When the Hills Bled Blue in the Boom of ’92

(True West) ... The real turquoise boom began 125 years ago. In 1892, George F. Kunz, a geologist for New York-based Tiffany & Co., announced that turquoise of the “Tiffany Blue” color was now considered “gem quality.”
That same year, James P. McNulty arrived in Cerrillos and went to work for the American Turquoise Company, which would sell some $2 million worth of stones to Tiffany to be turned into jewelry. It helped that, for a while, one of the world’s oldest gemstones was thought to be found only in Persia, Egypt and New Mexico Territory. Indians sold turquoise long before Tiffany. Continued