Ghosts of Southern Arizona

The Ghosts of Southern Arizona

The ghost towns of Southern Arizona are an especially fragile dimension to this region. They are skeletal remains, monuments in warped wood and crumbling adobe - a testimony to man's temporality, his hopes and his fortunes.

They are like orators speaking out of the past. A walk through them seems to produce real voices the wind rattling a tin roof, or whispering through tumbleweed. Or is it the absolute silence of an era and a people from yesteryear which registers with the ear?

Practically speaking, these ghosts are gone, because they are vulnerable to the ravaging elements and the brutality of human predators. They are truly reminders of the past but they give meaning to the kind of people and the times which made them alive.

Many of them are inaccessible today except by foot or rugged vehicle. Inquire before setting out to see them, to determine if you are welcome, and to make sure you can find or reach them.

To the northwest of Nogales on the old road to Arivaca is Cerro Colorado. The old adobes of this ghost would be bloodsplashed to this day but for the rain and weathering which has erased all but a few foundations. Though the earth has absorbed the town's walls, sad memories still remain.

The Sonora Exploring and Mining Company, Arizona's first mining enterprise, opened up a string of silver mines in southern Arizona during the mid-1850's. It was at this time that the Heintzelman Mine at Cerro Colorado was located, thus making it one of the first mines in the Gadsden Purchase area.

Operations went well at first. The ore assays were high, and within a few years of the mine's discovery, 250 Mexican and Indian miners were on the company payroll. Silver ore was smelted in primitive adobe furnaces, and the resulting bullion was freighted to Guaymas, Sonora in wooden wagons. From there the silver was loaded on schooners bound for San Francisco, where it was sold.

Just before the Civil War the first tragedy struck. Twentyseven miners were killed when the roof of the mine caved in, burying them under tons of dirt and rubble. There was no way to rescue them. The calamity paralyzed mining operations. The mine was haunted, the Mexicans said. Many refused to work, and returned to Mexico.

The memory of the cave-in was just beginning to dim when the second blow fell. United States troops stationed in the Arizona Territory to protect settlers were withdrawn to fight the Civil War. The Apaches, who believed they had driven the soldiers away, began a series of attacks to purge their homeland of any remaining settlers. Charles and John Poston, operators of the mine, braced themselves for the worst. It wasn't long in coming. Within a week raiders drove off more than 150 horses and mules.

Work at the mine was demoralized and disrupted. The laborers, now thoroughly spooked, gathered bags of high grade ore from the mine and slipped away to nearby Mexico during the nights that followed. Discipline had to be restored, and when John Poston caught his foreman leaving with a load of silver bullion, Poston killed him as an example.

Subsequent workers fleeing to Mexico from Cerro Colorado carried the rumor with them that Juanito, the dead foreman, had buried $70,000 in stolen bullion somewhere near the mine.

Within a short time Mexican bandits heard the tale and began showing up at the mine. After brutally murdering John Poston, they greedily dismantled the mine works searching for the treasure.

It was never found.

The soul of the mine and the town slipped away. Now even the adobe walls are gone.

In the same vicinity is the gold camp of Oro Blanco. In 1873 a group of Tucson prospectors relocated a gold vein once worked by Spanish Jesuits. The prospectors named their mine Oro Blanco (white gold) and before long, houses of wood, adobe and rock dotted the camp site. Forty miners, fathers of the camp's children energetically worked the vein, while the camp's youngsters learned their lessons in a makeshift three-sided school roofed with brush.

Conditions improved as the little town prospered. By 1880, three mining and milling companies had moved into town. The population leaped to 225, including a host of miners, saloon keepers, merchants, and a blacksmith, constable, deputy sheriff, doctor and dentist.

Oro Blanco was never known for the barroom brawls and shootouts so commonplace in other mining camps. However, it was nearly the scene of an international incident: Both Arizona and Sonora, Mexico, laid claim to the rich mine which eventually produced more than $1,300,000 in gold. Two surveyors, one representing each country, were brought in to settle the dispute once and for all. After careful calculations and measurements both men agreed that Oro Blanco was in Arizona, though only by two miles.

Little of the old town is left today except rain-stained crosses leaning over sunken graves in the cemetery.

Ruby is another ghost in the area. It is owned by private interests who avoid pilferage and destruction caused by unscrupulous visitors, by having the area patrolled by an armed guard. Because of this, Ruby has withstood the years remarkably well. It dates back to sporadic mining activity around the turn of the century.

Some particularly colorful ghosts are clustered northeast of Nogales. The fate and fortune of the first two of these, Washington Camp and Duquesne, were so intertwined that old-timers would say that when Duquesne's tail got stepped on, it was Washington that barked.

Though Mexican miners worked in the area during the early 1800's and the promising San Antonio claim was discovered in 1862, Apache attacks made mining hazardous, if not impossible.

