Legends of the Lost

LEGENDS OF THE LOST Don Antonio's Frightful Find Guards a Lost Golden Bonanza

One spring day in 1901, a newspaper reporter looking for a story wandered down to the banks of the Salt River where it ran through Phoenix.

In the willows there, he came across an old prospector camped out with his dog and two ancient burros "with shrill voices."

The prospector told the reporter a tale of a rich gold mine hidden in a rugged canyon three days from Phoenix. The prospector had been there once, blindfolded, but couldn't find his way back. He had been searching for 20 years.

The story had all the elements of a good lost mine legend: Spanish priests, Indian attacks, skeletons, ghosts. Having been both a reporter and an editor, I would like to send that reporter back for more information. There were holes in the old prospector's story you could drive a burro through.

But then I remember being a young reporter, fascinated by the tales of crusty old-timers, men and women who had seen frontier Arizona the way we will never see it again. A lot of their stories seemed bogus. When I tried to pin them down, they became irritable and clammed up. Later other sources would tell me there was more than "a sketch of truth" in the stories the old-timers told.

So I imagine the reporter did the best he could. It's a good yarn, and the holes make it more intriguing.

The prospector's name was Henry Impeche Hayden, but he was known as "Old Harry La Paz" because he was a veteran of that short-lived mining town on the Colorado River. In 1862, the year before Arizona Territory was separated from New Mexico Territory, a rich gold strike brought 1,500 residents to La Paz, including Harry. The town prospered as the Yuma County Seat during the 1860s, but after the river flooded and changed its channel in 1866, the town lost its landing and businesses began moving to Ehrenberg. In 1871 Yuma replaced La Paz as the county seat, the gold was nearly gone, and the town's 150 buildings were on their way to being abandoned.

Harry La Paz" because he was a veteran of that short-lived mining town on the Colorado River. In 1862, the year before Arizona Territory was separated from New Mexico Territory, a rich gold strike brought 1,500 residents to La Paz, including Harry. The town prospered as the Yuma County Seat during the 1860s, but after the river flooded and changed its channel in 1866, the town lost its landing and businesses began moving to Ehrenberg. In 1871 Yuma replaced La Paz as the county seat, the gold was nearly gone, and the town's 150 buildings were on their way to being abandoned.

After he left La Paz, Harry toiled as a freighter for the men working the fabled Vulture Mine near Wickenburg. On one of his trips between Phoenix and Wickenburg, he came upon an old man called Antonio, a native of Mexico, who was being pursued by Apaches intent on killing him. Harry rescued Antonio, who was very grateful. They became friends, and eventually Antonio told Harry his story of a misplaced gold mine. Harry called him Don Antonio, apparently out of respect for his age.

Antonio said that some years earlier, he had been walking through a deep canyon in a rugged, broken range of mountains. From that and other sketchy details of the story, I suspect that he was east or southeast of Phoenix, perhaps in the Superstition or Dripping Spring mountains.

Antonio came first upon a small stone chapel and assumed it had been built by or for the Spanish priests who trekked north during the time Arizona belonged to Spain. (Arizona was acquired from Mexico by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 and the Gadsden Purchase of 1854, but Spanish explorers and missionaries had penetrated the region as early as 1539.) Continuing on through the canyon, Antonio came upon the ruins of a mine. There were cavelike shafts in the canyon walls, and he could see bits of free gold in the bed of the stream that had carved the canyon.

But Antonio saw something else human skeletons lying around, as though they had been killed in an Indian attack. He also saw espantos, or "frights," some sort of ghostly emanations. He fled back the way he had come. Antonio told Harry that if he hadn't come upon the chapel first, he'd never have known about it; the sight of the mine and its eerie occupants would have put him to flight before he had a chance to see the chapel.

More than one lost mine story involves mines worked first by Jesuits, then by the Franciscan missionaries who replaced them in 1767, when King Carlos III of Spain wanted more control over the Catholic Church within the Spanish Empire and expelled the powerful Society of Jesus. Most of these mines, the stories say, were worked by Indians overseen by priests. The mines were "lost" when Indians attacked or when the priests were called away. The most famous of them is the fabled Mine with the Iron Door, supposedly hidden in the hills north of Tucson. (See Arizona Highways, Oct. '92.) Antonio told Harry that the canyon with his lost mine was a curious one. What seemed to be the bed of an ancient river cut diagonally across the wash that appeared to be the natural bed of the canyon.Harry eventually persuaded Antonio to show him the mine. Antonio agreed on two conditions: Harry would go there blindfolded, so he could not learn the location of the mine, and he would not take away any of the gold.

Harry told the reporter, he figured if Antonio could show him a rich gold mine blindfolded, it was more than he had been able to show himself with his eyes open for some time past, and as to bringing the gold away, what was the matter with going back after it the next trip?

with his eyes open for some time past, and as to bringing the gold away, what was the matter with going back after it the next trip?

And so Antonio blindfolded Harry and they struck out from Phoenix, riding their burros. After three days, Harry said, they came to the canyon and the mine just as Antonio had described them, skeletons and all.

"The mine was a placer in the bed of some ancient river that ran diagonally across the present canyon, and in this bed of ancient sand and gravel the miners had done a great deal of work. The bed of the present canyon and of the ancient river is of slate, and on this gold was deposited richer than Harry had ever seen in the placers of California. This was made more evident from the gold that the padres had dug out and had then had to leave behind in one of the tunnels."

Harry didn't see any espantos, but nervous Antonio didn't want to stay long at the mine. Harry soaked up all the clues he could: The canyon ran north and south, and the strata at the top of the canyon walls seemed to be some sort of light-colored volcanic formation. Then he had to put on the blindfold again and begin the three-day trip back to Phoenix.

Antonio had been afraid of taking the trip, and he predicted bad things would happen to him. As the men approached Phoenix, they stopped at a canal to get a drink of water. When Antonio knelt to drink, a rattlesnake bit him. He was dead within an hour.

Harry found an old sheepskinskin map in Antonio's pocket.

Its crude sketching was probably intended to show how to find the ghostly old mine in the canyon.

"That was 20 years ago," the reporter wrote, "and since then, Hayden has spent most of his time looking for the lost bonanza, but all to no purpose as he has never been able to find the deep canyon cut by an ancient riverbed."

I'll bet Old Harry La Paz was searching the country east or southeast of Phoenix for that's an area likely to have been penetrated by Spanish and Mexican miners long ago. There are some rugged, broken mountains out that way places of jumbled geology, where one eon interrupts another, and where it would be easy to lose a gold mine.