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Virgin Valley’s opal barons invite gem hunters

and history buffs to dig in and share the wealth

by Carolyn Dufurrena

from the May/June 1986 edition of Nevada Magazine

 Reprinted here with permission of the publisher, Nevada Magazine

The year is 1970.  The month is July, when the midday sun in Northwestern Nevada’s Virgin Valley is hot enough to make a lizard sweat.

Lamar Taggart hauls his lanky frame off the D-9 cat.  His raven’s eye has picked up a glint of light in the dull gray clay three feet in front of the tractor’s heavy blade.  He picks up a big dirt clod and rubs it.  As the dirt crumbles, a grin cracks Taggart’s weathered face.  Filling his hand is a huge black opal, flashing with a rainbow of fire in the sunlight.

“There weren’t any rockhounds out that day,” recalls Harry Wilson, owner of the Royal Peacock Mine where Taggart was digging.  “There were just the three us, Tag, Bill Kelley, and myself.  We’d been working that face for days.  When Tag showed us that stone, we were flabbergasted.”  The three men took the opal down to Wilson’s house, opened a bottle of cheap whiskey, and got smashed.  During the celebration they christened the stone the Royal Peacock Opal.

“We were so excited about the potential of this stone that we drove to Reno and flew it to Kelley’s lab in Cleveland that same day,” Wilson says.  “We knew it was a hell of a find, but we didn’t know until it was dried and cut that it was worth upwards of $250,000.”

The three-and-a-quarter-pound opal produced several five carat stones, the 20-carat Little Black Peacock, which sold for $15,000 and the 169-carat heart of the stone, the Black Peacock.  That was sold unmounted for $45,000 to a collector in Massachusetts.  He had it made into a broach, surrounding it with sapphires, emeralds, and diamonds.  “The raw stone was the most flawless, perfect stone ever to come from this valley,” Wilson says.

“If Harry Bill wants to say that, I guess that’s OK,” says Wilson’s neighbor, Keith Hodson, who owns the Rainbow Ridge Mine across the valley.  “We’re good friends and good neighbors.  We’ve known each other for years. But,” he adds, “I’d be hard pressed to agree with him.  I think the Robeling Opal was the epitome of fine opals from Virgin Valley.  It got tons of publicity and was valued at quarter-million dollars, and that was way back in 1917.  I’m not just saying that because it came out of my mine.  It was found here long before my time.”

Indeed, the Robeling Opal was a famous find.  The one-and-a-half pound stone was given to the Smithsonian Institute by Colonel W.A. Robeling, a civil engineer known for his work on the Brooklyn Bridge.  The big black fire opal is on display in the Smithsonian’s Gem Hall along with a few stones from the Royal Peacock.

Wilson, who is known as Harry Bill to his friends, and Keith Hodson might have a friendly debate about the value of the legendary stones at their next monthly poker game.  But on one thing they will always agree:  The black opals of Virgin Valley rival those of any other district in the world for fire, value, and sheer beauty.

Although the opal is a common stone, gem-quality fire opal is found only in a few places.  “The main producers of gem opal are Australia, Mexico, and the Virgin Valley,” says Fred Carrillo, Nevada mineral officer for the U.S. Bureau of Mines.  “Australia and Mexico produce great quantities, but Virgin Valley Opals are some of the most beautiful in the world.”

Because of the beauty, the valley’s black opals may command as much as $2,500 per carat.  A five-carat stone – about the size of a dime – could cost $12,500. The same as an investment-quality one-carat diamond.

There are about 150 mining claims and seven mines in the valley, but Wilson and Hodson are the only operators that welcome rockhounds and amateur prospectors.  They relish the company of people who come from all over the world to sift through the tailings, dig in virgin ground, and swap opal stories in this remote corner of Nevada.

Virgin Valley is located near the Oregon border in the Sheldon National Wildlife Refuge, 125 miles northwest of Winnemucca.  Unlike most of the state’s long, narrow valleys, this one is roughly circular.  It is the floor of a 20-million-year-old collapsed caldera, where volcanoes and earthquakes once shook the landscape.  The valley’s walls are cracked, revealing red-rock canyons hundreds of feet deep.  Warm springs bubble into sandy pools.  Most people come here to camp at the warm springs, to fish the ponds and nearby Big Springs Reservoir and to hunt opals.

