[Music]
welcome to another edition of Mysteries of the Superstition Mountains and once
again we're going to be talking with Marshall Trimble as he tells us about
the gold rush that happened right here in Arizona now we always hear about the
what in California but there was a big one right here and Marshalls going to
tell us all about it in the gold rush period in Arizona there
were there were two... two separate times one was the first big Gold Rush in the
1850s that began in the 1850s and the other was around 1900 when they were
demonetized in silver and gold became precious again or yet became you know
the new rush started so I'll tell you a little bit I'll tell you some of the
early days those are the more colorful ones of the way the first strikes
because some of them were just amazing most of them were right around where you
Yavapai County is in fact almost all of them were the only one that was and
was the first one and that was at 1858 at Gila City on the Gila River about 20
miles east of Yuma Jake Snively who was a Confederate
officer and and Texas Texas well just a Texas patriot let's call him and he was
with a party of gold prospectors and it seems so funny to think they would find
placer gold there but in 1858 there was a strike I mean a boomtown came
overnight it was called Gila City and and they were they were out there they
they were picking up $100 a day of panning out $100 a day in gold and then
blowing it that night because tomorrow they would pan out some more and when
when placer gold plays out it plays out it's easy to find Nature has already
mined it for you what is placer gold placer gold is it's
it's broken away from the from the ore and it's just out there being polished
by the rushing waters and it's just glistening there waiting for you to some
lucky guy to pick it up and so then the next one was the old
Scout Pauline Weaver is over at two place it was it was on the the fiesta de
la Paz that the the the Fiesta of Our Lady of Peace January of 1862 and
over in the Colorado River area at a place they would the place that would be
called La Paz and they were taken gold out of there and some Mexicans were
also taking gold they were just it was a it was a big strike they've been
thinking about making La Paz the territorial capital when Arizona became
became a separate territory it was that big a place but again as
Senator Goldwater said his grandfather was one of the merchants over there one
of the first settlers and he says my my grandfather came out one morning and the
Colorado River had moved it was a steamboat landing there with no it with
no water now so he said he just picked up the store and went out and found the
river and that's where Ehrenburg is today I mean he named the new town
Ehrenberg in honor of a good friend of his who had just been killed by Indians
recently and Herman Ehrenberg and so so that was the that was the that was the
big strike the first big strike and they were really picking it up and it was it
was big but there was more to come now when that with Gila City was going
strong another man comes in as one of the
prospectors his name was Jack Swilling and old Jack you know he he he gets
maligned and I'm just trying to lionize him because everybody's says bad things
for me he had gotten hit in the head and been shot and he did a very typical
thing that people did he took he took laudanum for the pain this is very
common you know he could just buy laudanum over the counter and and he so
he was so he so easy the trouble is is he mixed it with alcohol and that's
dynamite and he did some violent things when he
was but otherwise he was a highly respected one of the most respected
citizens of Arizona of his time in his time unless he was drunk or high or both
well anyway swilling comes along and swilling is a swilling... organizes
some militia volunteer because the Yavapai now were attacking these
prospectors you know they've been doing all their damage down in Mexico but all
of a sudden hey there there's a you know new talent we can we can pluck and so um
so Swilling on an expedition now leading and he comes along about where
Avondale is today up the Salt River they're following that actually was the
Gila the following the Gila River out because become the Salt joins it right
about Avondale anyway they're coming up the Gila River and there is a river
point coming out of the north and no white man has ever gone into central
Arizona believe it or not in 1860 no white man has ever ventured in there and
Swilling is not going to do it either because the Yavapai and
a Tonto Apache both that's their land and and there were white people up died
by the 35th parallel you know we're interstate 40 is today going across to
California but all those central mountains were just void of white people
and so so anyway he he remembers it and these guys had a I they could dig like a
gopher and had an eye of an artist for looking for geological you know the
self-taught geologists and he said that looks promising but he's not going to
dare venture up there well fast forward to 1863 meanwhile the civil war is going
on he was a Confederate officer during the Civil War by the Arizona Volunteers
Arizona Rangers and he's a lieutenant when the Confederates invade Arizona and
make it a Confederate territory but when the
he was mainly in there as a ranger to fight Indians and Raiders on over Silver
City and where he had to be and so he gets some he gets to New Mexico and
they've been driven out Confederates have been driven out of Arizona and
they're headed all the way back to Texas and he and this is where Swilling says I
joined us to fight Indians not fight other white men he said this is not my
fight and he deserts and so and then he hooks up with Joe Rutherford Walker
Joseph Rutherford Walker who is one of the greatest mountain man of them all
and explorers and he is now a guy he now has gold fever
he's never been he's been all over the West every nook and cranny of the West
but he's never been in central Arizona into a mountain man he'd been there so I
got to go there because it's just my attitude okay so how did the two of them
meet and start traveling together well I'll tell you how to happen they they
captured some Yanks at Pima villages and they're taking them escorting I mean he
is escorting these these Yanks back there's William Mcclee of Captain
William McLean Swilling Mccleve start visiting over the campfires at
night even a once a prisoner the other ones the captor and that's and they
become friends and Swillings is talking about this gold that he's sure
there's gold up in the Haasayampa river and so McCleve introduces him to
General Carlton and then General Carlton they introduced him to Joseph Walker and
Joe Walker has a party of gold seekers coming in and they're wanting to go into
Arizona but they don't know anything about it Swilley knows the whole area