By 1870, however, a few hardy pioneers were moving into Washington Camp in spite of the dangers, and by 1880 claim markers were breaking out like pox on the hillsides.

An era of prosperity began when the Duquesne Mining and Reduction Company of Pittsburgh bought a mine called the Bonanza. The company built a reduction plant in 1889 nearly a mile away from Washington Camp and laid out the townsite of Duquesne. Within a year both settlements boasted a population of 1,000 souls each.

For the most part, the two towns belonged to the company -lock, stock and barrel. Folks lived in company houses, bought their favorite cuts of beef and pork sausage from company butcher shops and purchased ribbons and flour from the company general store.

A story which persists among long time residents of the area is that George Westinghouse, of Westinghouse Electric Company, once lived in Duquesne where his relatives owned mines. According to the most popular account of this unsubstantiated story, young Westinghouse drew scowls and headshakes when he equipped his home with lavish bathrooms complete with hot and cold running water. To the rugged miners who scarcely bathed at all, the idea of running water was pushing the absolute limit.

Though production at the mines diminished and the towns became ghosts, some prospecting and small-scale mining continued until the early 1950's. Today the schoolhouse which was built midway between the two camps, stands roofless and in ruins, and two boarding houses attest to the camps' active days.

A few miles north of Washington Camp and Duquesne lies the ghost town of Mowry, one of Arizona's oldest mining camps. During the summer months when the monsoon clouds cover up the sky and dust devils kick stones over forgotten graves in the town's cemetery, the persecuted form of Lt. Sylvester Mowry drifts among the splintered wood shacks and disintegrating adobe ruins near his mine.

The silver mine did not always belong to Mowry, though its fortune and that of the man are joined for all time. The mine, originally called the Patagonia, had been worked by Spanish Jesuits many years before. In 1857 it was rediscovered by a Mexican herder who sold it to a group of army officers at Fort Crittenden for a pony and several other fairly valueless articles. Mowry acquired the mine two years later when his fellow officers failed to agree on any issue concerning its management and sold it to resolve their differences. Mowry paid $25,000 for the claim, which he renamed for himself. He soon resigned his commission at the fort and began mining in earnest.

From the first day of operations the mine yielded almost magically under Mowry's supervision. Treasure-filled ore was first crushed and then reduced in 12 Mexicanstyle blast furnaces. The resulting silver was molded into 70pound bars which were shipped to Europe to be sold.

Some of the silver refined at the site was kept on hand to cover immediate expenses. These bars ranged in value from $3 to $200 each, and were used like currency to pay workers and purchase equipment and supplies.

The potential of Mowry's mine seemed endless. For many months at a stretch it produced more than $1,000 in silver ore per day.

Meanwhile the Civil War began, and the beginning of the end for Mowry. On June 8, 1862 General James H. Carleton charged that Mowry was selling lead to the Confederate Army for making bullets. Mowry was arrested for treason against the United States government; all his mining property was confiscated, and he was whisked off to prison at Fort Yuma.

According to Hiram Hodge, who wrote extensively on early Arizona, the arrest was completely without cause and the result of jealousies which had existed between the two men while they were in service together. This may well be. No evidence was ever produced against Mowry, and he was released from prison six months later.

Mowry returned to his home expecting to reopen his mine and continue work there. But even after his release and exoneration, the mine was not restored. In anger and confusion he brought suit against the general who had arrested him, but even with the suit pending, Mowry's mine and all his mills were auctioned off July 18, 1864 at a U.S. Marshal's sale of confiscated property. The mine went to the highest bidder - Marshal Cutler, the auctioneer himself. He paid $4,000 for one of Arizona's most valuable pieces of mining property!

Crushed and bewildered, Mowry began an exhausting battle to regain his mine. Historians disagree on the outcome. According to one account, Mowry eventually received $40,000 as a token payment from the government; the other declares Mowry died penniless in London, England in 1871 with no compensation whatsoever.

Years passed and the Mowry Mine slipped through many hands. As if in loyalty to its maligned former owner, the mine never produced so abundantly or with such promise as it didthose few years when Mowry processed $1,500,000 in pure silver bullion.

Three miles to the north of Mowry lies the skeletal remains of Harshaw. A few sagging wood houses and adobe ruins are scattered across the valley floor where David Har-shaw discovered a silver vein in 1879.

Harshaw, a rancher and prospector, probably would never have located the mine if Indian Agent Thomas Jeffords had not made him move his cattle (they were grazing on Apache land). After his eviction, Harshaw drove his herd from the San Pedro Valley into Santa Cruz County where he soon discovered the rich silver deposit.

