PICKET POST, GHOST OF A GHOST TOWN

Viola Slaughter, Arizona Pioneer

mysterious warning, he had left the lighted room just as the assailants were about to shoot him through an open window. The ringleader of the four renegade Mexicans, who were soon caught, was Manuel Garcia, a young Yaqui who had spent his whole life on the ranch and had nothing but kindness there. Garcia confessed later that he had listened to tales of a chest full of gold that was supposed to be in Don Juan's room and planned to shoot him first of all and then loot both house and commissary. When this plan fell through, he and his companions ran away. They lacked courage to enter the house while the mighty fighting man still lived.

A few months later, when he was eighty years old, John Slaughter died peacefully in his bed as he had foretold. For lack of a son, the great ranch was sold and Viola's days were spent with lawyers and bankers, the whole estate being left to her.

She bought a home in Douglas, and with Edith Stowe as her faithful companion made an effort to fill days empty of meaning. Housekeeping, formerly a big affair involving freight wagons full of provisions and the killing of beeves, now meant giving orders to two maids and a daily trip a few blocks in her car to buy groceries in paper sacks. All so different from the way things were in the old days.

Edith Stowe did most of the driving because Viola drove a car as she had ridden horses, at top speed, expecting an automobile to use horse sense. She once turned over a shining new sedan on the Bisbee highway, and when she and her companion crawled out uninjured, Viola looked at the car, which lay wheels in air, and said scornfully, "I never did think much of it wouldn't keep to the road."

Her love of the horse-and-buggy days led her to consent to sit in the saddle once more and lead the parade when the city of Douglas staged its first big rodeo in 1939. Viola want-ed Steele Slaughter Woods, a relative, to ride beside her be-cause he had been a cowboy on the San Bernardino Ranch in the days of its greatness. Once committed to taking part in the rodeo, she began to enjoy the prospect as it was to be a fiesta entirely devoted to horses. The floats were to be horsedrawn, and in the saddle would be many cowboys in their usual garb, cowgirls in bright silk shirts, and Mexican vaqueros in the gay colors of their country.

to sit in the saddle once more and lead the parade when the city of Douglas staged its first big rodeo in 1939. Viola wanted Steele Slaughter Woods, a relative, to ride beside her because he had been a cowboy on the San Bernardino Ranch in the days of its greatness. Once committed to taking part in the rodeo, she began to enjoy the prospect as it was to be a fiesta entirely devoted to horses. The floats were to be horsedrawn, and in the saddle would be many cowboys in their usual garb, cowgirls in bright silk shirts, and Mexican vaqueros in the gay colors of their country.

Viola borrowed from a mu-seum the sidesaddle that she had placed there with many other Slaughter relics and res-urrected a riding costume that had lain in a trunk for years. On the day of the parade, she mounted the horse that Steele led to her door with a gaiety she had never expected to feel again. Riding with all her old grace, her form still erect, Viola stole the show from the cow-girls who followed her smiling progress through the crowded streets.

again. Riding with all her old grace, her form still erect, Viola stole the show from the cowgirls who followed her smiling progress through the crowded streets.

When the parade disbanded, she said to Steele, "Let's take a ride," and quite sedately they went out to the park and along its paths. Then they turned their horses homeward, but it soon proved to be quite a different ride. Hitherto they had ambled along at a walk, choosing the unpaved back streets. On the way home, Viola suddenly spurred her horse into a gallop, and Steele, taken by surprise, could only follow at the mad pace she set. By miracle the shod horses kept their footing on pavement slick with oil and polished to a glaze by rubber tires, and Steele's heart had climbed almost up to his mouth when the race ended before her own door. Viola knew this was her last ride.

“There she goes! Where she stops, nobody knows!” The cry of the croupier in one of its 14 saloons and gambling halls epitomized life in the mining town of Picket Post, later called Pinal City.

The social life of the town was centered in these noisy “palaces of pleasure”; the businesslife around a bank, a couple of stores, the old stamp-mill — and the Silver King mine, five miles up on the side of the Pinal Mountains. The rest was shacks and tents. All occupied a little basin not much larger than an ordinary city block.

But Midas had touched the Silver King in the early 1870s, and more than 1,000 miners, freighters, gamblers, and stray cowboys made Picket Post a lively city.

The story goes back to 1872, a little more than 10 years after civilization began to take root in this region.

With the vanguard of pioneers came the Army to help fight hostile Indians and to build wagon roads. It was for the latter purpose that General Stoneman, in 1872, established an outpost about two miles south of the present location of Superior and U.S. Highway 60. It was called Camp Supply.