The dirt road that turns south form State Route 140 forks at the campground.  Each fork leads to one of the mines.  To the right, by Virgin Creek, is Wilson’s Royal Peacock Mine.  To the left, toward Sagebrush Creek, a battered sign points the way to Keith Hodson’s Rainbow Ridge Mine.

Hodson usually can be found rummaging through his dumps or standing behind the counter in his shop telling rockhounds about his old mine tunnel and new open pit.  If his sons Glenn, 35, and Brian, 38 are up from Arizona, where the family winters and has shops in Phoenix and Carefree, they’ll be working the new diggings.

Hodson inherited the Rainbow Ridge from his father, an Indiana accountant who brought his family out on vacation in 1947 and, by 1949, had bought the mine and moved lock, stock, and barrel to Virgin Valley.  They added on to the old stone ranch house, which dates from 1919, bringing stacks of white oak and cypress by train from Indiana to finish the interior.  “We added gas lights when we bought the place, and then later electricity.  It was a long trip into Winnemucca for the groceries then,” he says, pointing to his garden.  A two-story greenhouse holds an untold number to tomato plants in wooden boxes.  Rose bushes, peach trees, and wind chimes surround the house.  “One time a biologist came here to dig opals and told me this was the perfect place to grow nectarines.” Hodson says.

He hasn’t started the nectarine orchard yet, but last summer the 84-year-old Hodson pulled two opals out of the ground that were larger than Arnold Schwarzenegger’s fists, and a lot prettier.  Another major find came in two stages:  Hodson’s wife, Agnes, found half of a softball-sized red opal, and the half was found by a visiting rockhound.

Before those finds there were a few lean years digging in the old tunnel, which dates back to 1905.  Then Hodson tried a new tactic last year.  “We just decided to take the bulldozer and open up the back end,: he says, waving his pipe.  After moving his equipment around to the other side of the hill and digging in, he wasn’t disappointed.  “We’ve found a lot of good new fire, and some wood replacement, called conk.”

While Hodson is excited about the mine’s future, he’s also proud of its past.  “Mrs. Flora Lockheed, the wife of the aviation magnate, use to spend a lot of time out here,” he says.  “She first arrived in the 1920s as a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle.  She just fell in love with the place and never really left again.  She spent years here, living in a tent prospecting and putting her finds in trunks.”  Hodson says she’d fill glory holes with old newspapers after she read them, and the Wilsons still find Chronicles from the ‘20s and ‘30s.

In her later years, it is said Mrs. Lockheed slipped away form home and stole out to the valley against the wishes of her family.  Once she came in a taxicab – all the way from San Francisco.  Her children soon fetched her in a limousine.  Hodson says most of the claims in the valley were named by Flora Lockheed and another opal addict, Mark Foster.

Foster was a retread gold prospector who came to Nevada from Northern California.  Timid and frail-looking until he had a taste of the grape, Foster was once 86’ed from Winnemucca for a year and a half.  Police wouldn’t let him cross the bridge into town without throwing him in jail for causing a ruckus.  He also was seduced by the black opal of Virgin Valley and lived in tents near his claims.

Today, with gem opals growing in popularity, more claims are being staked in the valley all the time.  But the main producers continue to be Hodson, who also owns the Bonanza mine, and the Wilson family.

Harry Bill Wilson is a four-decade resident of Nevada, a weather-beaten rancher with a devilish grin.  He’s been known to take a gamble on more than a few things in life, and the Royal Peacock Mine is one that has paid off handsomely.  “When my dad bought the opal claims in 1937, the precious opal wasn’t even for sale,” he says.

Wilson’s mine is just a stone’s throw from the barns at the family ranch, where many a rockhound has relaxed in the shade of its tall trees with a glass of ice tea after a hard day at the dumps across the creek.  Cattle graze in the meadow between the ranch and the mine, and the music of untold numbers of African bullfrogs fills the air.  Wilson introduced a few pairs of the fat green frogs to the ponds several years ago to satisfy his occasional hankering for frog legs.

These days he spends most of his time ranching, leaving the mining business to his wife, Joy, his daughter-in-law, Mary Ann, and his 30-year-old son, Walt.  A man of few words and a quiet smile, Walt is a jeweler and the outfit’s principal miner.  He uses a bulldozer to open new cuts in the hillside and then picks through for major finds.

“The opals occur in layers, at four different levels in the side of the hill,” Walt explains.  “Each level here has a different kind of fire.  One layer has the red Mexican fire, one has black opals with pinpoint iridescence.  As you go farther north into the valley, you get more white and jelly opals.”

