The Lost Dutchman Wasn’t Dutch

Jacob Waltz, also called Walzer or Walz, was deutsch, meaning “German.” But that word when pronounced sounds a lot like “Dutch.” So he became known as the Dutchman. After all, Americans more than a hundred years ago seemed to have a more genial attitude toward the Dutch, who were an object of humor, than the Germans, who were thought too gothic. It just goes to show you how little we know about the man and his “lost mine” in the Superstitions.

The Superstition Mountains are dramatic at first sight. The massive hulk of barren rock brooding over the Salt River Valley east of Apache Junction guards a vast region of uninhabitable wilderness, broken by rugged canyons and insurmountable peaks and spires. The mountains were named when Pima and Maricopa Indians told early Europeans that the area harbored evil and only bad things came to those who ventured among the tumbled stones. That was believable when Apaches controlled the area. But long after they were driven to a reservation adventurers still disappeared or were found murdered in the mountains. After so many years the Supes still elicit feelings of fascination mixed with fear.

Fixation on Superstition Mountain began with the discovery of gold nuggets, but the only gold evident in this view are the sun gilded tops of cholla cactus. The photographer in the late 1940s or early fifties manipulated the color very well to capture the drama surrounding the barren rocks. Most people consider the isolated mountain shown here the western-most portion of an entire range by the same name extending far to the east. The Superstitions can also be considered the western limit of the Pinal Mountain range south of Globe.

Miguel Peralta and his family were the first on record to bring Apache gold out of the Superstitions. That is, if their La Sombrera Butte of 1845-1848, lurking over their diggings, is the same as what is now called Weavers Needle. The location of the butte described as shaped like a Mexican hat is a matter of dispute, just like everything else about the Dutchman’s gold. That gold was taken out of the Superstitions, however, is not in dispute.

During the Civil War, when US troops were withdrawn from the southwest to fight elsewhere, soldiers from the Confederate States set up camp in Tucson to protect Americans from Apache raids. After an undersized contingent of union troops returned, King Woolsey (1832-1879) who had come to Arizona from Alabama organized a private militia to track down Apache raiders. In 1864, he led at least three punitive expeditions. Both supportive and critical accounts of those forays exist, conflicting on many points of fact. It was said that he tricked Apaches into eating poison food and on another occasion opened fire on Apache warriors summoned to peace talks. The latter incident, known as the Bloody Tanks massacre, probably took place in the Superstition Mountains. Was Woolsey also looking for gold? In any case, he received a commendation from the territorial government for his efforts, was elected to the legislature, made commander of the territorial militia and went on to help form the Democratic Party in Arizona.

To Native Americans white men always seemed to lose all reason and discretion when it came to gold.

In 1871, after a prospector reported finding gold near a butte that looked like a Mexican hat, “the greatest treasure hunt in the southwest since the days of the Spanish conquistadors. . .was organized. Territorial Governor A. P. K. Safford, a pioneer of Nevada’s Comstock Lode days, set aside his official duties to lead the expedition” (p. 365, Arizona, American Guide Series, 1940). They found no gold and missed the silver that would be discovered a few years later near Globe. They did notice quite a few mountains resembling hats, but it was like searching for Weaver’s Needle in a haystack. Now there is a Sombrero Peak in the Sierra Ancha Mts. NW of the Salt River Canyon in Gila County and a Sombrero Butte in the Galiuro Mts. east of Mammoth in Pinal County.

This booklet issued in October 1940 in Phoenix is only one of hundreds of pamphlets, maps and books published over the years promising treasure to those who brave the Superstitions. Barry Storm (a.k.a. John Clemenson) went on to publish a popular book about the Dutchman story, Thunder God’s Gold, which was made into a movie called Lust for Gold in 1949 starring Glenn Ford and Ida Lupino.

A newspaper article that appeared across the country in 1940 suggested a lost Spanish gold mine discovered in Needle Canyon may have been the source of wealth for both the Peraltas and the Dutchman. (Click on article to see full size.)