has been there many times just not up the Hassayampa so Swilling
joins with the Walker party and they come into Arizona they probably
cross over they come into southern Arizona they go to Tucson to buy supply
and there are none so they go up to the Pima villages and they're plenty
supplies there so they acquire some supplies across the Gila or the Salt
River about where Tempe is today and they head west and they come to the
Hassayampa River and now swilling has got some fighting men with him and
they're going to go up the they're going to go up the river well they made the
chief and well the Tuva can't remember for sure what his name but anyway he
informs him he informs them that if you go up there you'll die and Walker just
big six foot four giant of a man could go bear hunting with a switch and he
says if we go up there you'll die and the chief backed off and so they went
that's how they that's how they Bluff their way up the river up the Hassayampa
and they go up the Hassayampa and they go all the way up to the headwaters of
the river and there they find and and big bug and Lynx Creek and all those
places they find gold I mean it's a gold rush so I would imagine that the gold
rush probably had a little bit of influence about making Arizona Territory
Washington finds out about it and next thing you know Arizona's a territory
well swilling goes back down William goes back down to the Tucson for
something and as he's coming back he stops at the Pima villages again and
there is a group of people there Peeples was his name AH Peeple's... Peeple's
Valley and he's leading a party and his Scout is once again
Pauline Weaver.. Weaver, Swilling and all these guys just show up at all these
different places and now they're back now they're together again
and so Swilling joins them because they say he we're going to we're going to go
up to they'd found some promising along the Hassayampa about where Wickenburg
just north of where we convert yesterday and so they go up there and at one place
burrows get lost and they've been looking for the burrows and right on top
of a hill they got up to a high hill there to see if they could get a view
where those burrows had wandered off to and right on the ground where it
shouldn't be is a whole field of nuggets they call it the potato patch it just
like it's potato patch huh so you could just go around picking gold off the
ground Wow well that's kind of cool it was just full ago they they picked out a
half a million dollars of gold and placer gold on about a half acre
all right so was that by today's standards or back then but by that just
about twelve dollars an ounce I think twelve sixteen dollars an ounce so
anyway the the rush is on now to Weaver Stanton and Rich Hill and also
the Prescott area and they were combing those mountains for gold
and silver and and that was really the big oh there's one more
Henry Wickenburg had come out with the party earlier party and Wickenburg is
down he finds though he finds lode gold so what is the difference with lode gold
lode mining which is it's still in the or just has to be processed it has to be
crushed and so forth but the vulture mine so right in that little area there
that short area between Prescott Lynx Creek in that area and down at the foot
of Yarnell Hill at Weaver and Stanton and Rich Hill and then right down a
little further along the Hassayampa at at vulture City we have the richest lode
mine in Arizona a single lode mine gold and the single single placer strike and
Lynx Creek the richest stream bed placer stream bed of
those are right along that area it was just a gold belt
can you still mine there it's it's all taken up I think there's one place in
Lynx Creek it was a few years ago anyway where
could still pan but everything else somebody's got a claim on it yeah so
that was the that was the 1860s was really the gold period in Arizona and in
the 70s they'll start hitting silver Silver King which this which it was a
huge gold silver strike it was the largest single silver mine in Arizona
and in Tombstone 1877 and by that time you you know by the time this all plays
out coppers in the electric age you know we've got electric the electric lights
electric wires and and so it was almost as if there was a pattern of well here's
the gold that'll get him here and then here's the silver that'll that'll
that'll take a little bit more work to get but where the where there's silver
there's also gold we enter the age of copper it's almost like they were guided
there yeah almost like it was ordained ordained, ordained to happen. well there's another period then
and that was the one that there was the that the government was battling back
and forth on the demonetization of silver 1873 if you if you collect silver
dollars you'll know from 1873 to 1878 you won't be able to buy any silver they're were not making
silver dollars then the government started buying silver again that that's
a plain talk and so and that would last until 1893 and once again the anti
silver Sherman anti Silver Purchase Act so in other words politics made silver
less valuable and this really crippled places like Arizona Colorado
you know these silver these big silver areas and but it opens it up for gold
again and around oh the 1890s we see we see the beginning of the people are
starting to look for gold again this would happen again during the Great
Depression when everybody was out of work they would pick up their fans and
go back up to these streams around Wickenburg and start panning out for
gold when I tell stories about the the superstition Gold know geologically
you know certain areas of the superstitions such as weavers needle
it's not geologically feasible a gold but right at the front you can't say
there's no gold out there they took millions out of there at the
mammoth and Bluebird mine in the 1890s early 1900s and and then there was
another go the another big gold strike besides the at it at goldfield that
they go for the superstition in front of the West range of superstition mountains
it was at Oatman and at Oatman and gold road these were big strikes in the early
1900s and Oakman was just a big boom town for gold so we did have that that
was that was the gold period again the gold promotion I called it the gold
promotion period and they had they were running ads for one at one of the ad I
remember was a ocean-going or bearing ship like we find on Lake Superior going
up the Hassayampa River selling selling selling shares selling shares in a mine
there but you got this a the Hassayampa River with a weather with the Edmund
Fitzgerald going up it now that would have been a site this place was right
for cons Thank You Marshall for sharing all your knowledge about the gold rush
that happened right here in Arizona another one of the Mysteries of the
Superstition Mountains
[music]