Rainbow's End in an Agua Prieta Well

ARIZONA HIGHWAYS APRIL, 1934 Rainbow's End in an Agua Prieta Well

HERE was a warm rain falling outside. The Hotel Lobby Club gathered early, with the freak warm weather for the month of March under discussion. The Old Settler came in and pulled up a chair. The awaited lull in the conversation came along. To relieve the pressure on his mind he started: "Say, did you fellows ever hear about the man who froze to death in Maricopa, the S. P. junction town below Phoenix some thirty miles, or so? He froze solid in the hottest month of the year. Well, it happened all right. You see a saloon keeper in Casa Grande-"

"Sure I know there is no saloon there. This incident occurred in the days of saloons. There was one in the town of Big House, but no ice factory. That produced the cause for the man freezing."

We told the Old Settler to proceed in his own way. His information of such cold weather in the Arizona lowlands was news Whenever it happened.

A Borderland Reminiscence By TERENCE (TED) HEALY

Instruction crews. About 1879-1880. My old time friends tell me mule teams, holding the record for being the big gest outfits on the American continent, used to travel in sections, like trains, hauling supplies to Silver King mine, and points in Pinal and Gila counties. In those days every other place was a saloon. About the time the big freighting ceased on account of the railroad reaching Tucson and other points moré convenient to haul from, Casa Grande burned down. Years later the supervis"Not to change the subject, Old Settler, could you tell us, has oil ever been discovered in the Casa Grande Valley?"

"Not yet have you ever heard of the whistling well? I have. Windy Bill, the most truthful man in the state, gave me full and complete information about this hole in the ground. You can find the moaning hole mentioned in Bancroft's History. If one of you ragtime millionaires will donate a smoke I will continue to give you a half hour of my valuable time.

"Bill, who used to live up in the Hassayampa River country, allowed that down on the Papago Indian flats, just north of the Mexican line, there was a deep hole that spouted air just like a gusher spouts oil. The rush of air was timed with the tides coming in on the Gulf of California, which is located about 100 miles away from the desert mystery. It was found that the moans and groans, shrieks and wails, that issued through the hole in the ground, occurred when the tide was coming in along the gulf coast.

"It wasn't cold weather when this hombre froze. It was 100 degrees hot in the Arizona moonlight, and this is a true story. It was a very simple process of freezing. A gentleman of the Latin persuasion, as a windup of a three-day spree, went to sleep on a consignment of ice. The ice, covered with sacking, came down to Maricopa from Tempe. It was there all night waiting shipment to Casa Grande. The jag was thawed out and the man froze stiff. While I have that town of Casa Grande in mind I will state that it is a fact that snow fell there, enough to cover the whole place, just twelve years ago. This snow storm took place the morning of March 12, 1922. Some contrast to the warm weather of March this year, 1934.

"Now back to the time when Casa Grande had more than one saloon. It was in the freighting days following the arrival of the Southern Pacific contractors permitted the operation of only one saloon there. Later fire again destroyed about one-half of the main street, wiping out the only saloon, along with a dozen business houses.

"At every meeting of the town council for some time afterwards somebody submitted a claim for being an assistant watchman during the night after the fire. The council, being the first one elected after the incorporating of the town although wanting to do the right thing in reimbursing claimants for services in guarding the goods from the stores and saloon, began to get tired of paying off watchmen. About the time they figured they had paid off a large proportion of the male inhabitants another citizen put in a claim for being chief watchman. He was paid. The town officials then, by resolution passed, declared payments to watchmen had ceased."

"Bill told me he almost financed a scheme of putting a pipe organ on the well for the purpose of collecting money from the tourists who would come to hear the high pressure air play popular music. Before he started to cash in on the idea, a cave-in somewhere along the line of the great earth fissure leading to the well, shut off the air and the whistling stopped. Bill says that every time he has thought of something good, something bad happened.

"He planned one time, so he says, to cover the top of Table Top Mountain, one of Southern Arizona's most prominent landmarks, with crude oil, ignite it, so people attracted by the smoke would come to that part of the country to see an active volcano. One of the town's checker sports became enthused with the idea of using the mountain top for golf and horseshoe pitching contests for aviators, so this idea sidetracked Bill's, and the enterprise went kerflunk. (Continued on page 20)