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Our story today on Mysteries of the Superstition Mountains is about an unusual man named Ted Sliger
he was born at the turn of the century in 1900 but he was raised in Las Cruces New Mexico
his family moved to Mesa in 1923. and in 1926 they established a gas station at the corner of
Power Road and Main Street in Mesa which today is a choice piece of property in 1934 it burnt
to the ground and they they lost everything but due to a friend some land was offered to him
to him a couple of miles further east at the corner of Recker Road and Main Street and but
the problem was there was no water anywhere near around there he had to haul water for everything
so Ted decided to drill a well and he hit 125 degree water you couldn't put it on a plant it
would kill it so he established this mineralized water he established a bath house and a motel
and he had to build cooling towers to bring the water down to a temperature that was a
for a human be able to get in it and there was those cooling towers are still there to this day
now I first met Sliger in 1958 when I came out here after I got out of the service to visit my
dad we were living a little less than a mile from Buckhorn and there was a lady there that
had a horse in a Corral across the road and she never wrote it but she did know that it needed
exercise so I rode that horse everywhere and I used to ride down to Buckhorn and I actually
helped Ted sligger on a couple of minor things but that was my first association with Buckhorn
well in 1940 well about that time that they drilled this well he married Alice
and Alice was totally responsible for contacting the San Francisco Giant baseball teams that's
later became the San Francisco Giants and they moved their operations spring training from Casa
Grande to Buckhorn these guys the Ty Cobb Willie Mays Ernie Banks Gaylord Perry all the big stars
of the old times was was living there and taking baths at the Buckhorn in 1949 a friend of Ted's
by the name of Alfred Lewis purchased Goldfield Ghost Town before it was a ghost town and he he
was tearing the place down and selling the lumber off and selling the Machinery that was left behind
and it doesn't quite explain how it happened but there was a huge Boulder that he had to move
and when he moved that Boulder he had opened up an entrance to an old mine tunnel
well he immediately came to Ted and Sliger and Nichols, Shumway and Lewis all formed a mining
operation and they removed fifty thousand dollars out of the old Mammoth mine near the old Mammoth
mine in 1949 until they tunneled into a more modern drift and they lost sight of the of the
vein but that's another story our Authority today deals specifically with the fact that in 1999
well Ted died in 1984. and in 1999 Alice closed the place down and um I was driving by there in
2007 and for the first time I saw for sale sign well that piqued my attention so what I
got through with whatever I was doing that day I stopped back by and asked to see Alice there
was still a lady working there and she said Alice was up at Lakewood for the summer and I asked if
there was any way I could contact her and she says well are you interested in buying the place I said
well no I couldn't do that but I am interested in what happens to the animals in the museum
you see Ted was a taxidermist and he was a good taxidermist and he had over 500 specimens
of Arizona animals and birds and reptiles in his Museum people that he knew would bring him animals
that they had taken and give him the skins and he he would process them he had a very unusual
way of doing that too because one time I talked to Alice out of a Gila monster for our Museum and
she told me that Ted always treated his animals with Arsenic and no bug would dare attack it well
this the the lady finally gave me Alice's phone number and this started a two-year Saga on an
attempt to get the animals donated to the Superstition Mountain Museum
so I called Alice we talked for a while and she hadn't thought much about what she was
going to do with it and so we hung up on the statement that I made that will Alice whatever
we do whatever you do with those animals that collection has got to stay together and I know
that struck a place in her heart and a couple of weeks later she called the museum and told
them that she had decided to donate him to us well time goes on and we had several meetings the board
I kind of think made a mistake at that time and and let me let me explain that that board
is no longer involved it's a whole new board up there so don't go blaming the museum for this
um they wanted Alice to put the money up to build a building to put the animals in and she quit
talking to us the board in one meeting had just virtually gave up and I I stood up and I said look
you had your shot now let me do it well her 100th birthday came around which I think was in 2007.
and uh we went I went to her birthday party and Jack Sam Felice went with me
and the lady in charge of the of the party uh was giving an address up front I think it was her
niece but I'm not sure if it was somebody that was related to her and Jack took me up and introduced
me to her and told her my name and that I was with this Superstition Mountain Museum and she says oh
you're the people that want the Alice the animals and you want Alice to pay for the building
I said no ma'am uh that's how the that's out of the question anymore he says we're
going to raise the money but I can't do that unless we know we have some document
that we're going to get those animals we can't go around raising money on
the outside chance that we wouldn't get them what do you do with the money then
so she said will you tell me what you want and I'll get Alice to sign it and sure enough Alice
and her lawyer notarized a statement and the intent to give us the animals and any other thing
she might decide to give us because there was a lot of other stuff around her besides animals
well two years goes by Alice must have been pretty sure she was going to do it because
she built a house across the street from the museum so she could be close to her animals
well we had a guy on the board that um he didn't like dead animals that's all I can say and uh
it got pretty sticky for a while and I got disgusted and I resigned from the museum
over this issue and it all fell through the animals were evidently donated to ASU
and they have piecemeal the whole thing out to anybody that wanted them
and I feel very badly about how that all came about well I wanted to tell you this story because
Buckhorn is an integral part of the community out here and it has been sold uh I read a story
about it a year or two ago and I think it was involves some relatives and the place had been
pretty well condemned by the city of Mesa so it's going to take a lot of work to put it back
in operation but the intent I believe is to reopen the well and and make it a bath house again and uh
of course the animals are gone but uh this this still would be a tremendous asset to the community
and uh I've got another story to tell you about Ted it's really unusual and that's the story for
the next time thank you for watching this episode of Mysteries of the Superstition Mountains [Music]
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