Though Jacob Waltz lived in Prescott in 1864 and Wickenburg in 1875, there is no evidence that he joined either the Woolsey or Safford expeditions. But in 1884, he filed a claim in the Superstitions and became well known in Phoenix for spending money derived from gold nuggets. “His mine had become the byword of all the local inhabitants of Phoenix and the nearby towns and villages by his tales and stories of it’s enormous wealth, years before his death. He proved his stories by producing gold in large quantities. His quick trips to the mountain, his return, loaded down with gold. . .kept the downtown inhabitants of Florence and Phoenix in a frenzy and the hangers-on of the Washington Street saloons pried him with questions and watched his every move” (p. 19, Barney Barnard, The Story of Jacob Walzer, 1954; a booklet actually written by Charles F. Higham and issued in more than 21 editions over the years).

After leading annual hikes into the Superstitions, the Dons Club of Phoenix built this monument in Apache Junction in 1938 at the intersection of State Route 88 and old US 60. Recently, a hotel that blocked the view of the mountain from the monument for many years was torn down after the business failed. The original plaque on the base used to read: “Here lies the remains of Snow Beard, the Dutchman who in this mountain shot three men to steal a rich gold mine from Spanish pioneers, killed eight men more to hold its treasure, then died in 1892 [he died October 25, 1891], without revealing its location. Dozens of searchers have met mysterious deaths in the canyons there, yet the ore lies unrevealed. Indians say this is the curse of the thunder god on white men in whom the craving for gold is strong. Beware lest you too succumb to the lure of the Lost Dutchman Mine in the Superstition Mountains.”

It’s probably true that some who followed Waltz into the mountains too close, didn’t return. According to one account, “this cold-blooded character was an ideal type for a real-life murder mystery. For the record, he killed upwards of a dozen men to gain and hold his treasure, one being his nephew, whose conduct failed to please the old man. Others faced his gun in ill-judged turns too close on his trail” (p. 46, Howard D. Clark, Lost Mines of the Old West, 1946). In 1891, Waltz got caught in the big Salt River flood in Phoenix, developed pneumonia and died about seven months later. But not before, on his deathbed, he gave his friends clues to find his cache. It’s across from a cave, near a stone house, in a gulch that runs north and south. You can see Weaver’s Needle from the cave.

Before Waltz’s death, four residents of Lehi, north of Mesa, began working a gold mine northwest of Superstition Mountain. More claims were filed in 1890 and a low-grade but profitable deposit was mined at what was now called Goldfield. A boom town developed with a post office that opened in 1895. The mine was productive until 1912 and then reworked 1950-1952. Some have argued that the Goldfield vein was the source of Waltz’s riches. Others continue to search till their last breath. Twenty adventurers died in the Superstitions from exposure, accident, gunshot wounds or unknown causes up to 1948. A few actually came out with gold, $18,000 reportedly in 1914. The Lost Dutchman became such a tourist draw that the Phoenix Don’s Club used to lead annual hikes into the Superstitions beginning in 1934.

So what is the secret? Is the Dutchman’s mine still lost? Or is it just profitable to continue to think so? Longtime Apache Junction resident and newspaper columnist Tom Kollenbom has probably made the most prudent observation, that the beautiful plant and animal life among the colorful stones in the Superstition Wilderness is more valuable than gold.

Several motels and restaurants in Apache Junction and Mesa have capitalized on the Dutchman legend over the years. State Route 87, or Country Club Road in Mesa, was the main highway to Tucson when this postcard was issued about 1947. The address at 560 South Mesa Blvd. (now called Country Club) locates the motel two blocks south of Broadway Avenue. The back of the postcard describes “a new 28 unit elegantly and completely furnished, insulated, air-conditioned, fire-proof Lodge. All tile kitchenettes and bath. Furnace heat. You will ‘really’ feel at home in Mesa’s Largest and Most Modern, Secluded Guest Lodge.” And then leave a place like that for a hike in the Superstitions? The motel is still in business as Lost Dutchman Comfort Lodge.

Contrast this view of a thinly covered, sun-baked desert, published by the L. L. Cook company of Milwaukee in 1939, with the thick vegetation nearby pictured above about 1949. It’s possible the two views document the difference between Sonoran desert growth on a floodplain versus higher ground, or a difference in climate. A long period of drought ended shortly after 1939 while 1949 fell in the middle of a short wet period. Much of the open space seen in both photos is now built over by housing subdivisions and strip malls. (The blue mountain Kodachrome was color enhanced on the original postcard, while I have yellowed the black & white “real photo postcard” by L. L. Cook.)

