Legends of the Lost

LEGENDS OF THE LOST The Shoemaker's Lost Placer: a Rich Trove or Superficial Bust?

Placer mining in Arizona dates to at least 1774, when Spanish priest Father Manuel Lopez reportedly taught Indians to sift through gravels in the Quijotoa Mountains north of the Mexican border. Since then, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, more than 500,000 ounces of gold have been retrieved from such surface deposits in this state. Legend has it that in late 1887, a Prussian named Charles Rodig found three of these ounces in a single shovelful of sand. When Rodig came to Arizona in 1876 (at the age of 50), he wasn't a prospector but a cobbler. He had learned his trade in Germany before immigrating and quickly established a successful trade in Phoenix. One of his best customers was another German, a prospector named Jacob Waltz, who later became known as the Dutchman of the Lost Dutchman Mine. Waltz was hard on his shoes and always paid with gold. Over the years, Waltz told Rodig various stories about his adventures in the Superstition Mountains and about the lode he had found there. These stories tantalized the shoemaker, and it wasn't long before he began prospecting himself. When his business slowed during the summer months, Rodig would close up shop and head toward the mountains with a shovel and a miner's pan. He would scour the water Courses of the Superstitions and Mazatzals for several weeks at a time, panning for nuggets where the soil looked promising. During the summer of 1887, Rodig was camped somewhere east of Four Peaks with two helpers when he came across a particularly black section of gravel near a stand of cottonwood trees in a shallow creek. Black sand doesn't guarantee that gold is present, but it can mean that the conditions for finding gold are favorable. Rodig sunk his shovel into the streambed and then panned through the contents. The water washed away the sand, leaving behind a heavy handful of nuggets. What happened next was so muddled by storytellers over the years that the entire episode sounds a bit farfetched even for a legend. "With their attention concentrated upon the business in hand," wrote Leland Lovelace in Lost Mines and Hidden Treasure (1956), "they were somewhat dazed when, at the sound of a war-whoop, they realized they Were attacked by renegade Apaches. They barely saved their scalps, and in their hasty retreat, they reached the bank of the Salt River without noting landmarks sufficiently definite for a return to the canyon of the black sand." In this version of the legend, Rodig never manages to relocate his rich placer - despite numerous efforts and the only remaining clues are a shovel and pick abandoned somewhere in the foothills of the Four Peaks. "He who rediscovers the black sand placer," the story ends, "will have the key to the most celebrated lost treasure in the West." A more plausible explanation, however, appeared in the Arizona Republican on June 3, 1892. Here it was reported that a messenger had warned Rodig that Apaches were in the area, and "killing everyone who came in their way." The article continued, "As the mountain fastnesses were well known to the red men, they [Rodig and his help] thought it advisable to vacate. So after taking the bearings of the location they took their departure for a place of safety." Now, the paper reported, Rodig was off to search for his abandoned placer once again, and he was confident that he could find it quickly. (On an earlier effort to relocate the treasure, Rodig had been stricken with sunstroke and nearly died before being discovered by a passerby and brought back to Phoenix.) In late August, 1892, Rodig returned from a five-week foray into the mountains. The Tempe News reported that he'd found ore "said to be the richest ever brought back to the city and Mr. Rodig is probably one of the happiest men who ever walked the streets of Phoenix." It is uncertain how much gold Rodig eventually retrieved, but in October of the same year, he filed a claim in Maricopa County under the Mining Act of 1872. According to the claim's Location Notice, the mine lay nine and a half miles northeast of Phoenix, two and a half miles east of Cave Creek Road, and about three-quarters of a mile due north of the Arizona Canal. The mine's official name became the "Confidence Mine,"

It is uncertain how much gold Rodig eventually retrieved, but in October of the same year, he filed a claim in Maricopa County under the Mining Act of 1872. According to the claim's Location Notice, the mine lay nine and a half miles northeast of Phoenix, two and a half miles east of Cave Creek Road, and about three-quarters of a mile due north of the Arizona Canal. The mine's official name became the "Confidence Mine,"

and a series of rock cairns marked the claim's dimensions.

But was the Confidence Mine the Lost Shoemaker Placer of lore? And if so, did it prove to be as rich as the first shovelful indicated? The location given in the claim puts the Confidence Mine a fair distance from the Four Peaks area where Rodig originally said he'd found the rich placer. But the timing of the claim coincides with his rediscovery of the mine, and it's very possible he lied about the exact location of the gold until he could file a claim.

At any rate, it does not appear that Rodig ever truly struck it rich. He continued his work as a cobbler, and in 1912 he was admitted to the Arizona Pioneers' Home, a privately endowed facility which served as, among other things, subsidized housing for retired miners. By this time, his wife had been dead for years, and he had no children or relatives in Arizona. As for the Confidence Mine, no existing records indicate that it ever became a productive operation.

This fact does not surprise Greg Davis of the Superstition Mountain Historical Society. "That's fairly typical of mines in this area," says Davis, who has been compiling information on treasure stories for decades. "A lot of these finds were superficial and played out pretty fast." Indeed, Phoenix newspapers from the late 1800s are full of short blurbs about promising claims in the area, but very few of these produced much at all.

Finally, one version of the legend has it that Rodig went crazy wandering through the Mazatzals looking for gold and that his sun-bleached bones still lie scattered somewhere in the desert. A faded record at the Pioneers' Home in Prescott, however, shows that he died there of "stomach problems" in 1920, at the age of 84. As hopeful and persistent a gold hunter as he had been over the years, it would appear that Charlie Rodig ultimately made more money repairing the shoes of other prospectors than he did plucking nuggets from a gold pan.