Legends of the Lost

LEGENDS OF THE LOST Cochise's Alleged Theft of Strongboxes Inspires an On-scene Investigation

Looking for a cave in the Dragoon Mountains is like looking for ice at the Arctic Circle: There are more caves, or rock shelters that look like caves, than can be explored in a year, much less an afternoon. Cochise Stronghold, on the eastern side of the Dragoon Mountains, is an impressive jumble of granite boulders where any person or any thing could remain hidden forever. The Apache leader Cochise knew that better than most. Reportedly born in the Dragoons around 1815, he used its labyrinth of tilted boulders, sheer cliffs, and oak forests as a natural fortress. From there he could hide from the cavalry or attack unwanted guests.

According to one John D. Mitchell, the mountain range also was a great place in which to hide a strongbox that had been stolen from a stagecoach in the late 1860s. Mitchell was an adventurous treasure hunter who wrote stories about lost mines and buried treasures. In 1940 he told another writer, Leland Lovelace, that he'd located the cave in the Dragoons where this strongbox had been buried. Lovelace may have had his doubts. In his book Lost Mines and Hidden Treasure, he wrote: “... Cochise learned that, in attacking the stages for the purpose of taking the horses and killing the passengers, it was also a part of the regular procedure to steal the money and the strongboxes of the Wells Fargo Express Company. Why the Indians should steal the bullion, cash, and money chests, no one can say, for they did not need money nor understand the value of it. And certainly bullion was no treasure to them.” In other words, if Cochise and his band did steal a Wells Fargo strongbox, there was no logical motivation for it.

Neither Mitchell nor Lovelace discussed the fate of the strongbox. While Mitchell's description would have put the cave in the general vicinity of Cochise Stronghold, did he actually find anything that looked even remotely like a strongbox? If he did, there isn't any written record and all Lovelace could remember was that Mitchell said the cave “had a floor of soft dirt.” That describes roughly two-thirds of the caves or rock shelters I've ever visited. Further complicating the issue, cows and other four-legged creatures sometimes adopt these places and over time manage to pulverize the soil, which then becomes soft and powdery. As a clue, that one seemed pretty useless, I thought.

I brought up this topic with Chuck Holt, a Forest Service ranger who lives in a small stone house at Cochise Stronghold, which now is a part of the Coronado National Forest. Holt was skeptical about the idea of Apaches stealing money. “The Apaches had no use for paper money or gold,” Holt said. “Apaches walked or ran, or they rode these little mustang ponies or scrawny mules. But mostly they walked, and it seems highly unlikely to me that they'd go through all the difficulty of hauling something as heavy as a strongbox all the way up here into the Stronghold. Why would they do it except to deprive the stagecoach people of it? From what I've read of the psychological profiles of the Apaches of that era, it doesn't sound like anything they'd do.” I asked Holt how many visitors ask him about the stolen strongbox and whether anyone has been hunting for it lately.

“I've never heard anybody ask about that,” he said. “We have some who ask about Cochise's grave because he's supposed to be buried here someplace. I've never heard about a strongbox from a stagecoach before.” A plaque in the campground at Cochise Stronghold says only one non-Indian knew where Cochise was buried. That man was Thomas J. Jeffords, a pros pector who became close friends with Cochise. But if Jeffords knew, he too took the information with him to the grave. For me the excursion is the best ingredient in any search for a stagecoach strongbox. Cochise Stronghold is a relatively short distance from Tucson (92 miles or about a 90-minute drive), and it's a beautiful place to camp and hike, especially in winter and spring.

As I entered the oak and manzanita forests in the Stronghold, it was easy to see why the place appealed to the Apaches. I walked west through East Stronghold Canyon, probably along the same route the Apaches took, and in only three miles found myself at the divide between East Stronghold Canyon and West Stronghold Canyon. The Apaches moved freely between the two canyons over this relatively low pass, which is slightly less than 6,000 feet in height.

A strongbox could be buried anywhere in this terrain. If I had to guess, I'd say the loot was probably buried at Council Rocks, where huge boulders form cavelike shelters on a hill with a panoramic view. The Apaches would hold meetings there, and some historians think Council Rocks was where Cochise finally signed a peace treaty with Gen. Oliver Otis “Christian Soldier” Howard in 1872.

That treaty gave Cochise a 55-square-mile reservation that included the Dragoons and the Chiricahua Mountains, and the San Simon and Sulphur Springs valleys, the traditional homeland of the Western Chiricahua Apaches. Cochise's “blood brother,” Tom Jeffords, was named Indian agent, and the peace lasted until after Cochise's death. The government eventually abandoned the reservation in the Dragoons and Chiricahuas and moved the Indians to the San Carlos reservation that exists today in the Gila River Valley between Globe and Safford.