Legends of the Lost

Dig out your maps of Gila County, treasure hunters. Dust off your pick and shovel. Gas up the four-wheeler. This month we're headed for Coon Creek, a minor tributary of the Salt River in the Sierra Anchas. On rugged slopes above Coon Creek an eight-inch wide dike of solid gold runs three feet across the surface of the ground, then plunges to depths unknown but easy to imagine. We're tracking a cavalryman named Sanders who stumbled over the gold more than a century ago. Sanders, a tough old bird, had two predilections: he liked to travel alone through wild country, and he had an eye for gold. Such a man was at least half useful to the Army, and, in 1879, his superiors sent Sanders west from Fort Apache to scout for hostile Indians. But this time, Sanders found gold instead of war.

Unlike other lost treasures, Sanders' gold shouldn't be hard to find. When you come down to it, the strength to bushwhack chapparal and the ability to recognize gold in broad daylight are about the only skills required for this prospect. Obvious landmarks narrow the search down to a few likely locations.

Sanders discovered the gold above an impassable waterfall, a rare feature in the Coon Creek drainage. From the waterfall he climbed a low ridgeonly two possibilities there until a

beam of sunlight reflected off the gold straight

into his dreams. Given that a Assure in the century since Sanders. It's not as if he kept it a secret. In fact, many old-timers had directions to the strike, and the essential details of the route were widely published in 1912. Of course, finding the gold might be the easy part. Sanders' problems started after he made his strike.

At first the expedition seemed routine, if a little dicey. Because he liked his hair in its natural position, Sanders avoided trails as he scouted below the Mogollon Rim. He crossed lands few others, white or red, had seen. Transforming necessity into virtue, the old soldier kept a sharp eye out for precious metals at the same time that he scouted for hostiles. When he crossed the Salt River, Sanders struck the trail of an Apache band that had rustled cattle from a nearby ranch. Without waiting for reinforcements, he tracked the Indians across the eastern edge of the Sierra Anchas. At first the trail was easy to follow, but when the band began to break up, its tracks slowly diffused into the chapparal where they finally vanished. By then Sanders had reached the top of Aztec Peak at the head of Coon Creek. From there he plotted a route down the creek and then back to the Salt River. The way to the creek led through thickets of scrub oak and manzanita, while briars guarded the stream's banks, and boulders choked its bed. Sanders forced a route eight miles down the creek until he came at last to the aforementioned impassable waterfall.

TRAGEDY HAUNTS THE LOST GOLD OF THE SIERRA ANCHAS

There he dismounted, and, dragging his horse up a long ridge, he sought a detour around the cascade. At the top of the ridge, Sanders was cheered by two sights. First, he descried a rough but straightforward way back down to the creek below the waterfall. Second, he glimpsed the gleaming tip of a pile of gold.

Both the quality and quantity of the gold exceeded even Sanders' dreams (and he, a lone cavalryman who had trailed a gang of Apache outlaws for a month, had dreams enough for a company of men). Chunks of lustrous metal spilled from the outcrop of decomposed granite and quartz. Sanders imagined himself atop a golden cone that extended to the center of the world. At last he tore himself away, but not before he had memorized the surrounding landscape.

When he got back to Fort Apache, Sanders begged for relief from his enlistment. He fabricated family emergencies and personal disasters. He feigned injury, considered (but ultimately rejected) desertion, then became surly and insubordinate, all to no avail. He had signed up for "40 miles a day on beans and hay," and the cavalry insisted he take his full ration.

Two years later, Sanders was discharged. In all that time he had not returned to Coon Creek, but at least he could be sure no one else had found the fabulous outcrop. Doubtless such a find would have been claimed quietly, then loudly proclaimed, and the fame of it would surely have reached as far as Fort Apache.

Yet a threat arose as Sanders rode out of the fort for good. A blowhard with the portentous name of Miner claimed to have found a bonanza in the Sierra Anchas. In Phoenix he inspired a frenzy of gold fever and soon raised a party of 300 men. The fact was, Miner had found nothing more valuable to mine than a very tall tale, and Sanders, with his long experience of the Sierra Anchas, soon realized the man was a fraud. Still Sanders joined the party to make sure nobody got lucky.

As they neared Coon Creek, Sanders consistently used his reputation as a cavalry scout to lead the party away from the site of his gold. Then one night he sneaked back to the outcrop. It was risky - he might easily have been followed - but Sanders had not seen his treasure in two years. Shortly after midnight, he stood on the mound of gold again and knew that soon it would all be his. All he had to do was to get rid of the pesky gold seekers below.

By Larry Winter

When a rock fell on one of the men a few days later, Sanders' problem was solved. The entire party packed up and headed west to Walnut Spring where they could nurse the wounded man. Next they moved farther west, and the danger to Sanders was over.

Within half a year, Miner had been condemned as a charlatan, and his party, which never came close to gold, had disbanded.

At last Sanders was free to stake his claim. Only a few loose ends remained. In particular, he had to decide the exact piece of ground to claim. Of course he would take the outcrop, but where should he go from there? In those days a claim was limited to 600 by 1,500 feet, and a fortune could be lost if the layout were wrong.

To locate a claim systematically, a prospector had to estimate the direction of the mother lode from a careful survey of the ground around a strike.

With three others, Sanders left Phoenix in 1882 or 1883. Although he had not told his partners precisely where they were headed, Sanders had described the golden outcrop to them in sufficient detail that they were willing to risk their lives for a share in it. Soon they got the chance.

At Camp Reno, the men learned that a group of Apache, perhaps Geronimo and his followers, was on the warpath in the Sierra Anchas. That was enough for two of the party, but Sanders and the other man pressed on. After all, Sanders had chased Apache through that country by himself. What did he have to fear from any band of marauders?

Plenty, as it turned out. Neither Sanders nor his partner ever returned. Within a month, a rescue party set out from Phoenix and tracked the missing men to Walnut Creek, but there the trail ran cold.

Twenty years later, two cowboys chasing strays found a human skull by the side of Coon Creek, then found another, then found two piles of assorted bones nearby. With a little effort they made out the scorched foundations of a ruined cabin. The story of the place was easy to read, indeed it had been common two decades before: the men had died fighting Indians. They had been slaughtered in the open as they fled their burning cabin.

Only one feature of the story was out of the ordinary. One of the skeletal hands clutched a muddy rock. When one of the cowboys knocked the mud away, he gasped. The rock was solid gold, three-quarters of an inch wide, two inches long. Carefully carved into it was the name "Sanders." A fitting memorial, but not the only one. In the canyon above, a dike of gold rose unseen out of a ridge of quartz. It still does.