The town that grew gemstones

Shelby is the largest village in Oceana County, and for half a century it held an unlikely claim to fame: it was a place that grew gemstones from scratch.

In 1970, a former Dow chemist named Larry Kelley set up shop in Shelby’s new industrial park and began doing something remarkable. Using superhot furnaces, he grew real crystals from melted minerals, then cut and polished them into sparkling stones. The operation, called the Shelby Gem Factory, started out making synthetic rubies for use in lasers, then moved into the jewelry trade, turning out lab-grown sapphires, simulated diamonds, and cubic zirconia, the sparkly stones in so much costume jewelry. By the company’s own account, it was among the first anywhere to make cubic zirconia in large quantities, and for years it shipped its gems to customers all over the world from a small showroom right here in town.

The factory finally closed its doors in 2019, after fifty years in business. But as the company liked to say, somewhere on Earth the sun is always shining on a Shelby gem, set in rings and necklaces in homes around the globe. For a small Michigan farm town, that’s a sparkle worth remembering.