There is a tremendous amount of really fascinating information available on the Superstitions and the search for the lost mine. Start at http://lost-dutchman.com and http://www.superstitionmountain.info or http://ajpl.org (Apache Junction Public Library). Hint: copy and paste the web address into your browser to go there.

For some recent history see: Apache Junction and Superstition Mountains by Jane Eppinga (2006) and The Lost Dutchman Mine of Jacob Waltz: The Holmes Manuscript by Thomas E. Glover (2000).

Goldfield Ghost Town museum is located 4.5 miles NE of Apache Junction on the Apache Trail (State Route 88), and Superstition Mountain Museum is at 4087 North Apache Trail. Lost Dutchman State Park on the Apache Trail 5 miles north of Apache Junction, scheduled to close June 3, 2010 due to budget cuts, was created in 1977 from a US Bureau of Land Management recreation site developed in 1972.

Indian Hot Springs Was Really Hot
Among the hot spring resorts of Arizona, Indian Hot Springs on the north side of the Gila River five miles north of Pima in the wide Gila Valley of Graham County, has always been a popular destination. As the name implies, the steaming waters with curative powers had long been open to free access by indigenous families. But when those families were confined to reservations in the 1870s, that opened the springs to commercial development. Ben Gardner channeled the flow and diverted water into pools soon after Ft. Thomas was established by the military about six miles west in 1876. From then on the hot springs were sold as commercial property every few years or so and each successive owner added improvements.

The Honeymoon Trail from Utah brought Mormon families to the Gila Valley, some of whom formed the town of Eden in 1880 two and a half miles south of the hot springs. By the end of the 1890s, the Gila Valley, Globe and Northern Railway had been built along the Gila River, providing convenient transportation to Indian Hot Springs from the depot at Pima. In 1903 construction was completed on a three-story hotel at the hot springs described by one visitor as “a feudal castle lost in the desert.” In 1905, the largest swimming pool in Arizona, measuring 255 by 70 feet, was added and then enlarged to 270 feet and cemented after 1916.

This advertisement appeared in the Bisbee Daily Review August 31, 1910, with a drawing of the “hotel and sanitarium.” At that time Bisbee residents could easily reach the hot springs by rail. (Click on pictures to see full size) There are a lot of typos in the text. “Dropsy” is the archaic term for general edema, usually from a weak heart. Notice promotion of the dual role of health or pleasure.

Indian Hot Springs was now a therapeutic and recreational site for those who could pay admission. By 1912 that included local families with modest incomes, along with those who could afford to take the train or drive their automobile. The resort was only a short distance off the major cross-country highway, US 70. “The famous health and pleasure resort” advertised its 1.5 million gallons of daily flow into pools, tubs and mud baths as a cure for rheumatism. There were four water temperatures available, Magnesium Springs at 81 degrees, Iron and Mud Springs at 116 degrees, Rock Springs at 118 and Beauty Springs one degree hotter. (For more supposed health benefits see: Resources of Graham County compiled by J. H. Vaughn (1888) pp. 15-16.)

Burton Frasher (1888-1955), who operated a postcard business headquartered in Pomona California, published a series of “real photo” cards of Indian Hot Springs in 1936. The photographs appear to have been taken a few years earlier. Fortunately the Frasher family and the Pomona Public Library have made hundreds of “Frashers Fotos” public domain images available on the internet. The amazingly sharp and beautiful black and white photos clearly document much of Arizona from 1930 to 1955.

I haven’t been to the site, and I’m not sure where you would actually immerse yourself in the hot water or have a mud bath. Probably inside, though the hot springs I’ve visited always had outdoor pools. Three “Roman baths” were built at the site in 1903. A big part of the experience is the mental relaxation. There was a resurgence of the hot springs spirit in the hippie movement of the sixties and that was evident at Indian Hot Springs too.

Frasher gives the older dimensions for the biggest swimming pool in the southwest. Local sources say it was enlarged to 270 feet long shortly after 1916.

