When Jan Graham was a toddler, her father labored for the Park Service and the household traveled rather a lot 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 filled with fascinating, distinctive and typically treasured stones.


“I used to be all the time into rocks,” she mentioned in an interview final week.

She 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, acquired married, had two ladies and determined to start out a rock store and reward retailer in Hungry Horse, the Rocky Mountain Nature Co. and Glacier Fly Store (in addition they like to fish) in 1990.

The store could be a summer time enterprise for retirement revenue. Jan labored for Faculty District 6, so it match the plan.

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

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

“As quickly as we found out (individuals needed) sapphires … enterprise took off,” Murry recalled.

Sapphires are a made in Montana stone. Yogo sapphires are probably the most coveted. As soon as polished, they’re a phenomenal blue, with no “zonation” which means the colour is uniform all through. They are often practically as arduous, or as arduous as diamonds.

The goldsmith would depart Hungry Horse, however the Grahams saved promoting the stones and the rings and jewellery they adorned.

It turned increasingly troublesome to seek 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 choose and shovel. Jan hauled up pails of grime from the opening. The children 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 arduous, however rewarding work. A hunk of nondescript rock may maintain a treasured stone the scale of an toddler’s pinky nail.

As soon as polished and reduce, it transforms right into a factor of magnificence.

They ran the store in Hungry Horse till 2018. In addition they had a store in Bigfork as properly.

They offered them each and constructed a brand new retailer, the Sapphire Shoppe, in Columbia Falls on Freeway 2. It opened final yr.

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

The store isn’t simply sapphires, it additionally options superb artwork images from John Ashley and a bunch of different Montana stones, together with Montana agates that Murry polishes and varieties 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 novel stone in his pocket, referred to as a Buffalo stone, as a result of it appears to be like like a buffalo bone.

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

The stone is definitely Baculite, a fossil from an historic cephalopod, a shellfish with a protracted straight physique.

The critters roamed underwater about 100 million years in the past.

“However the (fossils) seem like buffalo (bones),” Murry mentioned.

In the present day the Grahams have the Columbia Falls store up on the market as properly, extra of a take a look at of actual property waters than something, they observe.

They nonetheless plan on mining stones come subsequent spring and the store this month is open by appointment and might be open Dec. 17-23.

They’ll then head south and reopen within the spring, they mentioned.

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

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

On one dig, Murry advised his grandkids if 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.