GHOST TOWNS

Silence in Swansea

We decide to set up housekeeping in George Mitchell's garage. I am certain he won't mind; he's been dead for the better part of a half-century. And so has his dream and his town.

We are camped at Swansea, perhaps Arizona's best pure ghost town. It is the antithesis of the popular spots - Jerome, Tombstone, Bisbee the sites that strain the term "ghost town" to the limit and make us wonder what a ghost town truly is. I remember a sign at the Queen Mine tour in Bisbee indignantly proclaiming "Bisbee Is Not A Ghost Town." No problem here in Swansea: there's nobody to put up the sign.

Actually, that's not quite true. A fellow who was here the last time I stayed is here again, or perhaps is still here. I waved to him earlier, and he acknowledged me from his campsite, but I wouldn't dream of intruding on his privacy. He has squatter's rights, so if he wants company, he can see our fire. The captain speaks to the swabby on the deck, not the other way around.

We're not really in George Mitchell's garage; we are on it. Or rather on the oldconcrete pad it sat on. Mitchell's was the premier house in Swansea, and now all that remains of his two-story adobe a 3,600-square-foot statement of opulence is an outline, two standing adobe corners, a hole for the basement, and lots of crumbled earth.

The concrete slab, ideal for setting up a tent, is the most artificial thing in the yard, a yard slowly returning to the desert. The palm trees that once surrounded the house have withered and disappeared. Some rocks still mark the path of the sidewalk, and scattered cedar shakes on the ground still resemble roofing, but that's because only a wink of time has passed a mere five decades.

People who expect to see a Virginia City, Nevada, are going to be disappointed with Swansea, but not the true ghost-town seeker or the desert rat. I am both. The closest town is Bouse, some 24 miles away. Even that doesn't help most Arizonans, so I'll add that Swansea sits amidst the Buckskin Mountains, south of the Bill Williams River as it heads west toward the Colorado River. If you were to fly on a straight course from Wickenburg to Parker, you would come very close to passing over Swansea. Your landmark from the air would be the 2,395-foot thrust known originally as Black Butte but changed by the Clara Consolidated Gold and Copper Mining Company, which laid out Swansea, to Clara Peak. By land you get to Swansea by taking Plomosa Road, the only main street that

Plomosa Road becomes the Swansea Road. Along the way, you'll cross the Great Anomaly Of The Desert The Central Arizona Project Canal. Miners from the early part of the century would have thought the sight of all this cool water to be a sure sign of brain fever - perhaps it still is.

The plants along your route do not know about the water in the canal. They are among Arizona's best arid-land survivors: creosote, ocotillo, cholla, saguaro.

At 13 miles from Bouse, you'll come to the site of Midway, once a water stop for the railroad that connected Bouse and Swansea. In fact, you can see the old railroad grade many times along your route, and sometimes you will be driving on it. From Midway, take the left fork. You'll almost immediately see a water tank on your left, and then you'll cross under a power line .3 miles from the junction.

Follow this road until you come to a fork, 18.5 miles from Bouse, and take the route to your right (the main road goes off to the northwest to the mining ghost town of Planet and the Planet Ranch, the latter the property of the City of Scottsdale, which plans to mine the ranch's water).

At this point, you are seven miles from Swansea. You'll know you're on the right road when, 1.5 miles from the last junction, you drive across a small aboveground pipeline and cross it a second time about one mile beyond. You'll dip into some small canyons, climb a couple of rises, and Finally see the foundations of Swansea in the distance, just as you begin a twisting descent into a wide valley. Keep your eye out for a jutting natural arch on the right side of the road one-half mile before the townsite. If you miss it going in, look again as you leave.

As you enter Swansea, you'll be greeted by a sign that gives you a brief, mostly accurate history of the place, along with the command not to disturb, deface, or remove anything. That is important etiquette for anyone on the back roads; unfortunately, there's widespread evidence in Swansea that this simple command has not always been obeyed.

This is a spread-out ghost town. (When you pass the historical sign, you will have already missed a tiny cemetery on the south side of the road. Make a note to see it on the way out.) You'll see large concrete foundations, adobe walls, a gray-plas-

Swansea

ter group of single-men's quarters, tailings of a mill that was long ago removed for scrap, and, up on a hill to the south, Swansea's most dramatic building: the imposing brick smelter.

Vanished from the town are its most civilized elements, such as its restaurants, theaters, saloons, and barber shops. When you survey the landscape, it does not seem possible that all those buildings could have ever been here. The place even had an automobile dealership.

