Chinese market was so critical to tourmaline, that when the Chinese government collapsed in 1912, it took tourmaline trade down with it.”
A Beautiful Mine
Deep inside the Stewart Mine near Pala, against a backdrop of pink-and-purple-hued tunnel walls lit up by their head lamps, Blue Sheppard, a gem cutter and educator, and his wife, Shannon, a gemologist, bring this rich history to life.The walls of the criss-crossing tunnels have been called some of the most beautiful in the world by experts in the field, said Sheppard, who bought the mine in late 1989 and began digging for gems a year later.
After the Gold Rush, which reached its peak in 1852, many gold prospectors known as “forty-niners” moved to south to San Diego County, and some panned for gold along the San Luis Rey River moving upstream from Oceanside, close to the historic San Luis Rey Mission, Sheppard said.
They didn’t find much gold, but their quest for treasure wasn’t in vain, he said.
“They found a strange purple rock as well as pink and green crystals in their gold pans.”
These curious forty-niners followed the trail of these bright, colorful minerals upstream all the way to their source at the foot of Queen Mountain, where natural erosion had released “a vast fortune in gems.”
Though what became known as the Stewart Lithia Mine would later produce some of the “most vivid natural pink tourmaline in the world,” the mine was recognized much more for the purple rock—lepidolite—than the gems themselves, Sheppard said.
The purple-and-pink lepidolite contained rich lithium ore, which was in high demand during the height of the Industrial Revolution when lithium grease—still used today—was needed to lubricate the wheels of locomotives and the gears of heavy machinery.
Chinese Market
In the late 1800s, the Stewart Mine became the largest producer of lithium in the nation, Sheppard said.At the time, many Chinese immigrants were in California working as construction laborers. They helped build the harbors and the foundations for railways, and some worked in the Pala mines.
Dozens of Chinese laborers hired to mine lithium ore at the Stewart Mine found pink crystals. After working 10- to 12-hour days, they began digging—with the company’s permission—a new section apart from the main lithium tunnels, he said.
At the time, the Chinese immigrant community commonly referred to all types of gems as jade, which “just meant valuable of some sort,” Sheppard said.
Some of the miners sent samples of these crystals they called “long, pink jade” to friends and family in China, he said.
News of the “bao shi”—Mandarin for “precious stone” or “gemstone”—soon spread to the Imperial Palace.
Fascinated with what was not actual pink jade, but pink tourmaline crystals, the Empress Dowager Cixi, also known as Tzu Hsi, sent her emissaries to the Pala mines to acquire more, Sheppard said.
Chinese Exclusion Act
Unfortunately, many Chinese miners were forced to flee the Pala area in the wake of the Chinese Exclusion Act, Sheppard said.Passed by Congress and signed into law by one-term President Chester A. Arthur in 1882, the act restricted Chinese immigration to the United States and was extended by various legislation until 1902, when it was made “permanent,” according to national archives.
“The Chinese were persecuted and all records of their ownership of businesses, mining claims and houses, were expunged,” Sheppard said. “It was so awful.”
But, before the Chinese miners at the Stewart Mine were chased out, they sealed the tunnel where they had been mining the pink tourmaline, Sheppard said.
Old Chinese Tunnel
In 1970, the new owners of the Stewart decided to mine for tourmaline on the other side of the mountain from where the lithium was mined, Sheppard said.By then, the existence of the Chinese tunnel was a legend that had become almost mythical, he said.
“It was like Bigfoot or UFOs. It was something that people didn’t believe anymore,” Sheppard said. “Nobody could find it.”
But as they blasted through the rock, they accidentally hit the old tunnel created by the Chinese laborers.
“The Chinese tunnel was a gift from God. The whole thing would have been a disaster if they hadn’t hit the Chinese tunnel. They would have gone at 90 degrees to it and tunneled into nothing but a bunch of feldspar and come out nowhere. So, providence was with everybody. It was a godsend,” Sheppard said.
The miners followed the Chinese tunnel “to where we stand now,” Sheppard said from inside the mine.
“Old-time miners all over the world call this the bridal chamber, because this is where the earth gave up her treasures,” he said. “There were tourmaline pockets ... three feet across, every five to 10 feet.”
Since then, he said, it has been “an incredible dance,” and the mine has produced a wealth of wonderful gems.
The workers carefully tunneled beyond the bridal chamber into “a big room full of tourmaline,” Sheppard said.
“Some pockets were worth half-a-million dollars. There were so many of them all jammed together. The tourmaline room was a world-shaking event. It was such a huge bonanza,” he said.
The pockets were filled with “unbelievable” tourmaline, morganites, kunzites gemstones, and quartz crystals, Sheppard said.
While Sheppard has found additional valuable pockets of tourmaline crystals, there hasn’t been another discovery to rival the tourmaline room find in the mid-1970s, he said.
He estimated there’s still 30 to 95 percent of gem pockets left to discover in different sections of the mine.
“I’m here at the tail end of it, and who knows what’s going to happen in the future?”
The largest and most famous pink tourmaline crystal to be unearthed from the Stewart Mine in one piece, valued at more than $1 million, is on display at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., he said.
Sheppard and a friend extracted the spectacular gem in 1993 and named it “The Time Key,” because it resembled the shape of the key to “The Time Machine” in the 1960 movie.
The ‘Rainbow Gem’
Tourmaline has more color variety than all other gemstones in the world combined, partly because it somehow welcomes metallic interference from iron, tin, chromium, manganese, and other elements, Sheppard said.The word “tourmaline” is derived from the Sinhalese word “turmali” which means “mixed colors” or “mixed gems” because of its wide array of colors. Although “rainbow” isn’t a direct translation, tourmaline is often called the “rainbow gem.”
‘Still Searching’
Sheppard, owner of Gems of Pala, ran a pay-to-dig site and gem shop at another property for more than 30 years, but recently transitioned the business model and now sells gem bags and gemstones exclusively online.For years, Sheppard, 78, has led GIA students on tours of the mine, initially at the request of Vince Manson, a gemologist, geologist, and GIA education director who died more than 25 years ago.
Sheppard’s own gem fever has taken him around the world since 1966. He often talks about his joy of “delving into the darkness of the earth to release the treasures of gems and minerals into the light.”
“My 36 years operating this mine has 10,000 stories, but my love for this land and the Pala Tribe of Luiseno Indians, has been a marriage made in heaven, and deep in the earth as well,” he said. “I only wish that this passion will carry on long into the future for the riches of tourmaline and lithium to be treated as blessings for many generations to come.”