There are more than 30 levels with opalization, but only four have the kind of fire Walt wants to see.  In all, about 15 percent of the precious opal found here has the valuable black fire.  “We think the black opals may have some relationship to ancient fires, probably set by lightning,” he explains.  “We usually find charcoal with them.”  It is possible that carbon from the burned wood is incorporated in the opal, producing its characteristic dark background.

Walt adds, “Anybody who’s ever dug opals will tell you you’ve really got something if you find a puffball.”  The best stones are usually hidden beneath the puffballs, which are mixtures of fused glass and ash from volcanoes.  It may be that the puffballs leach an increased concentration of silica into the water table below.

In addition to straight gem opal, there are strange and unique varieties of opalized wood and pine cones.  Even opalized horse and camel teeth have been found by the Wilsons.

Despite their beauty, Virgin Valley black opals were undervalued until recent years.  “When we bought the opal claims from Mark Foster,” Harry Bill says, “my dad was the buckaroo boss on this ranch, then owned by Miller and Lux.  He rode a chuckwagon all over these parts for years.  Sure was hard to get him to go on a picnic.  Anyway, he bought the moss opal and fluorescent opal, which glows green in ultraviolet light but doesn’t have any fire.  They are usable only as mineral specimens.

Then Mark Foster threw in the precious opal claims as a (unreadable word).  It just goes to show you what the value of things was.  The buckaroos used to go up there on the hill and dig till they found a nice opal, and ride into Denio with it to trade for a couple of shots of whiskey.”

The man who changed that view of opals was William F. Kelley, then-curator of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and founder of the Cleveland Aquarium.  A chemical engineer, Kelly came to Virgin Valley in 1965 looking for specimens for the museum.  He fell in love with the local black opal and decided that the gems were destined for greatness.  Soon he founded Opals, Inc., to produce and promote the famous stones.  Blessed with a silver tongue and wealthy partners, Kelley set about convincing the captains of industry that their wives and mistresses needed black opals to complete their jewelry collections.  From 1968 to 1973 the value of black opals rose from pennies to thousands of dollars per carat.  Kelley’s flamboyant personality drew investors from around the world, and by the time he left in 1974, he had put Virgin Valley on the gem map.

Kelley’s other major contribution was his discovery of a way to keep the newly uncovered gems from cracking as they (unreadable word).  Virgin Valley opals contain seven to 15 percent water, according to the Wilsons.  Unless you happen to find one that is already sun-cured, care is needed when the opal first sees the light of day.  The opals have spent about 15 million years at a constant, cool temperature.  If they are abruptly hauled up into the hot summer sun, chances are they will dehydrate too quickly.  Walt adds, “The only opals I cut right away are the really good black fire stones.  The rest of the opals I put in an oil bath.”

The oil bath was developed by Kelley, but only after he had tried a few other approaches.  “He flew to Canada and talked the Canadian government into letting him put some opals into one of their small nuclear reactors.  The process worked great,” the elder Wilson says.  But apparently Kelley didn’t want to build even a little nuclear reactor in the valley, so he developed the oil treatment.  “Keith Hodson puts his opals in a water bath.  We think oil works better.  I use mineral oil, but (unreadable word) oil works, too.”

Many of the Royal Peacock’s gems go to a specialty jewelry shop in Hawaii.  Finished stones and jewelry also can be purchased at the Royal Peacock’s gem shop.

Mining the opals is a lucrative business for the Wilsons, but it’s the rockhounds that make the difference.  Joy Wilson says, the rockhounds really keep the place going, although sometimes it makes Walter cry when they take out a gallon bucket of opals worth $10,000 after digging four or five days.”

Walt adds, “I tell people that if they can only spend a day they may not find much.  But if they have the time to spend four or five days, the chances of taking home something are very good.”

Of course, the value of a trip to Virgin Valley can’t be measured entirely in carats.  The rewards sometimes come from the camaraderie with other rockhounds and the chance to meet these opal barons.  Here you can forget the rat race (unreadable word) enjoying the simple pleasures of sifting through a pile of dirt.

While digging, however, you might find an oddly shaped piece of clay.  And when your rub the crust away, there will be a large black stone staring up at you, sparkling with fire.

Carolyn Dufurrena is a consulting geologist based in Winnemucca who likes to hunt opals now and then.

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