As was the case in most mining camps, it was not equally civilized for all. The men who worked in the mines, many of them Mexicans and Colorado River Indians, lived in slums conveniently out of view of the town's luxuries.

The best way to see Swansea, I have decided after four visits, is by mountain bike. If you're not a cyclist, then hike around. A truck is the least desirable method to get around here for two reasons. First, the lesser roads can't always be trusted; I have digging and timbering experience to prove it. Second, and more importantly, you don't want to be in a truck because in your confined space, engine chugging and air-conditioner humming, you will miss Swansea's best features: the sky, the panoramic views of the mountains, and the silence.

The man-made features, dwarfed by the natural, continue after your first view of the town. The road heading northeast across the tailings dumps takes you to the classy part of town, where George Mitchell, mining superintendent and our absentee host for the night, lived. His is the large foundation with crumbling adobe walls up on the left. Next to his house was the garage where he once parked a car, purchased in France in 1908, that was supposed to be bulletand bomb-proof. He liked its four cigar lighters and locomotive headlight. Tonight the only light near the garage is from our campfire.

In daylight, beyond Mitchell's house, you can see the ruins of the six adobe houses of the mining company's managers. These had central breezeways, running water, electricity, and even telephones.

To the north of the row houses stands Swansea's saddest sight: the cemetery. It no longer has the prominence it once did. Vandals have thoroughly desecrated it. The broken markers, the scattered fences are bad enough, but each grave has been dug up, probably by those looking for buttons, rings, and so forth. It is more than ghoulish; it is downright insulting to the people who endured this harsh desert in the early part of the century.

If you return to the row houses, off in the distance to the southeast, you can spot the solitary adobe walls of the train depot, the link between one of Arizona's most remote mining camps and the towns of Congress, Salome, and Parker.

Earlier today my friend Darryl and I spent the better part of the afternoon trying to follow the old railroad bed out of Swansea. We left the depot and rode our mountain bikes atop the railroad grade, but the old trestles that crossed and recrossed a major wash are long gone. As a result, we started out riding the grade, dropped down into the wash, fought the sand, climbed back up, and began again. After five or six such forays, we gave up and returned, somewhat sheepishly, to the comforts of George Mitchell's backyard for dinner and a night's rest. The desert has begun to reclaim the old route into Swansea, and we could only retreat. The more I think about that, the better I feel.

Swansea came into being in 1908 and was dead by 1937. In between lived a camp fueled by a financial joyride that careened wildly from steady payrolls to strikes, from tentative solvency to hopeless bankruptcy and in the forefront of much of it was our missing host for the night, George Mitchell.

Swansea was first prospected in 1886 by three men who found silver but also realized that what lay mainly in the veins was merely copper, then virtually worthless, so they moved on.

One of those original three, John W. Johnson, returned 10 years later with two new partners because copper was becoming well worth mining. They staked claims and did assessment work, but little else.

In 1904 a rail line was begun from the Santa Fe route that already connected Phoenix and Prescott to the main line across the northern part of Arizona. This new route, built by a Santa Fe subsidiary, the Arizona and California Railroad, was to head west across the desert from north of Wickenburg to Parker and on into California. This railroad sparked new interest in the mines in the Swansea area because reduced transportation costs would make mining feasible.

When the Arizona and California reached Parker in 1907, George Mitchell entered Swansea's history. Welsh by birth and a metallurgist by profession, George and his brother Robert had worked for Sen. William Clark at the tremendously successful copper workings at Jerome. George Mitchell became the prime promoter for the investors of the Clara Gold and Copper Mining Company, which held the claims near Black Butte (Clara Peak). Mitchell named the place for his home town of Swansea, brought in investors from all over (principally from France), and was the guiding hand in leading Swansea to become a boom camp and, later, a financial disaster.

The principal problem with Swansea was not that it didn't have a solid body of copper ore. It was primarily that Mitchell was less a metallurgist and more a promoter, who wanted things done on a grandiose scale. For example, the smelter, the huge brick ruin that still dominates the town, was so large and inefficient that it cost three cents more to produce a pound of copper than it could be sold for.

The amenities that made Swansea a more tolerable place to live were mostly showpieces to convince investors that their money was in good hands. Harvey Weed, in his 1913 Mines Handbook, wrote that Mitchell's operation was "an example of enthusiasm run wild, coupled with reckless stock selling, and the foolish construction of surface works before the development of enough ore to keep them busy."

Mitchell left Swansea in 1916 to join the Jerome-Superior Copper Company, which went bankrupt by 1920 amid claims of mismanagement.

