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welcome to the Mysteries of the Superstition Mountains where we explore
the history and the mysteries surrounding the Superstition Mountains
the first lost mine of the Superstition Mountains which was not the Lost
Dutchman mine it was a Dr. Thorne mine our story really begins just prior to
the Civil War when CE Cooley moved from Virginia to Santa Fe New Mexico
when the civil war broke out he joined the Union Army and sometime during the
Civil War or shortly thereafter he met this doctor thorne. Dr. Thorne convinced
him about this mine that he he had been taken to by the Apache Indians just as a
short review in the late 1850s Dr. Thorne was captured by some Apache and
these people realized this was an unusual individual and a very
valuable person and he treated the Indians while he was in under captivity
eventually he got away from him and ended up at Fort McDowell which was
established in 1865 that although he wasn't an army doctor he did continue to
treat the Apaches that lived in and around Fort McDowell and a couple of you
know the things that we consider normal everyday occurrences with a doctor were
somewhat mysterious to the Apaches and they were so happy with Dr. Thorne and
his treatment of the Indians that they wanted to reward him so they took him
blindfolded from Fort McDowell into the superstitions to a mine where he was
allowed to take all the ore he could carry and then of course they took him
blindfolded back to Fort McDowell you would think from hearing the story that
this was just a one-day trip wouldn't be that far
getting documentation on stuff like this is rather difficult I mean we can't sit
here and say Dr. thornes mine ever existed or the Lost Dutchman mine there
existed but you can't disprove a theory just because you didn't find it you know
but there is documentation about the search for Dr. Thorne's lost mine
C E Cooley after talking to Dr. Thorne who gave him all the clues of the things
that he saw how he when they took the blindfold off the ability to see
Sombrero Butte in the distance a stone Corral and a few other things he
described and perhaps even showed him a piece of the gold that he had the ore that
he had left over CE Cooley took it to heart and organized a search for the
mine in 1869 Cooley was an unusual individual when he came to Arizona he
acquired with a partner a considerable amount of land and when the time came to
divide that land up to see who got the best piece they decided to do it over a
card game and it was Cooley that drew the low card and won the best piece of
land and that's how Show Low got its name because he showed the low card
Banta was also in the group AF Banta all these men were former military they were
all Scouts for the army and while Banta was scouting one group of military he
was the man that discovered the meteorite crater and the leader of the
army squad that he was scouting for nicknamed it Franklin's hole AF Banta
Franklin was these usually went by Franklin even though that was his middle
name and of course the day they just call it the meteorite crater and Henry W
Dodd was the third man he was a colonel but I couldn't find much
information about him or even find his picture but these three men left a Zuni
village in New Mexico and they had several Chaya torille Indian scouts and
guides and they made their way from the Zuni villages all the
to approximately where cibecue is today part of the Indian Reservation there
they meant friendly Indians cartera indians because cooley was married to a
Chiefs daughter chief Pedro, Pedro I'm not sure that's the way you pronounce it
but in the bargain I guess according to Indian tradition
the younger sister of the wife went along with the package so he had both
of them on his hands whether he married them or not is I don't know but he was
well-known among the among the Indians Cooley in fact was the man who suggested
the White Mountains as an Indian reservation at Fort Apache and so they
recuperated two or three days you know today we get in a car and we we can go
anywhere in Arizona in three and a half hours but these guys you know that they
had to follow the military rule of 30 miles a day on beans and hey so they
spent a lot of nights in the field getting to cibecue and as they prepared
to go further west in a search for Dr. thornes mine they were met by some
Pinell Indians who warned him that if they crossed their boundary there would
be trouble and although the cartero guides were willing to go on the three
white men decided that it wasn't worth starting a war over with these friendly
Indians behind them so they called off the search so 1869 was the first search
for Dr. Thorns mine which it didn't absolutely nothing but Banta became a
newspaperman and he took copious notes of everything that he did and this is
some documentation that you will find in the Journal of Arizona history put out
by the Arizona Historical Society from Tucson some of these old journals that
have been around and Banta also published some of his
treks like this in the Prescott paper and later on in the Payson paper I don't
think that any of those things survived but it stirred up the imagination of a
lot of people in fact another trek to look for Thorne's mins occurred still in
1869 when a Thomas Miner, Thomas Miner was his name
organized 28 men from Prescott who came down to Verde River and they were all to
meet at the Salt River just just below Fort McDowell no much no numbers were
