When Jan Graham was a baby, her father labored for the Nationwide Park Service and the household traveled lots 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 attention-grabbing, distinctive and generally treasured stones.


“I used to be at all times into rocks,” she stated.

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 residence. She met Murry Graham, one other rock fanatic. They hit it off, bought married, had two women 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 earnings. Jan labored for the Columbia Falls Faculty District, so it match the plan.

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

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 probably the most coveted. As soon as polished, they’re a lovely blue, with no “zonation,” that means the colour is uniform all through. They are often almost as arduous, or as arduous 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 increasingly troublesome to seek out them, nevertheless. 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 dust from the outlet. The youngsters helped and ultimately, 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 would possibly 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, and had a store in Bigfork as properly. 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 stated.

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

Murry additionally carries a novel stone in his pocket, known as a Buffalo stone, as a result of it seems like a buffalo bone.

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

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. The fossils seem like buffalo bones, Murry identified.

Immediately 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 word.

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

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 entire life.”

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

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

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