When Jan Graham was a baby, her father labored for the Nationwide Park Service and the household traveled loads as her father’s job took her from park to park.

Alongside the way in which she began to gather rocks and stones. Some she picked up. Some her father gave her. It began out with a cigar field, after which a shoe field, and eventually, her father gave her a trunk stuffed with fascinating, distinctive and generally valuable stones.


“I used to be all the time into rocks,” she mentioned.

Jan spent her early childhood within the desert parks of the Southwest, however in 1969 her father took a job as upkeep supervisor for Glacier Nationwide Park.

Montana turned Jan’s everlasting dwelling. She met Murry Graham, one other rock fanatic. They hit it off, received married, had two women and determined to start out a rock store and present retailer in Hungry Horse — the Rocky Mountain Nature Co. and Glacier Fly Store (additionally they like to fish) — in 1990.

The store could be a summer season enterprise for retirement revenue. Jan labored for the Columbia Falls College District, so it match the plan.

“We knew the vacationer trade wasn’t going to go away,” she mentioned.

They met a goldsmith who lived in Hungry Horse on the time and began promoting her jewellery and sapphires on fee.

“As quickly as we discovered [people wanted] sapphires … enterprise took off,” Murry recalled.

Sapphires are a made-in-Montana stone. Yogo sapphires are essentially the most coveted. As soon as polished, they’re an attractive blue, with no “zonation,” that means the colour is uniform all through. They are often almost as exhausting, or as exhausting as diamonds.

The goldsmith would go away Hungry Horse, however the Grahams stored promoting the stones and the rings and jewellery they adored. It turned an increasing number of troublesome to search out them, nonetheless. So about 19 years in the past, the couple paid $10,000 for lots close to Utica that included two sapphire claims.

Murry began digging with a decide and shovel. Jan hauled up pails of dust from the opening. The youngsters helped and finally, so did the grandkids.

They spent weekends and holidays on the declare. They’d work all season for a handful of sapphires. It was exhausting, however rewarding work. A hunk of nondescript rock may maintain a valuable stone the dimensions of an toddler’s pinky nail. As soon as polished and minimize, it transforms right into a factor of magnificence.

They ran the store in Hungry Horse till 2018, and had a store in Bigfork as nicely. They bought them each and constructed a brand new retailer, the Sapphire Shoppe, in Columbia Falls on U.S. 2 that opened final 12 months.

“It’s been higher than Bigfork and Hungry Horse put collectively,” Murry mentioned.

THE SHOP isn’t simply sapphires; it additionally options tremendous artwork images from John Ashley and a bunch of different Montana stones, together with Montana agates that Murry polishes and kinds on his personal into bear claws and different jewellery. The patterns within the stone, which is native to the Yellowstone River, appears to be like like claws within the rock.

Murry additionally carries a singular stone in his pocket, known as a Buffalo stone, as a result of it appears to be like like a buffalo bone.

“Legend says if in case you have one in your pocket you’ll by no means go hungry,” he mentioned.

The stone is definitely Baculite, a fossil from an historical cephalopod, a shellfish with a protracted straight physique. The critters roamed underwater about 100 million years in the past. The fossils appear like buffalo bones, Murry identified.

Right this moment the Grahams have the Columbia Falls store up on the market as nicely, extra of a check of actual property waters than something, they notice.

They nonetheless plan on mining stones come subsequent spring and the store this month is open by appointment and can be open Dec. 17-23. They’ll then head south and reopen within the spring, they mentioned.

Rocks are a lifelong interest and for them, a real labor of affection.

“It’s actually cool for the youngsters to get into,” Jan defined. “It goes their entire life.”

On one dig, Murry advised his grandkids they may have no matter they discovered and dug up themselves that day.

“They discovered an $8,000 stone,” he mentioned with a smile.

It was made into a hoop for a member of the family.