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What is the story of these vintage Montana Rock Creek sapphires?

These sapphires have made a round trip from Montana’s Rock Creek to Switzerland and back. It starts with

THE AMERICAN GEM MINING SYNDICATE

Sapphires were first discovered on Montana’s upper Rock Creek around 1892 by pioneer gold miners William Knut and William Moffitt. In 1901 the American Gem Mining Syndicate (AGMS) was incorporated to operate two groups of sapphire properties they held in Montana, the Yogo Gulch claim group in the Little Belt Mountains and the Rock Creek claim group near Phillipsburg, Montana. Millions of carets of sapphires were mined by AGMS over forty years and shipped to factories in Switzerland where some were faceted into gems but most were turned into sapphire bearings for watches and precision instruments. Advances in technology overtook natural sapphires when synthetics were developed which were cheaper and nearly flawless. The final shipment of sapphires from AGMS’s mines on Rock Creek occurred in the late 1930’s. Because the transformation to synthetics was being made, they were not accepted at the plant in Switzerland. Bags of these sapphires were returned to AGMS in Phillipsburg and put into storage where they’ve been kept for more than 80 years. Click the pictures below to see how small the cup, doughnut and shaft bearings for instruments compared to a pin. Imagine looking for these on the floor.