mentioned but Wickenburg sent a party and Phoenix sent a party met with the
Prescott party and Cooleys Show Low party so if you just averaged out 30 men for a
group you'd have over a hundred men in this first group but another group was
organized in Tucson and governor Sanford a territorial governor was a leader of
that group and also involved in that was some prominent names but Al Sieber of
all people was one of the people in governor Sanford's group there was a
there was a roster of people that listed as 267 people involved in this whole
thing and they met in Florence Superior didn't exist at that time
Mesa didn't exist at that time Goldfield hadn't been discovered yet but they they
all group together in Florence and went over to globe and then up into the Tonto
basin where Roosevelt Lake is now established further north into the
Sierra anchors mountains which would be near her Payson is today one man was
killed by accident which did nobody explain another man was killed by
Indians they lost a few horses and the Tucson group after a couple of
weeks in the field decided to call it off and went back to Tucson
the Cooley group decided then to go on back to the Show Low but the
Phoenix, Wickenburg and Prescott group went down the Salt River through the
Superstition Mountains exploring all the way for the Dr. thorne's lost mine when
they got back to Fort McDowell they disbanded the Prescott group went back
up the Verde River Wickenburg followed the Phoenix group to Phoenix
and then went on back to Wickenburg except for one man one man decided to do
it on his own and that man was no other than Jacob Waltz now since we don't have
a roster that existed how do we know that Jacob waltz was among this group
well there was contemporary author by the name of Milton Rose who wrote a book
and he made several verbal claims that he had a relative that was in the
Phoenix group and that he knew that Jacob Waltz's in that group and
evidently Jacob waltz continued his search he reacted and continued his
search and and indeed we know that he did find gold and it was under his bed
when he died I was enamored with Al Sieber I couldn't believe the history of
this gentleman he was brought over from Germany at about age five and they came
into the Arizona Territory at about the age 12 it was said that if you took some
of these prominent Indian fighters of the past and put the three worst ones
together they wouldn't have been as many Indian fights as Al Sieber was he had he
was wounded many times he also before he became a scout for General Crook was in
the Civil War he was in some of the bloodiest battles
took place it mentioned Antietam Fredericksburg and Gettysburg
Fredericksburg was a was a terrible disaster for the Union
there wasn't a blade of grass to hide hide behind and they sent wave after
wave of these soldiers up against Confederates were behind a stone wall
and it was just a slaughter and the angel of Fredericksburg had a monument
there because this Confederate soldier had such sympathy for the wounded who
were crying out during the night that he asked three times to take water to him
and was rejected but the third time the the commanding officer just said it's
your life go ahead and although they did start shooting at him when they realized
what he was doing they cease fire and he went and gave water to hundreds of these
wounded soldiers in the field but at Gettysburg Al Sieber was a member of the
1st Minnesota the 1st Minnesota was held in reserve when Pickett's Charge took
place Pickett's group made it to the Stonewall
and actually was crossing the Stonewall when a general rode up to
whoever was in charge and said what have we got in reserve to stop these guys and
he pointed to the first Minnesota said that's all we got and the general
sent them in and they stopped the the charge out of 234 men in the 1st
Minnesota only 47 of them came out unscathed Al
Sieber wasn't one of them he got a ball in his ankle that went all the way up
and come out he's knee it was the wonder he survived that in
the medical condition of the the Civil War later on he was transporting the
Apache kid and some other prisoners to Yuma and was again shot in that same
ankle and it pretty much crippled him for life
also Al Sieber was the mentor of Tom Horne and Tom Horne was present and
interpreter at the surrender of Geronimo when General miles took place of General
Crook he did banning the use of Apache Indians and Al
Sieber was out of a job well Al Sieber in nineteen three Apache trail was being
built from between 1903 and 1905 Al Sieber was in charge of the two hundred Apache
Indians that was building the Apache Trail and he was getting his workers
from San Carlos and of all people the Indian agent at San Carlos was
Yellowstone Kelly now think of all these famous people in Arizona that that you
don't hear about that much but these people were the roughest toughest
pioneers you ever laid your eyes on and Al Sieber after the Apache trail was
built they were widening a strip of it up at the dam and a huge boulder fell
and crushed him to death but this is documentation that exists that you can
find and it just depends on who's telling the story you can see that they
are all using the same source but one thing was more important to one author
than the other but it's it documents that this actual this search actually
took place thank you for watching this episode of mysteries of the Superstition
Mountains
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