The Hermosa Mining Company of New York got wind of the claim and offered to buy it from Harshaw. He sold out and moved to Davidson Springs where he operated a stage station and ranch for the rest of his life. Within a year of the sale, a lively silver camp sprang up around the mine workings and a 20-stamp mill went into operation. Harshaw's first 600 citizens were a cosmopolitan conglomeration. They came from 35 states, three territories, 14 Euro-pean countries, plus India, China and Mexico.

During the first months of 1881 new residents continued to arrive and the population soon peaked at 2,000.

Horses and wagons clogged the shopping district as resi-dents bustled in and out of numerous business establishments. Butcher shops, boarding houses, blacksmith shops, livery stables and laundries flanked the main street on both sides for nearly a mile. The populace was served by barbers, shoe-makers, lawyers and one doctor, not to mention the faro dealer, three druggists, a watchmaker, tailor and stage coach driver.

Unlike many of the hastily constructed mining camps, Harshaw boasted fine sturdy buildings of adobe, wood frame and rock which surely contributed to the aura of security and permanence which characterized the town.

Unexpectedly, Harshaw was hit by a streak of bad luck. The summer of 1881 brought flash floods which swept away some stores and flooded the stock of others. Later, one section of the town was demolished by a major fire that swept through the St. Charles Hotel, John Busher's livery stable, and some shops and houses leaving only a trail of charred wood and ashes. The final blow came in November of 1881 when the Hermosa Mine, which had produced more than $1,000,000 in bullion during the past 18 months, shut down.

The ore was gone!

The busy semi-metropolis shriveled to a village of 70 people. Nearly all the buildings were empty. Doors stood half open, and empty windows stared blankly at the deserted main street.

A few families stayed on, convinced the town would be revived. Things picked up in 1890 when a Tucson miner bought the old operations and installed a new reduction mill.

The crunching and grinding of the ore that meant prosperity soon fell to a whisper. By 1909 only a few inhabitants remained. One or two of them live in Harshaw to this day.

Off to itself 14 miles southeast of Willcox beneath the mountain of the "two heads," the tiny village of Dos Cabezas weathers in the sun.

Today's crumbling adobe ruins and deserted wood dwell-ings belie the town's rambunctious beginnings in the 1880's when a brewery, school house, general store, barber shop and the usual saloons and hotels were the social focal point for nearly 300 denizens.

It all started in 1878 when prospectors poking around the Dos Cabezas Mountains decided the land was loaded with silver and gold. A brigade of fortune hunters equipped with clattering pans and shovels sloshed and swirled the glinting gravels and caused so much excitement by their finds that soon a town materialized.

Both the silver and gold potential was overrated, however. Though sporadic mining continued well into the 20th century, the place soon slumped except for the die-hards who rationalized that Dos Cabezas wasn't half bad to live in anyway. Mostly weeds and lizards inhabit the adobe ruins where once guests and mail were received at the stage depot. A few tin-Gleeson the adobe hospital, now roofless, recalls busier times. - Tom C. Cooper

Mowry this sturdy adobe gradually deteriorates. - Josef Muench Pearce the adobe walls of a home slowly give way to the elements. David Muench roofed houses have stubbornly held out against the rain and wind, though the markers in the cemetery go about their slow business of weathering away.

To the southeast of Dos Cabezas is a mining camp that blustered and strutted a few years, then blushed and withered away.

Accounts vary as to how the place was named. According to one historian (Byrd Granger), a newly married couple moved into a little valley at the foot of the Chiricahua Mountains. The realm was nature's own, and because of their happiness, they named the place Paradise.

A departure from such idyllic bliss is Judge J. C. Hancock's version. According to the Paradise pioneer, prospectors crossing the treeless valley from Sam Simon (where they bought supplies), were so grateful for cool water and a rest in the shade that they called the town Paradise.

No matter. The place was not much like "Paradise" for long. After the Chiricahua Development Company began mining operations there around 1901, 13 saloons sprang up on the main street, an average of one for every 20 residents. Overnight Paradise was a rowdy mining camp. The typical host of merchants, riffraff, gamblers and miners that always follow in the wake of a mineral strike idled along main street, clogged the doorways of the camp's three general stores, and regularly occupied every room of the local hotel. When somebody got out of hand, the local lawman chained the offender to the "jail tree" before the local law abiding bunch decideda more efficient facility was needed.

The boom was over by 1907, and nearly all the residents drifted away. A lopsided post office and cemetery laced with wrought iron is all that remains of Paradise today.

Three ghosts, Gleeson, Pearce and Courtland, are strung along the dirt road from Tombstone to Sun Sites.

Gleeson's real story is not so much the mines, the boom, or the instant fortunes made and lost. It is sufficient to say that Gleeson got its start around the turn of the century, and that it endured longer than some of its contemporaries due to the demand for copper during World War I. It was all downhill after that. By 1940 Gleeson was a ghost town. Roofs fell in, tumbleweeds rolled into place the town was dead.

But the man who distinguished Gleeson stayed on. His name was Yee Wee.