The central figure in the drama that played out around the discovery of the Silver King Mine was an enlisted man, a wanderer. All the ensuing time and hit-or-miss recording of early-day facts have left of his name is “Sullivan.” A moody sort of fellow, Sullivan had come from the East, probably a member of one of the old Southern families destroyed by the Civil War. He had used the Army as a means of coming west but was dissatisfied with Army life and the grueling work of the road camp.

One evening after work, Sullivan, having sought sol-itude near the camp, idly began picking up small fragments of rock and crushing them with a larger stone. No doubt his idle mood left him when he found that some of the small stones heavy black metallic lumps - would not crush. They merely flattened like lead. Sullivan was not a miner, but he knew he had found some kind of metal, probably silver. He placed several of the nuggets in his pocket and told no one in the camp about them.

His enlistment expired a short time later, and he struck out to find someone he could trust to examine the mineral. He also needed money. Prob-ably he had an idea of going to San Francisco, already the metropolis of the West. How-ever, his first stop was the ranch of Charles G. Mason, near Phoenix. Sullivan stayed at the Mason ranch several weeks and, to reassure himself that the chunks of metal were silver, showed them to the rancher. But he would not tell where he found them.

Under strange circumstances, Sullivan disappeared. Because of the long stretches of desert, travel in those days was from ranch to ranch, but none of the ranchers reported seeing him. It was believed he had been killed by Indians.

About this time, the McMillan and Globe district went wild over the discovery of several silver deposits. Attempts were made to find the source of Sullivan's nuggets.

In 1875 Mason gathered four of his neighbors and organized another expedition. Besides himself were Benjamin W. Regan, William H. Long, Issac Copeland, and another man whose name is unrecorded.

Picket Post, Ghost of a Ghost Town

Near the animal, he noticed an outcropping of black rock and curiously broke off a piece.

He stopped in his tracks.

"I've struck it!'"

To ensure the venture's financial gain, Mason proposed going to the Globe-McMillan district with a pack train and bringing back a load of ore for shipment to Yuma and, thence by boat, to refineries in San Francisco.

But their search for Sullivan's strike seemed about to end in failure. On March 21, 1875, they were attacked by Apaches while en route home. After a bitter battle in the rugged area atop the Pinals, the raiders were driven off, but the un-identified member of the party was killed. The survivors round-ed up their scattered pack train and took the body to Camp Supply. There they buried their luckless companion in one of the old stone ovens used by the soldiers to bake bread.

Meantime, the pack animals were left to forage around the camp. One of the animals strayed.

The simple frontier rites performed, Mason and his friends were ready to continue their journey, bent on getting out of the mountains as soon as possible in order to avoid another brush with the Apaches. Copeland was sent for the straying pack mule, grazing in plain view several hundred yards away. Near the animal, he noticed an outcropping of black rock and curiously broke off a piece as he passed it. He stopped in his tracks.

"I've struck it!" he shouted to his companions. Forgetting the pack train, the other three ran to him. "It's good enough for me!" Copeland shouted joyously as they came up. It was the same outcropping on which Sullivan had found the metallic fragments three years before.

The four men organized a company, dividing ownership equally, and the Silver King almost overnight became one of the richest and most famous mines in Arizona's history.

Several of the rich strikes in the Globe area petered out, and, fearing the Silver King would do the same, Copeland and Long sold out to their partners within a few months for $80,000.

A short time later, Mason weakened and sold his part to Col. S.M. Barney, of Yuma, for $250,000. When Mason sold, first-class ore assayed from $8,000 to $20,000 per ton. It was shipped overland in big-wheeled freight wagons to Yuma, then placed aboard boats for San Francisco.

Soon Regan, also beginning to suspect the mine had a bottom, sold to Colonel Barney for $300,000. To others, though, the mine's wealth seemed unlimited. It was one of the few Arizona mining stocks regularly quoted on the San Francisco stock exchange, and its dividends passed the $1,000,000 mark.

Picket Post's name was changed to Pinal City. The Silver King, according to Harry Brook, editor of The Pinal Drill, was vomiting great chunks of virgin silver. “The superintendent, Aaron Mason, would sometimes drive down from the mine to the mill with a string of silver wire several feet long twisted around his sombrero,” Brook later related. “They sent native silver to the mint and had it made into silver dollars which were given away as souvenirs.” Then one day a travel-worn wanderer walked into the booming mill town. Gazing wonderingly about, he strayed up to the mill office and asked for a job. It was Sullivan!

After wandering over the country for nearly a decade trying to interest someone with money in helping him develop his mine, he had returned penniless. No one would believe his story when he refused to show where he found his nuggets. He went to work as a laborer. Like an ill omen,