After his departure, prosperity did come to Swansea, at least for a while. The demand for copper during World War I caused a price rise, making mining the ore much more practical. Between 1917 and 1919, approximately one million dollars' worth of copper ore was shipped from Swansea. Ironically, the large inefficient smelter sat idle; the ore was sent to smelters at Clarkdale (near Jerome), Humboldt (near Prescott), and Sasco (northwest of Tucson). After World War I, copper prices declined, and so did Swansea. Several attempts were made to bring it back to life, but, by 1937, the railroad, most of the machinery, and virtually anything portable of value was gone.

But what remains has more than mon-etary value. Here in the ruins of Swansea, I have found an elusive quality missing in

Swansea

so much of présent-day society: solitude. I am sitting on a folding chair at the end of a remarkably satisfying day of back roads bicycle exploring. My friend Darryl cyclist, backpacker, ghost towner, desert rat - is working on dinner while I reread an excellent article on Swansea by Robert L. Spude in the Winter, 1976, issue of The Journal of Arizona History. Our only other company is a hummingbird that makes repeated kamikaze attacks on us until it apparently begrudgingly accepts these interlopers. My job, Darryl says, is to get into the mood, to be able to transmit to all who wish they had been with us, our last hours in Swansea. Tell them what the place looks like, what happened here years ago, what it feels like to be here, and, while you're at it, he adds, describe those clouds and that sky (which will be our entertain-ment until a while after sunset).

I can relate the events of the day and describe the townsite, and I can probably hone Spude's article for more casual con-sumption (you've just read the result), but I am at a loss to do justice to the eastern clouds that echo the pink of the declining sun. I also feel a bit guilty because I defi-nitely have the easier task - reading rather than cooking. On the other hand, Darryl has led hundreds of Boy Scouts through cookouts, and probably that would be easier than having me trying to assist him.Mystery writer Tony Hillerman has one of his two heroes, Navajo policeman Jim Chee, comment upon the essential social difference between the Navajo and the Hopi. Chee observes that the Hopi people cluster together, while the Navajo deliberately separate into sparse areas. Although I admire both cultures, I must admit that Darryl and I must be Navajo at heart. Here we are, some 24 miles from the nearest town, and I am a bit annoyed that someone else was here before us today, and I can hear him chopping wood. And I'll bet he's annoyed that we are here, even if we're a quartermile away. None of us at this remote spot is a cluster person by nature.

If you ever wondered why people would purposely choose to do what we have done all day, to be this far removed from our fellow creatures, here is one answer: often it's not for the day at all - it's for the night. We sit near the campfire as the cool breeze brings the last smell of a distant rain.The bats that crisscrossed the sky at sunset have long since headed off, and the heavens simply shimmer. I don't try to make order out of the stars; usually I forget their names soon after I've been reminded. But that does not diminish their importance to my well-being. A long, silent examination of the star show is a critical part of the solitude and peace I seek - and find here.

Darryl and I, the non-cluster people, probably speak less than a dozen words after dinner. At one point, I rise from my chair which makes a grating noise in the dirt, for which I quickly whisper an apology. That's the kind of night it is.

George Mitchell built a dream house here and made plans for a city, plans that collapsed upon him. He died a broken man in Los Angeles. But the dream, I think, is not altogether dead. In some cases, perhaps dreams do not die; perhaps they just evolve. I'd like to think that George Mitchell's version of the dream for Swansea merely changed to mine: for in the silence that is Swansea, I could not be more content.

Editor's Note: The ruins of Swansea are located on public land administered by the U. S. Bureau of Land Management's Yuma District Office, which is concerned about the gradual destruction of the ghost town by collectors and other vandals. According to District Archeologist Boma Johnson, "To effect any quality preservation of Swansea would require more resources than we now have. Perhaps if the public had some interest and made it known to us, we could find the resources to do justice to this site." If you are interested in preserving Swansea, contact Boma Johnson at the BLM's Yuma District Office, 3150 Winsor Avenue, Yuma, AZ 85365; telephone (602) 726-6300.

Photo Tour: Philip Varney accompanies photographer Tom Weiwandt on the Friends of Arizona Highways photo tour of southeastern Arizona, October 27-November 3. Call the Friends' travel desk, (602) 271-5904 for a detailed itinerary and reservations.

Travel Guide: For a travel guide to Arizona's hinterlands, we recommend Travel Arizona: The Back Roads, an Arizona Highways book that describes in detail, and maps and pictures, 20 great trips for the whole family. To order, call toll-free 1 (800) 543-5432. In the Phoenix area, telephone 258-1000.