Legends of the Lost

LEGENDS OF THE LOST The Lost Petauge Mine Exists Somewhere in the Salt River Canyon, Say Several Accounts

By custom, lost mines choose the most difficult regions in which to become lost. Salt River Canyon is just difficult enough to be intriguing. Its Lost Petauge Mine not only chose a spectacular location, but engaged some colorful characters from Arizona's frontier days.

The Black River and White River rise in the forested White Mountains of eastern Arizona and merge to become the Salt River, lifeline of the Phoenix metropolitan area. On its way to Phoenix, the river carved spectacular Salt River Canyon.

The scenic gorge amazes travelers who come upon it suddenly, and whitens the knuckles of nervous drivers who dislike twisting mountain roads. U.S. Route 60 winds down the precipice on one side, crosses a curved bridge, and climbs out the other side.

The highway was not even dreamed of in 1879, when a rich vein of silver was discovered in the canyon, then lost again. One of the men who coveted the silver called it the Lost Petauge Mine, but I haven't figured out why. The word isn't in any of my dictionaries. Perhaps it was the name of the elusive Apache who brought the mine to the attention of Anglos.

The story begins in McMillenville, at that time a silvermining boomtown between Globe and Salt River Canyon. Prospector Charles McMillen and his partner, Theodore "Dore" H. Harris, had discovered the Stonewall Jackson Mine in 1876. Legend says that McMillen had been roaring drunk the night before in Globe, itself a raw new silver mining boom camp. Harris was a teetotaler. While he waited for McMillen to sleep it off under a juniper tree, he idly tapped a flaking stone ledge with his partner's prospecting hammer and found some sticky ore. It turned out to be silver, of course. Harris didn't recognize it, but when McMillen came out of his stupor, he knew they had struck it rich.

The lode was on the San Carlost Indian Reservation. That did not stop Anglos from mining it, while Congress was quickly removing it from the reservation and putting it back into public domain.

Other mines were located at McMillenville, which grew to more than 1,500 population, larger than Globe. The Stonewall Jackson's shaft was a refuge for miners and their families in July, 1882, when renegade Apaches led by Nahtiahtish broke out of San Carlos and raided a number of places, including McMillenville.

The mines petered out by 1890. The town had a single resident then. McMillen had long since drunk himself to death. Harris, who had lost his new fortune on the San Francisco Mining Exchange, was washing dishes in a Globe restaurant.

When I first poked through the ghost town a quarter of a century ago, several rickety buildings remained. Now, however, there is only a historic site marker beside U.S. 60 to remember its location.

Charles M. Clark was sometimes a telegrapher and sometimes a miner. He also was a writer, and a 1927 article for a Phoenix newspaper told of his visit to McMillenville in 1879. He had gone there to visit Keystone Clark, superintendent of the Stonewall Jackson Mine. Charles Clark didn't say whether he and Keystone were related.

"An Apache came to the cabin where I was quartered and held out a piece of ore, practically clean silver sulphide," Clark wrote. "The sample was about the size of one's fist, cut with a clean fracture on all sides, showing it had been broken from a larger piece, or that the vein from which it was broken was considerably wider than the sample."

Clark excitedly asked the Apache where the silver came from. The man signed that the spot was three days away from McMillenville, and to the northeast. Clark offered the man $10 to bring back a larger sample, and he agreed.

After the Apache left, the two Clarks sent to San Carlos for a Yuma Indian tracker who was living there. Did they intend to steal the Apache's silver mine? Only if they could. That was, regretably, standard business practice in 1879.

The Apache returned with a sample barely larger than the first. Charles Clark paid the $10 but sent the man back to bring the larger sample for which he had contracted. The Yuma Indian was assigned to trail the Apache and learn the location of the silver.

The Apache returned three days later. Clark paid him for more silver samples. He said the Indian bought some calico and other supplies and returned to his home on the San Carlos reservation.

The Yuma tracker returned a couple of days later and said he had lost the Apache in the depths of Salt River Canyon. If you have seen that rugged gorge, you can understand how hard it would be to trail someone there.

The story took on a little more glamour at this point, because Ed Schieffelin came into the picture. Schieffelin was one of those footloose prospectors who were always searching for gold and silver, but not much interested in mining.

In 1877 Schieffelin had gone from Mohave County in northwestern Arizona to Cochise County in southeastern Arizona in the company of soldiers. That was a prudent way to travel for Apaches were violently resisting the white man's invasion of their world.

From near Camp Huachuca, Schieffelin eyed some low hills to the northeast. Dan O'Leary, a colorful scout for the Army, had warned Schieffelin that if he wandered away from the Army outpost alone, he would find only his tombstone. The prospector went out on his own anyway, and soon discovered a rich vein of silver. With tongue firmly in cheek, he named his find the Tombstone Mine. That was the origin of legendary Tombstone, a raucous town best known for the fabled O.K. Corral gunfight. By 1879 Schieffelin took to roaming the hills again, while others got rich at Tombstone. Clark wrote, “Ed Schieffelin was at this time visiting some friends in Globe. I had known Schieffelin in Tucson, but Keystone had known him intimately, and had grubstaked him in Mohave County before he discovered Tombstone.” The Clarks told Schieffelin everything they knew about the mine. Schieffelin concluded, “It’s about a day and a half travel out from here in a general northeast direction. I’ll go out, and if I get into a country where that ore could be, I’ll know it. Then I can prospect for the vein.” “Schieffelin put in the balance of the season, about three months, prospecting for that silver vein,” Charles Clark wrote, “but never did succeed in finding it, nor has anyone else found it to my knowledge.

“Somewhere in the vicinity of the river, about 40 miles from McMillenville, in a general northeast direction, there is a vein of mighty rich silver sulphide, found by that Apache in 1879, and never found since.” Clark wrote his story nearly 70 years ago. There have been other kinds of mines in the vicinity of Salt River Canyon, but I find no reports of anyone finding silver there.