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welcome to Mysteries of the Superstition Mountains I'm Larry Hedrick or we bring
the past into the present for our future viewers today we have another great
story by Hank Sheffer one of the things that I really like to do the most is
tell stories about things that happen to me things that I did myself and this
particular story deals with Syphon Draw talks about Syphon draw 35 years ago
give or take a year or two I had heard so many stories about life and drawing
things that occurred around it and I'd seen maps that really reminded me of
syphon draw one of those maps was the Peralta Ruth map or the Gonzales map
and before you all get hyper I know this isn't a map of syphon draw but my first
impression when I saw it after the pictures I'd taken him Syphon draw
earlier reminded me that this is where this was and I thought well I'm gonna go
up and see for myself now bearing in mind that the syphon draw trail starts
about two and a half three miles as the crow flies from my 50/50 ranch so I left
there and I drove my truck up to the meanwhile back at the ranch
the owners Bob and joy Bishop I'd known for years and I figured I'd park my
truck there at their ranch because the the trail the siphoned draw was just on
the other side of the fence of their property so I did that and I went up
there and I walked directly north east up toward siphon draw and I was
following the wash which you could do at that time
I don't know what it looks like now I haven't been there in years but I was
walking up the wash and just kind of enjoying the scenery there were rabbits
running all over the place a lot more than than there are now and they were
jack rabbits big guys bigger and jumping around and they were kind of fun to
watch it was sort of a hasy kind of day so it wasn't real hot
and I hadn't been thinking real good I guess because I was still wearing my my
riding boots my western boots for the walk but I figured that wasn't gonna be
that long anyway so I wore them but I was walking up the wash and watching
the rabbits and just kind of enjoying the day I had hoped to be with my friend
Charlie LeSueur he was supposed to be on this trip but he was busy with
the filming for Larry John Wright at the time and so he wasn't able to make the
trip normally I wouldn't do this kind of thing on my own
going into the mountain but it was only syphon draw so I wasn't terribly
concerned about any four-legged critters or anything else I'm always healed anyway
I wasn't worried about two-legged critters either the same reason so at
any rate I'm walking up this trail watching rabbits and all of a sudden I
hear this buzzing going off and for those of you who have never heard a
rattlesnake buzz in the bushes it will get your attention especially if you
already know what it is so familiarize yourself with it if you're gonna walk in
the mountains and up in front of me about 20 feet 25 feet was this big old
Mohave rattlesnake in the middle of the wash he wasn't very long but he was fast
in the middle and I was apparently invading his sacred ground he was not
happy with me at all for any of you who have ever been out
hiking around any mohave rattlesnakes they are aggressive they don't like you
this was really fortunate because I don't like them either so I found a way
to circumvent him and I walked up on the bank of the wash and I went by him and
he was still giving me the dickins but I went on by him toward the mountain so as
I got up there I'm walking into the mountain and I'm just seeing all sorts
of wonderful things right in the front of the mountain there are places where
some of the tectonic plates I guess they call them they're the slip faults that
do this have created what looked like caves they're really not caves
they're just places between the two slips and you can walk inside they're in
their place it almost looked like drifts that come off of that like a mine would
be they're not your just a hole in the rock and we have pictures of the of
those so you can see I'm not blowing smoke at you so at any rate I saw those
walked in there and we took some pictures I took some pictures and then
we came out of that and there's a place that I'd heard about in fact Tom Kullenburn
told me about it I walked out there and there's this spire about four
feet three to four feet wide two feet deep and about chest high to me and it
looked just like a pulpit and it had been call had been named Jacob Waltz's
pulpit and you could stand behind that thing and look down in the valley you
could see all of Apache Junction you could see all the way over the San
Francisco Peaks that was back when you could see all the way across to the San
Francisco Peaks without the brown clouds flying in from California but at any
rate I'm standing up there and I'm looking down and it was just really neat
to see and it was quiet so I left from there and I went a little bit further up
into the into the canyon itself up into the draw and further up he got the
steeper it got and it reminded me of that old story that real estate agents
used to tell if you buy a piece of property that when you walk at your nose
hits the ground at the same time yield us go back and get your money because
you got taken because you're walking almost like this what any rate I'm
walking up there and rocks are getting bigger and as I got up right into the
draw there was this place with this great big
flat rock and it really was it looked like it had been just shaved right off
the top and in the corner it was a square piece that was missing it was
about this big and it looked like it was big enough to maybe set a lantern in or
a light of some sort what any rate come to find out from legend this was
supposed to be father Kino's rock now father Kino who was over here it's
