The Stories of Turquoise are an important part of Turquoise in America Part Two 1910-1990. In Chapter Four covering 1970-1990 Douglas Magnus, owner of the famous Tiffany and Castilian Mines at Cerrillos New Mexico and a noted jewelry artist in Santa Fe, tells the story of those claims. Recently he provided an update to his story.
Don Clark was the custodian of the claims for the owners at that time. He was by some accounts quite a character. Doug tells that over time a buried vehicle has been gradually coming to the surface in the vicinity of the mine. Recently a friend of Doug's took his backhoe and the car was excavated and found to be filled with Clark’s garbage.
The history of turquoise has many stories and many voices. Some are remembered and some are lost to the vagaries of time and tide. Sometimes we are able to have an update to an old story. We often only remember the what of history, the when and the who. It is the people who make the history and help us understand the most important part of the story, the why. There are reasons for everything: good reasons, bad reasons, and no reason.
In this case an old Plymouth, filled with garbage and poorly buried tells a tale about the time and the people. Other than the telling of this tale the sands of the high desert would have buried the past and left only the resurgent desert plants, the scrub and grass, covering a filled in hole, to tell their own story.
Mike Ryan II
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