In the early days this pond offered romantic rowboat outings. Apparently it was stocked with goldfish when this photo was snapped. The Arizona Bureau of Geology and Mineral Technology has identified 45 hot and warm springs in Arizona, with a concentration in Graham and Greenlee counties. (James C. Witcher, “Thermal Springs of Arizona,” Field Notes, June 1981).

The hot spring experience was mostly a Native American and European tradition. What we call a spa today is an entirely different affair. By the 1960s, business at Indian Hot Springs had declined and the latest owners of the property were more interested in farming the acreage. Without commercial value, the beautiful grounds were opened up again for free use by local families. But much would be lost. Around 1966 the health department closed the pool, judging that un-chlorinated water was not fit for swimming. Now the ornate Victorian hotel was even more out of place. When built, the brick and stone building had been advertised as fireproof, but fire of unknown origin broke out in the wooden interior February 24, 2008, completely wrecking the entire structure.

This fine structure replaced canvas “cottage tents,” an adobe building and a small wood house available for up to 60 guests before 1903. By 2008 the 30-room hotel was still being rented to guests, according to a newspaper account, and caught fire after a group left.

See also:
“Eden mansion burns down,” Eastern Arizona Courier 2/27/08
“Burned resort full of history” Eastern Arizona Courier 3/4/08

ABC Arizona Communities

All Roads Lead to Holbrook

A few years ago the Holbrook Chamber of Commerce declared their community “headed in the right direction.” Though it hasn’t always been true, it has been that way for a long time. In fact, Holbrook has also been a place to which people are headed. The Santa Fe Stage Company established passenger and mail service in 1867 from Santa Fe to Los Angeles along the middle route, which meant across northern Arizona Territory. The stage found a convenient crossing of the Little Colorado River where it is joined by the Rio Puerco, and within a year or so Juan Padilla and Berado Frayde from New Mexico built a stage station with a store, restaurant and hotel at that point, calling it Horsehead Crossing. After Camp Apache was located in the White Mountains in 1870 General George Stoneman had a supply road built from the military outpost to Horsehead Crossing. And beginning in 1876 the Mormon immigrant trail from Utah, known as the Honeymoon Trail, used the same crossing for wagon trains going to all of eastern Arizona.

This map is a reconstruction published in 1943 of the trails that led to Horsehead Crossing in the first decade following the establishment of the Territory of Arizona. It doesn’t show General Stoneman’s road, nor does it continue the Mormon trail. The headquarters of the Hashknife outfit, established about 1883 or 1884 is shown, and the Star Mail Route taken by the stage line and the first territorial governor’s party.

By 1880, the stage had stopped running but the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad was building into Arizona from Albuquerque. Grading contractor John W. Young had recently purchased the stage station knowing it was on the surveyed railroad line. But Young was disappointed when the railroad arrived in 1881 and picked a location for a depot where the valley was wider, about two miles west of Horsehead Crossing. Still he suggested naming the place after the railroad’s chief engineer, Henry R. Holbrook. Within a few years the new town would become the principal shipping point and center of commerce in eastern Arizona. By then no one could recall why it’s former location was named Horsehead Crossing. The steep bluffs bordering the two rivers probably reminded travelers of the more famous Horsehead Crossing, on the Pecos River in Texas.

This photo from the National Archives and Records Administration documents the center of the single business street, rebuilding after the fire of 1888. The photographer is standing at the railroad main line with the foundation of the burned depot and a rail spur in the foreground. At right, along Front Street, is the A & B Schuster General Merchandise store and the Mormon Arizona Cooperative Mercantile Institution relocated from nearby Woodruff and Horsehead Crossing before that. The storefront with the sign at left is F. J. Wattron’s Drugs & Notions. Next door to the left is the Cottage Saloon, nicknamed “Bucket of Blood” after the infamous saloon in Virginia City, Nevada. Gambling and booze too often resulted in gunfights. Today, Front Street is named Bucket of Blood Street.

