White Hills: Six Silver Years

The desert, the sun and the wind are slowly effacing the little town of White Hills in Mohave County, that once was lively with the robust people who followed a silver boom. For six silver years, White Hills flourished. Now it is a ghost town.

White HILLS

The Arizona desert is fast reclaiming all that remains of White Hills, a thriving, rich mining town of the 1890's, in Mohave County.

Back in 1892, when an Indian friend of a prospector showed him the "pretty colored rocks" from a strange white hills, he lost no time in staking a claim. The old prospector immediately recognized the exceptionally fine silver ore. With the help of his old friend, and famous promoter of the day, R. T. Root, he managed to secure the financial backing of a Colorado railroad to install a mill and to excavate the first shafts.

Hundreds of stories have been told of the old town, and a maze of speculations has arisen as to what happened there. But this we do know-White Hills began booming. With each new claim-The Norma, The Occident, The Prince Albert, The Great Diamond each in turn, the 1500 settlers who had rushed to White Hills became more certain that this would be the most important city in the territory. They erected countless buildings homes, schools, stores, laundries, saloons, and even completed an extensive reservoir of solid cement and masonry. A cypress wood pipe was laboriously run seven miles to a spring which was expected to furnish the only item more precious than silver-water. But all the painstaking, hard work was in vain. It never held water.

This failure did nothing to curb the wild spirit ofWhite Hills. Water was hauled. The mines were booming and building continued. New streets were laid out in anticipation of a larger city. Money was plentiful and rolling in from all sides. The town was as active as you would expect in a place of new found riches. It boasted a dozen saloons, and on Main Street stood seven in a row. There were the usual gambling tables with craps, poker, faro, and roulette. Whiskey flowed freely, and sold for a "bit a drink," but rarely was there a customer who didn't purchase "two for two-bits." For a dollar you could get your quart jar filled from the barrel. It is said that the livery stable proprietor belonged to the latter class. The townspeople could tell when old Only those who died at White Hills remained when the big boom was over. Equipment, which served its purpose, was left.

When the silver veins played out, six booming years came to an end. About 1900 White Hills became history on a frontier.

Jim Twiggs had reached his limit. Always when he had imbibed the "one too many" you could hear him shouting up and down Main Street: "Hoo-ray for Jesus Christ, George Washington, and R. T. Root the three best men in Mohave County." He, for one, never forgot old R. T. Root, to whom credit was given for the birth of White Hills. For almost six years White Hills produced some of the silence of the eternal hills now entombs the town.

the finest ore ever mined in Arizona. More than 27 miles of tunnels honeycombed the area. It netted more than $12,000,000 in silver and gold. But in 1898, the inevitable happened. The thrill of new strikes stopped. Rich veins began to play out. Where there had been great wealth, now there was none. The saloons and gambling halls were strangely empty. The gamblers saw their "daily take" fade into nothing. The cost of living soared. There was no building now, no bright future to talk about and plan for. Deep concern enveloped the miners and their families. Almost immediately, the few who had not spent all their money in the excitement, began to leave White Hills.

Finally, White Hills closed down entirely. And it became "just another ghost town" of the West. The buildings, the stores, the Post Office, the saloons began to disintegrate.

Today, after more than fifty years, crumbling wooden shacks and deserted graves are all that's left of this boom town that saw its "big day" and then passed quietly into the history of the West. The desert has taken its toll of White Hills. Creosote brush has grown back on the streets, and the sand has left its mark on the wood and the iron. Only the two "White Hills Cemeteries" still defy the desert with their rock enclosures and their headstones of barrel cactus. Not even the desert wind has been able to obliterate the words on the monuments.

An outstanding example of a colorful era of the West, White Hills now "rests" between Hoover Dam and Kingman, Arizona. The minute one makes the turn onto its wagon road, he makes the turn-back of half a century.