No one knows what part of China he came from or even how old he was when he got off the boat in San Francisco, but Yee Wee arrived in Gleeson just as the town was beginning to stir in 1900. He opened a restaurant, and before long his lemon cream pies, home-made ice cream and multicourse dinners were famous from Tombstone to Prescott. But better known than his culinary talents was his total generosity. He never let anyone go hungry. He took it upon himself to feed hungry travelers and miners whether they could pay or not.

The mines closed in the 20's and most of the population left town. Not Yee Wee. His restaurant door stood open and He managed somehow. In the 30's he cooked for a Civilian Conservation Corps gang in Rucker's Canyon for awhile, but during his absence someone robbed his restaurant and then burned it down.

He never opened again, but quietly retired and puttered around his vegetable garden which supported him nicely. The sun was warm on the back porch where he sunned himself every day. Thirty years of retirement came and went.

In the late 1960's he was buried in the Gleeson cemetery under a new square stone that almost looked misplaced against the sun-dried grass and scorched wood crosses. He lived in Gleeson 70 years, and now rests with those he helped and fed.

The town has not changed much since Yee Wee left it. The gaunt arch of the 1917 school house stands bold against the sky, and the general store is forever empty.

Down the road a few miles you'll find an old general store, low adobe houses and wooden shacks which mark the town sparked by Jimmy Pearce's silver and gold discovery.

"Uncle Jimmy" as he was called, was a Cornish miner who arrived in Tombstone during the silver boom. Fortunately he and his wife were thrifty folk who patched, mended and saved as a matter of course. When Tombstone's mines sank in water, the middle-aged couple had enough money to buy a small ranch in the nearby Sulphur Springs Valley.

Uncle Jimmy never did take much to ranching. He was a miner to the core. One afternoon as he sat on a knoll to eat lunch, he aimlessly knocked two rocks together, and out came a chunk of free gold.

Pearce had found a mine. He hurried to the Tombstone Courthouse to claim land for each member of his family. This done, he shouted the good news to all his friends and anyone who would listen. After the assayer announced the high silver and gold content of the specimens, no one needed further urging. A stream of loaded wagons headed for Pearce's ranch.

Claims sprouted on every outcrop and rise for miles around, and tents and clapboard shacks cluttered the site where only days before there had been nothing.

Naturally the first business in town was a saloon, if two barrels of whiskey with a plank between them for a bar can properly be called a saloon. This place, Gentry's Palace of Pleasure, was soon followed by stores and boarding houses of every description. By 1919 the camp had almost 2,000 residents who were busy patronizing fine restaurants, soda parlors and the local movie house.

The ore gave out gradually, and by the depression of the 30's, only a few residents remained.

Today the rubble from decades of mining litters the weed-impacted plots between deserted buildings. The Old Store, which among other things tempted children with colored rock candy and crayons, still operates as a museum and old-time general store.

Early in 1909 four copper companies rushed to a dusty spot at the foot of the Dragoon Mountains. Within six weeks, more than 2,000 people had followed them there. Courtland was an instant city.

Nearly a thousand men were on the payrolls of the Great Western, Copper Queen, Leadville, and Calmut and Arizona companies, and the resulting prosperity fostered all types of businesses. The miners lacked nothing in their desert environ-ment. Fresh milk and baked goods were commonplace, and one could purchase unlimited quantities of these luxuries. The town's two newspapers presented their readers with news of mineral wealth, social events and other evidence of good fortune and growth, and telephone and telegraph wires tied Courtland to the rest of the world.

After 1916 Courtland's fortune see-sawed back and forth for nearly 25 years. Returns from the once opulent mines were crushingly low. The restaurants and smoky saloons were locked and boarded, abandoned, left to wither and die in the sun.

But one hardy old lizard wouldn't leave, and Courtland's hermit achieved possibly more notoriety than the decaying buildings of the ghost town.

He was a lean, leathery man. A ripped shirt, well worn pants and dusty felt hat hung around his frame. All around the town he had posted bold, defiant signs. "This is not snooperville - snoopers not welcome," one read. Other equally inhospitable signs bluntly informed tourists and rock hounds to keep out. Go away, and never come back. Ever. He prohibited picture taking and was known to brandish some makeshift weapon from his junk pile at intruders, be they photographers, writers or plain dusty travelers.

Maybe he was an old neurotic, a man warped by thwarted dreams of mineral riches. But more likely he loved the solitude of his shadowy companions and knew that when civilization comes bumping down the road in cars and pickups, a ghost town disappears board by board, nail by nail until nothing is left, the place is less than even a ghost.

As the years passed, he just sat on his splintery front porch with a rifle balanced across his knees. Two years ago he was taken to a hospital. Within six weeks much of what remained of Courtland had been carried away - by visitors.

Catch the ghosts while you can. But be kind to them - take only pictures.