Commodity speculators from the east coast and Texas had driven a boom in the cattle industry in that state which went bust in 1885. They turned to northeastern Arizona to try again. The Aztec Land and Cattle Company was formed with about a million acres of cheap railroad land grant. Ranch headquarters was located a short distance southwest of Holbrook. From 1884-1887, nearly 40,000 longhorns, 100 cowboys and more than 2,500 horses were shipped to Holbrook. Having grown to 60,000 head within a few years, it was the third biggest ranch in North America. And though it only lasted 16 years, it wielded tremendous power in northeastern Arizona, altering settlement there forever, where its legacy is still evident. Called The Hashknife outfit, after its brand which resembled the tool favored by chuck wagon cooks, the beef and land development company owned alternate sections, giving it de facto control over about two million acres. Armed cowboys sternly enforced a policy of excluding homesteaders and warning trespassers. Mormons who had settled from 1876-1878, before government surveys, found their land claims in jeopardy. Sheep ranchers already grazing flocks in the area were considered a threat.

Freight wagons piled high with sacks of wool arrive at the depot around 1906. The row of storefronts pictured in the 1889 photo (above) are located just out of view at left. The railroad shipped 300,000 pounds of wool from Holbrook in the first year of the town’s existence. By 1896 the freight depot handled 1.1 million pounds of wool, 20,000 head of cattle and 22,000 head of sheep.

In Holbrook, the line of saloons between the tracks and the river supported at first by railroad worker paychecks now served a hard-working, hard-drinking, quick shooting bunch of cowboys. It wasn’t long before the town seemed headed in the wrong direction, with a violent reputation to rival the other wild west towns along the A & P. In 1887, Sheriff Commodore Perry Owens became a legendary figure after calmly walking Holbrook’s main street with his over-the-shoulder hair wafting on the breeze. After reaching the house where the Blevins gang, wanted by the law, was hold up, Owen’s Winchester pierced the walls to leave three dead, including a 16-year-old. Some who read newspaper accounts worried that Holbrook and Tombstone could tarnish the whole territory, dampening business investment and chances for statehood. Owens was not reelected in 1888. Still, Holbrook maintained a reputation for over-the-top lawlessness and tough law enforcement for more than another decade. In 1899, Navajo County Sheriff F. J. Wattron was criticized by the President of the United States for issuing a too gleeful invitation to a hanging. It turned out to be the only hanging to ever take place in Holbrook.

Apache county had been created out of the eastern part of Yavapai County in 1879 by powerful mercantile and sheep interests centered in St. Johns, which became county seat. But as Winslow and Holbrook blossomed with the railroad there was a struggle to wrestle the county seat away from St. Johns. Finally, Navajo County was created out of the west half of Apache County by the territorial legislature in 1895 and Holbrook narrowly beat Winslow to become county seat.

This 1912 panorama looking west shows how the railroad ran down the center of the main business street. There’s a locomotive puffing smoke in the distance. In the 1880s there were only a few scattered homes on the north side of the tracks (on the right in this view) and no business buildings. The residential neighborhood was first located among the cottonwoods that lined the river, seen at left. The Navajo County Courthouse (1898) is seen at extreme right, built on higher ground. Floods would soon drive the residential and business districts in that direction.

Several years of drought followed by the severe winter of 1898 killed half of the cattle grazing the Hashknife range and the beef industry collapsed just as it had in Texas. Aztec Land and Cattle filed for bankruptcy in 1900 and Holbook entered a period of relative tranquility. Now calamity visited the community only in the form of periodic disasters. The big fire of 1888 was followed by flood in 1891. Drought and overgrazing by sheep and cattle produced more silt in the Rio Puerco and Little Colorado until the stream bed was higher than parts of town. The flood of 1923 was the worst ever, cutting off Holbrook by rail, highway, telephone and telegraph. Streets were inundated, homes and commercial buildings washed away and one life lost. Beginning in the 1930s the US Army Corps of Engineers constructed levees to protect those homes and businesses that remained on the south side of the tracks. Work on the levees continues today.

One of the earlier motels catering to travelers on Route 66 is pictured about 1931. The back of this postcard says “a large assortment of genuine Navajo Indian rugs in stock at all times.” Though it doesn’t look very inviting today it seemed to offer most everything you could want, including a good mattress.

