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okay people don't worry this is still Mysteries of the Superstition Mountains
my name is Yamil Sued from Gun Stock Reviews and when I heard Hank Sheffer
was doing a story on the colt 45s I had to be involved so you know hey
Hank tell us more about Geronimo Park take it away Hank
in the past we've talked a little bit about Apacheland and also
Apache Junction and how the two pretty much grew up together for a while
Apache Junction has been around for quite some time it wasn't always called
Apache Junction but of course with the the stories about Jacob Waltz and his
Lost Dutchman gold Apache Junction more or less actually became the gateway to
the Superstition Mountains of course now we've talked about the efforts of Apache
Junction growing and bringing more people into town the first thing of
course was Apacheland we talked about that in one of our previous episodes and
we've also talked about the superstition Ho Hotel which was built about the
same time but today we're gonna talk about two things that are just right in
there with western history we're talking about Colt 45s and Geronimo park now
before you all get real excited Geronimo Park was the baseball stadium and the
Colt 45s were a split off team that came to be back in 1960 and what had happened
was there were some fellows that knew this was going to happen one was Paul
Richards who had been a he's been a player with the Baltimore Orioles and
later he was a he was one of the coaches a head coach and another fella by the
name of Bill Giles and Bill Giles just happened to be the president of the
international side or the national league I should say
and they had come out here to Apache Junction so they knew something that we
didn't know but another fella that we talked about before was W W Creighton or
Bill Creighton now Bill Creighton was a visionary and he knew that if you wanted
to have your town grow you had to have people and you had to have something
that would draw those people to your town and somehow or another he got mixed
up with these baseball people now two other fellows who came to town
one was a Bob Smith there's a common name for you and another fella by the
name of Roy Hofheinz now they hooked up with Bill Creighton and they bought
hundreds of acres here in Apache Junction and what they were doing was
they were speculating on bringing this new baseball team that was being
introduced into the National League called the Colt 45s
now you're gonna chuckle but this is all true there was also another minor league
team there was called the Colt twenty-twos I don't know how that works
but they were the Colt 22 the guys that came into us here in Apache Junction
were the Colt 45s well Bill Creighton and his people got
together some of them from superstition Mountain Enterprises Inc and they were
trying to pull enough money together to build this stadium so that they would
have a spring training facility right here in Apache Junction now to get
things into perspective we have to bear in mind that Apache Junction had a
population of roughly 200 maybe a little more maybe a little less but somewhere
around that mark we're going to use so they started collecting money best they
could Bill Creighton even started an
association called the Lost Dutchman Baseball Association
I know but that's true true story they collected as much money as they could
and they hired this group out of Phoenix to come out here got the best bid and
build this stadium now this stadium was built to hold about 5,000 people I know
you're doing the math already but the idea is to get people from someplace
else into your stadium the Colt 45s started playing in 1961 and just in the
61 62 and they played a couple games out here and they didn't do real well a lot
of them didn't like this the stadium to start with and we'll talk about that in
a minute they didn't wind up and last but they were eight out of nine be that
as it may now we have people who aren't real happy because first off they hadn't
collected enough money to actually pay off the construction people who had
built the stadium to start with and secondly Bill Creighton had told the
team that they would make an X percentage whatever that percentage was
of the gate of all these people who were going to show up to watch them play
losing baseball games there was $24,000 on that one side and there was $20,000
it was supposed to go to the contractor needless to say we're about not quite
$50,000 on the short side a lot of unhappy people welcomed the following
year people showed up for spring training spring training notoriously
starts in February by the end of March middle of March the cold 45s had played
the last game they were going to play out here and it was finally decided that
they were going to move now it's really kind of interesting because part of the
problem was the player for it very enthusiastic about being here to start
with there were only two saloons in town and
it's one of the fellow said he said there's there's only two places to go
and he said one of them you don't want to go there after dark and the other
place is all full of coaches we don't want to do that so they hated that it's
my belief that the one that was the better of the two was the red garter
saloon which was up in the Superstition Ho Hotel be that as it may they weren't
happy with that the other part was that they were out in the desert
in a town that had no social amenities at all there was nothing for these guys
to do in fact one of the guys in so much as to walk between the the stadium which
was located where the the Royal Order of Moose club is located today they could
walk us in a straight line across the desert because there was nothing out
there right directly to the hotel and one of the guys would challenge the
other fellas to see how many rattlesnakes and tin cans they could
shoot with their 22 pistols walking back and forth to the stadium
this was their social activity apparently at any rate the last game was
played in March in 63 and the team was lured off into Florida to a
brand-spanking-new facility of $800,000 worth of goodies for the guys by 1964
the team was completely gone and the the stadium was sold it was sold off to the
Mesa School District School District got all of the bleachers and they took them
and they used him in one of the high schools here out in Mesa so those
bleachers lasted for quite some time and the configuration at the football
stadium there is still the same as it was them the building deteriorated
everything that was there at the stadium was completely destroyed and was finally
torn down and nothing remained until the the people moved in for the Moose Club
and they built their their Clubhouse there and of course now we know that
team as the Houston Astros thank you for watching this episode of mysteries of
the Superstition Mountains
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