Legends of the Lost

The frontier Apache were not in the habit of sharing their knowledge about precious metals with the white man, but in this case an exception seems to have been made. The year was 1948, and Iretaba, a Tonto Apache, was 80 years old, nearly blind, and very poor.

For years he had been a wrangler in the area of the Four Peaks and Superstition Mountains, living on there even after his people had been moved to the San Carlos Indian Reservation to the east. He became known as Puncher Bob and made friends with a number of Anglos. One of these was Colby Thomas, a mining engineer and prospector who had worked with considerable success in Arizona and Mexico.

As a favor to his friend, and in hopes of getting a little money for himself, Iretaba told Thomas of a rich gold mine he had seen as a child. Thomas was in his mid-80s, and by his own account too old to go searching for lost gold; but Iretaba's words enticed him. He listened closely.

Nearly a hundred years earlier, the old Apache told him before his people had been corralled onto reservations they had found two prospectors from Tucson excavating a blowout in territory the Apache considered their own. The Indians killed the men for violating their land, then covered the mine entrance with boulders and scattered the tailings so it never would be found again.

Iretaba's father had taken part in these proceedings and passed the story on to him when he was a child. Iretaba later found the mine and broke off some pieces of goldladen quartz but was punished severely for this and never went back again. Now he was too old and infirm to return to the secret area, but he wanted Thomas to find the mine.

He told Thomas to take State Route 87 from Phoenix to the Hughes Ranch turnoff, and from there to go to the Hughes well. At this point, he would find two converging washes, and he should follow the southerly wash about five miles east. Here he would find evidence of an old digging in the side of the wash. From this point, Thomas could climb out of the wash onto an elevated bank, where there was a huge paloverde. The opening of the mine lay 20 feet to the southwest of that tree.

Where had he gone wrong? All of the directions seemed correct, and the lay of the land was as Iretaba said it would be. Frustrated, Thomas returned to Mesa, where Iretaba lived with his son.

Iretaba insisted that Thomas had been in the right area and urged him to try again. Thomas said he had the desire but not the health. The heat and rugged terrain were more than a man of his age could handle. Again, however, the possibility of finding gold was more than he could resist. Thomas had heard other stories of Apache Indians in possession of gold and of their hidden mines.

During the Army's construction of the Reno Road in 1867, the Apache, as was noted in Camp Reno reports of the period, confirmed rumors of placer gold not far from the general site of the camp (off State Route 188 near Punkin Center) and brought to officers fine specimens for examination.

Another such tale involved a Dr. Thorne, who was captured by the Apache in the 1850s and held for nearly 20 years. At one point, his medical knowledge saved the entire band of his captors from illness, and eventually he was set free.

Upon returning home, he spoke of a fantastic lode he had come upon while roaming with the Indians along the Salt River. Dr. Thorne and many others searched for the lost mine, but nobody ever found anything except a few paltry nuggets of iron pyrite along Tonto Creek.

Yet another story involved a prospector named Charles Roderic, who had obtained $70 in gold in a single shovelful in a placer mine near the Four Peaks.

Thomas decided to give the search for Iretaba's mine another try. This time he enlisted the help of a younger friend, a prospector named Ed Abbott. They drove to the Hughes Ranch together, but Thomas waited by the car while Abbott went searching on foot.

Abbott also failed to locate the mine, but he did find a newly staked claim near the tailings in the wash bank. Had Iretaba sought other help? Thomas went to Iretaba to ask just that, only to learn that he and his son had moved away. In 1952 Thomas died at the age of 89.

That was all long ago, and the existence of the mine remains a mystery and a doubtful one at that. No significant claims have been made in the area since Thomas died, and the Arizona Department of Mines and Mineral Resources holds that no gold of any economic importance has ever been extracted from the Four Peaks vicinity. (Moreover, the area is now a wildlife preserve, prohibiting any further prospecting or mining.) So while the tales are abundant, the historical facts are as scarce as the gold itself.

There are, however, a few firsthand accounts of encounters with Apache who had substantial quantities of gold.

Francis Xavier Aubry, a celebrated guide and animal trader, recorded in his journal of 1853 that he saw Apache Indians using bullets made of gold; the same Indians gave him $1,500 worth of the metal (about six pounds) for a few articles of tattered clothing. And John Ross Browne, in his Adventures in Apache Country, said he met prospectors with nuggets the size of his palm that they claimed to have gotten from the Apache. Browne himself had been a skeptic, he wrote, until seeing the gold himself.

Perhaps there is more to the legends of Apache gold than mere romance; perhaps there are a few mines out there that remain as the Apache would like them to be: lost. And though the likelihood of finding one is slight, the possible tends to outweigh the probable in the hearts of those who would search for lost gold.

See travel tips with back-road story on page 54.