With the development of automobile travel, Holbrook businesses came to line two main streets, Navajo Boulevard seen here looking north in 1937 and Hopi Drive running west and east one block north of this view. Joy Nevin Avenue and the railroad tracks are just behind the photographer of this “real photo postcard,” the prolific Burton Frasher (1888-1955) of Pomona, California. The left side of this block is hard to recognize today, taken over by giant plaster dinosaurs advertising a rock shop. The white house that was home to Scorse’s Green Lantern Café in 1937 is still there, but the Holbrook Hotel built in 1884 and housing a Buick-Oldsmobile dealership in 1937 is long gone.

Holbrook’s fortunes increased with every new road bringing tourists and shoppers. Trains stopped at Adamana, 15 miles east of Holbrook, for tours of Petrified Forest National Monument created in 1906. It wasn’t long before tours of the Painted Desert, Petrified Forest and the Hopi pueblos would start in Holbrook. Beginning in 1913, an Ocean to Ocean highway was constructed across the country, named the National Old Trails Road. Coming from California, the automobile road followed the Santa Fe railway until Holbrook. There it crossed the Little Colorado River twice to go south to St. Johns and Springerville and into New Mexico. When named highways were given numbers in 1926, US Highway 66 from Winslow took a new alignment at Holbrook, staying north of the Rio Puerco.

Judging by the number of cars, The Motaurant was a popular stop on west Highway 66, Hopi Drive in Holbrook when this postcard was issued late in 1953 or early 1954. Not a complete octagon, the café wing was nevertheless built to resemble one of the better Navajo hogan homes. Another postcard for The Motaurant from the late 1940s advertised organist Fred Laskowsky playing your requests in the “refined cocktail bar” at left. Drinks and then back on narrow, two-lane Route 66 at 50-65 mph.

“Sleep in a Wigwam” said the back of this Petley Studios postcard from the 1950s, “a novel and unique place to stay.” Built in 1950 by Chester E. Lewis based on a design used for six other such motels from California to Florida, it was first called Wigwam Village No. 6. Though closed from 1974-1988 when I-40 bypassed the downtown, today it is still operated by the Lewis family. Besides the seven Villages, there were other teepee design motels, including one in Tempe.

In 1917, Holbrook became the terminus of a new railroad, the Apache Railway extending south to sawmills at Snowflake, Standard and McNary. Lumber became a commodity shipped out of Holbrook. Today, the Apache Railway brings paper from a mill near Snowflake. Over the years, Holbrook has also been a supply point by truck for the Hopi mesas to the north and the Mormon settlements to the south, along Highway 77. Highway 377 also comes in from the south, from Heber and the rim country. But it was Route 66 that created one long strip development through downtown Holbrook, offering travelers a variety of gasoline stations, restaurants, motels, curio shops and amusements. That’s the town that still greets motorists on Interstate-40.

This is the intersection of Hopi Drive and Navajo Boulevard, looking northeast about 1952. The cupola of the courthouse is seen above the yellow-brick Masonic Lodge (1917). Motorists on Route 66 headed east would drive the length of Hopi until arriving at this intersection at lower left, then turn left to proceed north on Navajo, passing the courthouse. If they turned right, they would pass the scene pictured above in 1937, cross the railroad tracks and the river with the option to head south toward Snowflake (Highway 77) or southeast toward St. Johns (US 260 in 1952 but renumbered 180 today).

This 1960s Agfachrome aerial photo by Bob Petley locates Holbrook between the Little Colorado River at lower right corner and the reddish bluffs bordering the river valley. You can easily make out the Wigwam Motel on long and wide Hopi Drive (click on the picture to see full-size) and the Santa Fe railroad running parallel one block south. In upper left, Navajo Boulevard has climbed out of the valley to curve back to the east as Route 66, going to the Petrified Forest on the horizon.

see also:
William S. Abruzzi, “The Social and Ecological Consequences of Early Cattle Ranching in the Little Colorado River Basin” Human Ecology, Vol. 23, No. 1 (March 1995) pp. 75-98.
Catherine H. Ellis, Holbrook and the Petrified Forest (2007).

Globe: The Greatest Copper Camp
Survived Without Copper

Searching for gold, prospectors found silver instead, in the rugged mountains south of the Salt River canyon in the early 1870s. Within a few years, Globe City would be built along Pinal creek, in a small valley between the Pinal Mountains on the southwest and the Apache Mountains on the northeast. Globe would be the business center of a “mineral belt” in Cobre Valley, and then about six years later the county seat of newly created Gila County. When the silver played out, copper would bring even greater wealth. And after about 50 years of mining copper, after all the copper mines at Globe closed, the city would survive nevertheless.

