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If semi-precious stones have their own cache of best-kept secrets, then one of them is definitely Larimar, an extremely rare precious stone that has only been found in one very small location on the planet, a remote mountain range of the Dominican Republic.
It is likely that the native Taino Indians, who inhabited the Island for a thousand years before Columbus arrived, had found pieces washed up on the beach or in a local river and made use of them. However, it was not until 1916 that a Spanish priest Miguel Domingo Fuertes Loren of Barahona, sent a “solicitude” to the Treasury Department of the Dominican Republic to obtain the privilege of exploration and exploitation of the mine. Catholic Priests were often skilled in mining and were employed to locate gold and other natural resources in the new lands where they were sent as missionaries, before he could exploit the mine though he was sent back to Spain and once again, the stone was “lost”. By 1957, the inhabitants of the small fishing village near the Bahoruco River were known to collect and sell polished pebbles of Larimar that were found on a local beach. They believed that the stones came from the sea; however, one of the purchasers of the stone, an artisan from the city named Miguel Mendez, began to question the source of the stone. In the company of another villager, he set out to find the origins of the stone. They followed the river upstream for a few days and found nothing. They then retraced their steps down the mountain and took another tributary. It was along this branch that the actual Larimar formations were found. Today this is the site of the only know Larimar Deposit in the world.
The stone was named by Mr. Mendez after his daughter, “LARISSA”, and the Spanish word for sea, “MAR”, because like the Caribbean Sea, Larimar has an extraordinary blue appearance. Colors range from blue, light blue, green, jade green to silk white.
Finally, in 1974 samples were sent by a Peace Corp volunteer to several geologists including the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC. It was only after their analysis that the stone was found to be a member of the Pectolite family, a hydrothermal mineral that occurs in igneous rocks. It was also around this time that mining began.
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