Ghost Town

Arizona's colorful past-the hectic pioneer days, rip roarin' frontier towns, the Indians, cowboys and prospectors, the tin horn gamblers of the wide open West is kept alive through recorded word, drawings, paintings and historic photographs. Life in the early West went on in a manner relegated by many to the land of fiction. For that reason it is difficult to convey the hundreds of stories of early Arizona days incidents that smack of distortion and fiction but were, nevertheless, run of the mill occurrences. Romance, danger and hell-a-plenty abounded in those stirring times. To the old timer they were a part of every day life.

Many of Arizona's old mining camps are but ghost towns now. Compared to their former glory the names of Tombstone, Congress, Humboldt and Mammoth are now in this class, while the mines of Richmond Basin, La Paz, Rich Hill, Pioneer, Rambo and McMillan are familiar only to the old timers at the present writing. Well known survivals of the boom days are Prescott, Wickenburg, Globe and. Florence.

Many of the famous mining camps which were really alive, rich in production and highly colored with the wild life of the times with their picturesque street dwellings, stores, saloons and gambling halls, were in Gila County. In these camps saloons and gambling halls outnumbered all other types of enterprise. Miners made rich strikes daily in the hills, but thought nothing of losing or doubling their money at the tables when they came to town. Whiskey was the main beverage and nearly everyone went armed and many an argument ended in gun play.

So everyone apparently enjoyed himself as best he could while able. Cowboys, miners, Mexicans and Chinamen filled the streets of the camps. The West was wide open in the eighties and nineties. Life was one exciting episode after another. This West has gone forever.

Globe was the hub of one of the most colorful of the "Helldorado Days" boom towns. In the year 1870, one Charles McMillan, a "desert rat" from Nevada and a prospector of the old school, and Dory Harris, a tenderfoot, a combination which was not uncommon in those days, left Globe to prospect in the White mountains. They were mounted and had three pack mules to carry their supplies. McMillan, who had been irrigating himself with "tarantula juice" at Globe for some days back, halted the outfit where the train ran through a group of shady trees, and as the day was hot, the temperature made him drowsy, and he lunged from his horse to an inviting shade and was soon in a deep sleep. Harris, cursing his inebriate partner, tied the stock to a tree and sat down upon a moss-covered ledge. They were about two miles from a spring where they had intended to camp. There had seemed no good in prospecting along the way and Harris was berating his drunken partner for quitting the trail so soon. While he fumed and fussed he picked into the moss-covered ledge, when to his surprise, his pick held fast and upon prying it out, he beheld a metal which he did not recognize. He pondered over it for a while, and then going to McMillan, aroused him from his drunken stupor and showed him the ore. Angry at being awakened, McMillan told him to go to blazes, and that he didn't give a whoop for ore of any kind, but on catching a glimpse of the metal, he sobered up instantly.

"Where did ye git this?" he roared.

"Over there," Harris answered, pointing to the spot.

The old prospector rushed to the place and upon picking some more, he yelled, "By the Eternal Graces, Harris, we've struck a bonanza! It's native silver." Thus, by booze, drunken stupor, anger, the famous Stonewall Jackson silver mine was discovered.

A bonanza it was indeed, and its richness drew a thousand men as fast as the news reached the outside world. Globe was forsaken and the trail was crowded with outfits of all kinds. Horses, mules and burros were laden with supplies, even merchandise and saloon refreshments.

In two months those eternal hills which had for centuries been silent, except for the voices of the wild creatures, rang out in a great medley of harsh, boisterous and roaring sounds. The braying of burros mingled with the raucous laughter and shouting of men and the boom-boom of the blasting of the great bonanza and the lesser claims around it. Soon a road to Globe had been built and lumber from the Pinals was brought in and adobes were made. It was not long until McMillan, with the exception of Prescott, was the largest and most substantially built mining camp in the territory. Adobe stores, hotels, saloons and dwellings arose as if by magic.

While this was going on, the camp ran true to form, playing the game of life fast and furious, taking out the richest ores, drinking, gambling and shooting. Money was spent and cast over the bars and gambling tables as though it were a part of the hectic breath which belched forth from their rumbling bodies. It was the same boisterous and speedy game that was played night and day in those good old days. Of the many worthy men who upheld the law in the absence of legal jurisdiction and compelled the lawless element to respect their commands, the writer can not do justice by mere mention of their names, because they were in the majority and it would take a roster too long to record them here. It is sufficient to say that they were respected then, not alone for their clear reasoning and wise judgment, but for their magnanimity in deciding cases which involved doubt and compassion. But woe unto those malefactors who abused others' rights by murder or robbery, or were caught in the righteous toils of these law abiding men. Judge Lynch sat in judgment and swift and sure was the punishment meted out to them.

