Legends of the Lost

In country somewhere southwest of Ajo, a two-foot-thick vein of gold cut through the base of a small peak. The vein, the source of the Jabonero (or Soap-maker) Mine, was so rich gold nuggets "big as turkey eggs" dropped out of the parent quartz to collect in heaps on the ground below.

Now the vein is lost, most likely buried by drifting sand or concealed purposely by Indians, but also buried under a pile of contradictory legends. A hundred and fifty years ago, the gold was real enough that men, perhaps including a German soap maker, were ready to die for it.

The soap maker's gold might have been worth trying for. In 1953 John D. Mitchell, noted treasure hunter and hunter of treasure tales, estimated that a single prospector, armed with a pick and using burros for transport, could have taken a million dollars from the Jabonero in short order. That was in 1953 when gold sold for $32 an ounce.

However, though many have looked - Mitchell estimated that in his day at least a party a year left Yuma to search for the mine none have stepped forward to stake a claim. The gold is still there.

Of course "there" is the problem. Directions to the Jabonero are vague, even for a lost mine, perhaps in part because several versions of the basic story are told. All locate the mine somewhere along the old Camino del Diablo, the route that once connected Sonoita to Yuma and then to the world beyond.

Most place the mine in one of the hot scrub ranges skirted by the Camino, usually the Cabeza Prieta Mountains east of the Lechuguilla Desert or the Tinajas Altas Mountains to the west. Beyond that, not only do the tales disagree with each other on critical points, they don't agree with details of local geography either.

The Jabonero is about as hard to locate in time as in space. Dates of its discovery vary from 1830 to 1850 to as late as 1854. A trading expedition, usually said to consist of three Sonorans, had recently left home, most likely Caborca or Sonoita. The men have their minds on business, not gold; they plan to trade salt or soap, maybe in California. The soap maker, who will become one of the principals in the mine, is not always a member of the original expedition. In any case, he may be German or Mexican.

One night the pack animals slip their hobbles, and in the morning while rounding them up, one man stumbles across a magnificent vein of gold. The vein runs diagonally across the bottom of a small rock face. Ominously, blowing sand threatens to bury the treasure even as the man gapes at the gold. A thoroughly trustworthy fellow, he scoops a handful of nuggets off the ground and rushes back to tell his friends.

The party immediately saddles up and heads home to reprovision. Who cares about peddling soap in distant California when there's a mountain of gold a couple of days ride from home? If the soap maker was along originally, the party stocks up and goes straight back. Otherwise they enlist the soap maker. Why a soap maker? The stories are not clear on the point, but often he's the one who grubstakes the expedition.

In an extreme version of the grubstake story, the soap maker is a German living in Tucson who pays three Mexicans to work a mine he discovered long ago. For three months, the men faithfully deliver gold, more than $30,000 worth, but then they are not seen again. The soap maker, grown indolent and forgetful in the comparative luxury of mid-19th-century Tucson, cannot relocate his mine. Years later a dying Papago confesses he is the last survivor of a raiding party that slew the miners and then buried the mine under a pile of rubble and sand.

A massacre and deathbed confessions are basic themes in the Jabonero stories, but usually the soap maker is there for the worst of it. The day of the massacre starts uneventfully. The soap maker and his partners, some of whom have made short trips home to show off a bit of the loot and to drop vague hints about the whereabouts of the treasure, are down in the mine, hauling out gold in baskets. Indians show up, take offense at the miners' activities, and shoot them full of arrows. Sometimes the attackers conceal the mine with boulders, other times blowing sand suffices to bury the vein. Vultures and coyotes clean up the remaining scraps of evidence, and soon the mine is lost.

TURKEY-EGG BIG GOLD NUGGETS AWAIT FINDER OF DESERT MINE

According to a fellow named C. O. Bustamente, the soap maker, having alone survived the attack, crawled back to Caborca where he recovered from his wounds but not his fear. Pursued by relentless nightmares of the wilderness, he moved to Los Angeles in 1849. There, lying on his deathbed 30 years later, he gave Bustamente detailed directions to the mine.

It is in the Cabeza Prietas. The way starts at a water tank, then follows a road even more ancient than the Camino del Diablo to a fork. From there, three peaks can be seen standing together and separate from all others. The mine is in the middle peak. In an arroyo far below the fork, a big flat rock can just be seen. The rock is at the foot of the middle peak, and a row of crowbars placed on its top points to the mine.

Sounds simple? Many have thought so, but before you run out to comb the Cabeza Prietas, here are some things you should know: first, the Cabeza is now a refuge and entrance is restricted. Second, there's not a single water tank in the Cabeza Prietas. Not one. Hence there is no way to find the ancient road, the fork, the three peaks, the flat rock, the crowbars or, most critically, the treasure. On the other hand, lots of natural water tanks can be found in the Tinajas Altas Mountains (which means "High Tanks"). That suggests the interesting possibility that Bustamente's directions are really for the other range. Was Bustamente just bad at geography, or did he consciously misidentify the range?

In other Jabonero stories, the soap maker dies in agony, a victim of the massacre. The classic variation on this theme was told to John D. Mitchell by an aged Papago healer called "Doctor Juan." In his final hours, Doctor Juan shared several secrets with Mitchell, including his central role in the Jabonero massacre, as well as the fact that he was 128 years old. Doctor Juan confessed he had led a party of renegades in 1850 that had killed everybody at the Jabonero Mine including the soap maker.

The mine, Doctor Juan whispered, was tucked into a valley in the Tinajas Altas. It followed a thick vein of gold into the south side of a small peak. The sand was so deep that the mine had to be dug out daily. From the top of the peak, the old man remembered seeing the Cabeza Prieta Mountains off to the west. That little word "west" has been the main sticking point in this story since Mitchell published it 40 years ago. The Tinajas Altas are west of the Cabeza Prietas, so no one standing anywhere in the Tinajas Altas could ever have looked west and seen the Cabeza Prieta Mountains.

Perhaps Doctor Juan, carrying his hatred of the mine and those who sought it to his grave, deliberately misled Mitchell. Some students of the Jabonero suspect Mitchell simply wrote the story down wrong and never caught his error. Or it could be that the dying 128-year-old man grew confused, and a new peak arose in the landscape of his memory, a peak in the Tinajas Altas that is also east of the Cabeza Prietas.

That's the problem with the Jabonero; it has always existed more clearly on the deathbed than in the desert. In the most poignant version of the story, the soap maker, terribly wounded, returns alone to Caborca. There, from his deathbed, he whispers the one true story of the massacre to his sweetheart. But just as he is about to divulge the treasure's location, he dies. It seems fair to say that's when the mine truly vanished. Once the soap maker expired in his sweetheart's arms, the pink quartz vein matted with gold, the vein that ran through an entire mountain, tempted many men and killed a few, was lost forever . . . Maybe.

See Tips for Travelers with Back Roads story on page 54.