funny they talk about father Kino and Jacob walts like they were hard fast
buddies here that gets a really a little silly after a while because father Kino
was here at from 1645 to 1715 thirty nine to nineteen or 1891 so they really
didn't know each other but father Kino was a he was a watchmaker he was a map
maker and supposedly this is where he he could sit up there I don't know that he
ever went there but that's what the rock was called it was called father kino's
rock or seat whatever you want to call it at any rate there was also legend
about the hearts there are the Peralta the Peralta stone maps of course that
have a heart at him we won't even go there but there are other hearts or in
the mountain and supposedly syphon draw had one well ironically sitting on that
rock off to my right which would have been north was this huge rock that was
kind of leaning away from me the edge toward me but it was leaning away from
me and lo and behold as I got a little closer to the front of it it was
actually a heart and this rock was probably eight to ten feet in diameter
and it had some squigglies on it I don't know if it was actually
real heart with with treasure clues on it or what it was but there was the
heart I was really intrigued with that was I was watching that all of a sudden
I was I was kind of jerked back to reality with this racket going on in the
bushes behind me and I turned around couldn't see anything no it wasn't a
ghost it was a ring-tailed tact it was rooting around in the bushes and I
turned around I'd never seen one up close and personal but they're cute
little jobie-dos about yea big and they have a long bushy tail that looks like a
raccoon and there's ring-tailed cats they had teeth that really took away
from that cute thing so I didn't mess with him but we got a picture of him so
that was kind of good well now we're starting to get a little
bit darker I hadn't started this trip until the afternoon anyway which I don't
normally do because that's the hottest part of the day but at any rate I
started on up the mountain I wanted to get all the way to the back of syphon
draw because I've been told that there was a cave affair back there and I
wanted to see if there really was I'm one of those doubting Thomas kind of
guys if I don't see it myself I don't believe it
so I'm walking and running over these big rocks now they're really big rocks
and this isn't the trail that is marked that you can follow today that will take
you all the way up to the Flatiron this is off to the north of that at any rate
I'm walking and sure enough I got to this place where I could see this cut in
the rock that was horizontal it looked like a Ledge with an overhang and I got
I got myself right up in there so I can look in when you look into these places
you want to make sure there are no critters of any kind in there like
snakes or ring-tailed cats or other things so I'm
looking in there and it was clear but I could see where people had actually
camped in there there was a campfire ring there was some trash not a lot but
there was some trash there so somebody had lived in this thing what was really
neat was it on the outside on that overhang about three feet long was the
etching of a dagger that went all the way across it was just as clear as it
could be and it looked like it'd been etched into the stone and the smoke
coming from the fire had made it have darkened it so you can really see it no
I haven't been drinking this is real stuff there's the stuff that I saw so
you can take it for what it's worth you're gonna go up and look you can at
any rate it was now starting to get darker and I'm thinking I'm I'm needing
to get down off this mountain I don't want to be up here in the dark even
though I also know this is full moon or close to it so it's gonna be pretty well
lit but I don't want to be up there in the dark anyway because I like to see
what's under my feet so at any rate I'm coming down and I got back down to
father Kino's rock and I took a little rest and I sat down there and about that
time the moon crusted between the two peaks on each side of Syphon draw and
this it came up there it created a kaleidoscope of things
moving because the earth is moving very quickly like twenty five thousand miles
an hour if you will and so the shadows are moving they're doing all sorts of
funny things and as I sat there with the moon coming up over my right shoulder I
could see like on the map there was a place down on one rock that was flat and
that was supposed to be where there was a cabin on the map well there's no cabin
there it just looks like a dark spot but following toward that is this guy
that looks like he's leading a borough and goes right down into that cabin and
about that time the moon has moved off the cabin goes away the mule and the
prospector go away and then what I have is a full blown lit syphon draw well I
left there and I came on down a little bit further because I'm I'm ready to go
back to the truck I'm ready to go home and off to my left looking past the
abutment of the mountain there there's a place where there's also an outline of
what looks like a burrow and a prospector with a big sombrero hat and
he's walking up the mountain now you don't have to believe me
I have pictures of it so you can see it for yourself at any rate I continued on
back down and I saw no more critters it was a real safe walk I got back to the
meanwhile ranch joy Bishop and Bob and I had a cup of coffee together
and then I headed on back to the 50/50 ranch now whether or not any of these
things are real or not I don't know I'm just telling you what I saw but I can
tell you as far as I'm concerned it's just one more mystery of the
Superstition Mountains thank you for watching this episode of
mysteries of the Superstition Mountains
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