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hello welcome to Mysteries of 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 as we've seen in some of our other episodes
we've talked about Apache land and we've talked about Apache Junction and in
those episodes we've talked about the Dutchman we talked about Apacheland
bringing celebrities into town and filming into town from Hollywood and we
talked about the hotel that was built so they have a place to stay and it would
draw people in from all over and it became a destination much like
Scottsdale had and then we talked about a baseball team of all things and the
Geronimo stadium that was built right here they come to find out that Bill
Creighton was involved in a lot of those those schemes to bring people into
Apache Junction and it must have worked to a point because by 1970 from 1960 to
1970 the population had risen to about 2,400 people from 200 so he was doing
something right but bill wasn't finished yet he still had one more to go and this
we've seen the early 1960s were really dizzy with things going on in the Apache
Junction the last thing that he had in mind was a fella by the name of Doby
Doc now Doby Doc you say is who well Doby Doc is our Las Vegas connection
he was a fella who had who had a tremendous collection of old old trains
and old cars and guns you name it apparently he had about three million
dollars worth of it because that's what we bought I say we as Apache Junction or
Superstition Mountain enterprises Inc and what had happened was
Doby Doc was in the process of selling this stuff he was getting up there in
age and he'd come over he was a fella who had the last frontier
village over in Las Vegas and that was built at the El Rancho casino hotel
which is arguably the first hotel that was built in las vegas the whole idea of
the lost frontier was it was a whole town and it was built to be very much
like an early day Disneyland in fact it predated Disneyland by about 30 years
but at any rate that's what he was doing now he's ready to get rid of this stuff
and he's over here and we bought up all these trains there were like 20 trains
no that's wrong there were three trains there were 20 automobiles there were 30
to 50 wagons and there were buildings there were drug stores
there were mercantil there were gun collections this whole town was to be
rebuilt in an area right near what used to be Bashas Plaza now directly to the
west of Bashas Plaza as we know it today right near where them the there's
an oil change place there now and then there's the BK lounge it was to be built
back in that area but this whole town was so big that some of the collections
were taken and they would be displayed at Apacheland two of those gun
collections were bought and they were moved out there to just lay them out
there the town was to do the same thing that it had done for the El Rancho it
was to draw people to an environment that was of course now
Disneyland existed so now there was another Disneyland where people could go
and visit and it was to be right here in Apache Junction Doby Doc was a fellow
it's interesting to know a little bit about him he's been collecting stuff
from as long ago as 1917 and he collected all these things sometimes he
wasn't all that kosher a young fella he was known as a gambler he was known as a
miner he was known as a crook they'll make that Cook he was known as any
number of other things including roustabout sometimes the way he acquired
things was not all that reputable but this is a time a long time ago and
things were different then it was the wild and woolly west Doby Doc who was
actually Robert Claudedill was his actual name he went by several different
names we never knew for sure which name was correct on contracts in those days
and he just became known as Doby Doc because one of his enterprises had been
that he built homes or houses out of you got it
adobe bricks so he was called Doby now he has all this stuff and he has this
ranch and this ranch is a very huge ranch the ranch itself was later sold to
a fella by the name of Binion and this is our Las Vegas connection because
Binion was a fellow who was skimming money from one of the casinos out there
and he wound up very dead somebody somebody killed him they didn't
like him very much and they killed him but in the time that
he was skimming all this money it was supposedly hidden somewhere in
catch on this property that he had bought from Doby Doc
now Mr. Binion daddy Bennion is dead and Ted Binion is now taking over the ranch
and of course if you go to Fremont Street you'll see Binion's it's still
there but Ted Binion actually found some of that silver so there's another whole
backstory there but that's why I like to call this our Las Vegas connection
because we were doing some of the same things not skimming off of the casinos
because we don't have a casino but we were putting up we were gonna put up a
city just like Doby had done before and we were gonna build all these wonderful
things to get people into Apacheland well it turns out when Apacheland
burned those gun collections disappeared I know where the drug store went that
was bought by our very own Drugstore Cowboy here in Apache Junction that's
another story and that that collection still exists the rest of the stuff
because the town had not been built yet that they were going to rebuild was
stored in a very large barn affair or a warehouse affair if you will out on
Kings Ranch Road just as you turned into Kings Ranch Road it was off in that
field off to the northwest there of course today we really don't know where
any of this stuff is anymore we've seen where parts of the collections were
we've seen where some of the collections were destroyed we've seen where bits and
pieces popped up but for all intents and purposes it just seems to have
completely disappeared or maybe it's just another one of those
mysteries of the superstition now thank you for watching this episode
mysteries of the Superstition Mountains
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