The responsibility of keeping law and order did not bar the good citizens from having their own disputes, which caused the red blood to course through their brawny bodies and to boil in anger, and which led to violent bloodshed from the thrust of a knife or a bullet. These scrapes, however, were fought on the square that is, both had an equal chance, for the forty-five Colts in the hands of each, placed them on an equal footing, and when the duel was over, no matter who won, the verdict was self-defense.

McMillan had its quota of such affairs. Billy Roach and Tom Bowe fought it out in just this way. Billy stood in his saloon and Tom stood beside a red oak tree across the street, both shooting to kill. Ten or twelve shots were fired in all. Billy, being a poor marksman, Tom remained unhurt, but Billy, standing outside his bar and facing the door, made a good target, and was shot in the leg. The shock brought him to the floor writhing in agony. Someone who had fled out the back of the saloon saw the distressed man and yelled out, "You've got him, Tom. Quit yore shootin'."

"You shore he's out?" questioned Tom, advancing with his gun prepared.

"Shore as Mandy, Tom," replied the other, and ran into the saloon.

Billy was on the floor, weak and pale and the blood was sporting from his wound. By this time the crowd that had witnessed the shooting from a safe and discreet distance, began to gather at the door, when Billy was heard to exclaim "Tell that long-legged son of a coyote to come in here and have a drink. Everybody take a drink the drinks are on me."

What they had quarreled about, no one ever knew, but they became fast friends afterwards, and so ended one of the bitterest gun duels ever fought in the district. As it was, it turned out very fortunately, for they both were shooting to kill. Roach had a lame leg for the rest of his life.

The camp was not without the presence of the real bad men who came to prey upon the industrious people. Three of the notorious Billy-the-Kid gang came one time to levy toll on the horse herds about the town. There were a good many horses there at the time, as everyone had his own mount, and as a rule they were of the best. But their game was suspected and one bright morning a posse of determined men took their guns, mounted their horses and with cool and level words commanded the trio to mount their cayuses and to vamoose and never to return. They went and returned not. They were only suspected, which was the only reason that Judge Lynch stayed the iron judgment of his inevitable law.

Other shootings took place and other events of the abovecharacter, too long to mention here and that might excite the imagination of the reader to a greater extent happened, but the above were on a par with the others which went to make up the wild life of McMillan, just the same as it did in any other red-blooded camp in the west.

At that time there were but three or four families of white women in the camp. The Shanleys: a mother and two daughters, Sarah and Mollie and also Julia O'Connel, a niece; Mrs. Beston and Katy, her daughter; Mrs. May and her daughter Ida were the only white women among the wild, rough, devilmay-care frontiersmen, but every one of these women was treated with the deepest respect and woe betide the man who dared to say one word of disrespect about them. He was lucky if he wasn't driven from camp, for with all their reckless mannerisms, these old trail blazers revered virtuous womanhood.

These women all have passed over the Great Divide, leaving behind them pleasant memories of their sterling virtue and sympathy for the rough old scouts they were wont to meet.

In 1880 the camp was at its peak of production and success. A ten-stamp mill had been erected and bars of rich bright bullion were shipped to Casa Grande, the main shipping point at that time. The wild life of the camp carried on. A half dozen saloons were running full blast. The doors were never locked, for the keys had been thrown away when they had first opened. Gambling, with all its colorful aspects and excitement, gun duels over card disputes, poor men becoming suddenly rich and rich men going broke, lent an atmosphere of intensity which kept one on the alert all the time to protect himself. For a man did not know when he might be drawn into trouble if he mixed with the crowd at all, and to do otherwise was well nigh impossible if the red blood of adventure coursed through one's veins, as it did in the majority of those old-time denizens of the wild and wooly west.

In 1885 the pay streak of the famous bonanza played out and the mines were shut down. Then the great exodus from the once great and prosperous camp began. Miners with small holdings moved out first and the owners of stores, saloons, and other business houses, sadly but firmly made up their minds to follow. It was more like a funeral procession to the rear guard of the old scouts who had really built the town. A few remained to prospect but they soon followed the others, and in a short while the silence which had prevailed before the camp was built came into its own again. But it was more oppressive because the wild, boisterous life which had sent its wild echoes to the farthest limit of the silent hills, was like the silence after a wild and thundering storm when it has spent its fury and has passed away. A brooding void seemed to settle over all. Deserted now were the large adobe buildings. Soon they began to crumble and decay.

"Them thar kiyotes air a using them fer dens 'n you can see the leetle fellers a rompin' 'n a playin' leap frog most any time o' day now," was the way an old prospector expressed it.

In a few years they were but mounds of clay. The streets are but cattle trails. It seems almost as though man had never dwelt there.