Legends of the Lost

A desert sandstorm. A riderless horse. A missing pistol and a dead man with his pockets full of gold. From more than a century ago come these clues to the legendary Lost Six-shooter Gold Mine somewhere north of Quartzsite. The particulars surrounding the Lost Six-shooter were first recorded in the 1930s by John Mitchell, a well-known author and treasure hunter. More information was added in the 1950s by Milton Rose, an authority on lost-mine stories. Both men told the tale of a man called Perkins (or Jenkins - the name has never been confirmed), who in the late 19th century was boss of the Planet Mine, one of Arizona's earliest commercial copper mines. In the winter of 1884, Perkins escorted a group of investors from the Planet (located along the Bill Williams River) south about 50 miles to the nearest stage stop at Tyson's Well (now Quartzsite). After seeing his party to the stage, Perkins decided to head back to the Planet. A squall was brewing and Perkins, new to the desert, had never witnessed it in one of its foulest moods. Unprepared, he rode off into the teeth of a howl-ing, choking, sun-black-ening sandstorm, a storm that literal-ly swallowed him up.

Days passed and Perkins failed to show up at the Planet Mine. Then, one day, his horse appeared, half dead, at the gate to the Planet corral. Planet miners backtracked the horse to the spot where Perkins' body lay half-buried in drifting sand. The storm had exacted its price; that much was obvious. But a search of Perkins' body revealed some peculiarities. For one thing, his six-shooter was missing from its holster. Even more curious or so the miners certainly thought - the dead man's pockets held several chunks of rich ore. It was gold-laced quartz, and it later assayed out at $25,000 per ton! Where had it come from? Only one clue turned up: Perkins' own notebook. In it he had scribbled these last words: "Found gold ledge by rocks 15 feet high. Two rocks alike. Knocked off pieces. Very rich. Dust in air too thick to tell exact location. Think it is above ravine I come up seven miles." From the location of Perkins' body a few miles west of the town of Bouse, on the edge of an extensive no-man's-land of undulat-ing and trackless sand dunes, it was clear that he'd been lost. It's probable he had been blinded by the storm then wandered in circles until stumbling upon a rock out-crop that offered some meager protection from the strafing wind. There he had huddled, exhausted, until he noticed the rock itself. He was sitting next to a treasure in gold. Even in his misery, Perkins must have felt elated. He stuffed samples of the ore into his pockets and, possibly, left his six-shooter behind to mark the spot. Then he set out for the Planet Mine, going an unknown distance before he expired. In the weeks that followed, prospectors crisscrossed the dunes in search of Perkins' lost ledge of gold. Unfortunately, it had been buried by sand. And that is exactly where it might remain today if it were not for two Quartzsite men, Bill Keiser and Dan Patch. Keiser arrived on the Arizona desert sometime in 1898, having come west, in his words, because "domestic affairs [back home in Pennsylvanial had taken a turn for the worse." His first job was that of a hard-rock miner at the King of Arizona, a mine for which the Kofa Mountains were named. Later, he prospected all across the southwestern desert. Sometime in the 1950s, getting on in years, Keiser decid-ed to commit his life to paper. The book that emerged, Bill Keiser's Lost Mines and Prospector's Lore (edited for the Yuma County Historical Society by Pauline Sandholdt of Salome), was published in 1978, some 15 years after his death. Keiser's book contains an extraordinary story, dubbed "Lost Mine in the Sand Dunes." This story eerily echoes the legend of the Lost Six-shooter Gold Mine. His story came to him in 1908 from Sam Butler, an old prospector from Bouse. Butler claimed that in the 1880s he discovered a man nearly dead in the desert. That man had some chunks of ordinary black rock, a type found in the near-by sand dunes. But closer inspection showed that the rock contained gold, later valued at $750 per ton. Unfortunately, the man died without revealing the location of his find. All anyone knew about him was he'd been lost in a sandstorm between Quartzsite and a mine he owned called the Planet. A sober, steady man, not much given to believing lostmine legends, Keiser apparently believed this one. He wrote: "This lost mine is no myth. It may be covered up, but if it is, it's apt to be uncovered again. It is located among the sand dunes in an area about 10 miles long and six miles wide, with the new State Route 95 skirting the eastern side of it." Was this the Lost Six-shooter? Keiser evidently thought so. In 1912 he made an unsuccessful try at finding it himself. Years later, enter Dan Patch, who says he found the lost mine that Keiser described, and it has made him rich.

WEALTHY MINER SAYS HE'S FOUND THE LONG LOST SIX-SHOOTER MINE MAYBE

Patch, 69, clearly recalls the lean days when he washed dishes, worked a sluice box, and weeded sugar beets on his hands and knees for 25 cents an hour. He also recalls Bill Keiser. That was back when Patch was young and living in Quartzsite, and old man Keiser was a friend of the family. Despite the connection, Patch swears he wasn't looking for any lost mine when he staked his claim. In fact, it's hard to believe he was even thinking about gold: he named the mine Copperstone.

Today Copperstone is a premier modern gold mine, a vast open pit 3,000 feet long, 1,000 feet wide, and more than 400 feet deep. It looks little like it did when Patch first saw it. Then it was nothing but sand and sky and creosote bush, with just a few black copper-stained rocks scattered across the surface. Nevertheless, the place "had a feeling" of gold, says Patch. Only later did he find evidence that Copperstone might actually be the legendary lost mine.

What was the evidence? First, its location. Copperstone is 13 miles north of Quartzsite and five miles west of State Route 95, precisely the area described as holding the Lost Six-shooter. Second, Patch foundKeiser's old claim notice in a jar on the property. Third, the place has gold. The first yearof operation, Copperstone extracted60,000 ounces of gold more gold than the entire state of Arizona had produced the year before. And that was only the begin-

By Rick Heffernon

ning. Before it is exhausted, Copperstone is expected to produce more than a quarter billion dollars in gold. But gold, believe it or not, is the weak link in Patch's chain of evidence. Copperstone holds relatively low-grade ore, averaging $40 per ton. In contrast, the lost-mine rocks would run (at today's prices) between $15,000 per ton and $528,000 per ton, depending on which story you believe. So the question remains. Is Copperstone the Lost Sixshooter? Patch freely grants it might not be. "I'll tell you one thing, though," he says, eyes blazing. "There's gold for sure out there much more gold than has ever been found. We haven't even scratched the surface."

But is it the Lost Six-shooter? Or does that gold remain hidden beneath the sand, waiting for a strong wind to un-cover it?

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