The military, operating out of a western ring of forts had been determinately confining the Apache people to a reservation in the mountains of eastern Arizona created by executive order of President U. S. Grant November 9, 1871. This allowed prospectors into the Pinal and Apache Mountains where they found small globes of silver. One group of men filed a claim on the Globe Ledge discovery in 1873. This was followed by adjacent claims in 1874 and 1875. Whether impressed by the shape of the silver nuggets or more likely the world renown they were sure was to come, they named it the Globe Mining District in the Globe Hills with the streets of Globe City laid out down on the creek. When a survey was made, all this was found to be on Apache reservation land. No problem. Friends in Washington got the reservation boundary line moved east several times to accommodate each new discovery. Still, proximity to Apache lands has always played a role in the history of Globe.

This Apache family depicted about 1910, possibly camped near Globe, would have traveled there to trade at the stores. At first, the Department of Interior and the military tried to round up all Apache tribes in the southwest on the San Carlos reservation east of globe, with shrinking reservation boundaries every few years. Then, a policy change sent Apache families to five reservations across the state. (Postcards from this era were made from colorized black & white photos.)

I don’t know who owned this general store or where it was in Globe, but the photo appears to date from about 1907. It undoubtedly shows the staff, including two young boys in an express wagon who delivered groceries and probably a salesman in a buggy. The butcher is all in white, and since women rarely worked in a store unless they owned it, I assume that the owners are the lady and the well-dressed man to her left. The other four men and boys would be clerks and stock clerks. Then again, maybe the butcher was the owner. A lot of the details of history have been lost.

Riches poured out of the land. Hinton (1878) in his Handbook to Arizona reported that red oxide of copper ore could produce $200 to $400 a ton in silver even if the copper was discarded. Rich silver ores within a few miles of Globe were yielding 200 to 400 ounces per ton. To attract investors and labor, some mines claimed to extract $1,300 to $4,000 per ton of ore, and even “ores producing from $5,000 to $15,000 per ton,” were reported. Smelters and furnaces were profitably roasting rocks all along the mineral belt even though all supplies had to be transported to the remote area by wagon teams.

This view of the Old Dominion works about 1906 is looking approximately south toward the town of Globe in the valley at left with the snowcapped Pinal Mountains on the horizon. The head frame for the underground shaft is out of view at left. A recently added concentrator has five smoke stacks and a growing pile of waste in the right foreground. Behind is the big stack of the smelter. The correspondent who mailed this postcard in 1909 has written on the front, “Talk about your mining towns, Globe is sure one, believe me.” On the back he related, “I am now in a town where a person must be careful, truly a mining town. Being in Arizona on business and near Globe, I thought I would take a run up and see it. It is not on the main line but 124 mi. from it, 743 miles from L.A. Talk about being in the mountains, all surroundings are like the picture on the reverse side.” The William Ryan drugstore in Globe had the photo sent to Germany to be printed as postcards, which were then sold at the drugstore.

This is a scene inside the smelter pictured above about the same year. At the end of the mining, concentrating and smelting process pure molten copper is poured into molds to become ingots. Today, an electrolytic process produces pure copper cathodes.

The Southern Pacific railroad had built across the state to New Mexico by the end of 1880. Heavy mining machinery, furnace clay, lead catalyst and everything else needed in Globe could be transferred from relatively cheap railroad shipping to relatively expensive wagon train 130 miles from Globe. This arrangement lasted more than 15 years and still mining proved profitable, even during the mid-1880s recession. “In few places in the world is copper ore found in such manner and of so high a grade as in the vicinity of Globe,” wrote Arizona Commissioner of Immigration John A, Black in 1890. That kind of treasure deserves a rail link he concluded. (see, Black, Arizona, the land of sunshine and silver. . .) Several attempts had already been financial failures, but finally with mining company money, in 1894 the Gila Valley, Globe and Northern Railway was formed and tracks reached Globe four years later. The line would eventually became part of the Southern Pacific empire but is now operated again by a small company.

Though laborious hand drilling of blasting holes gave way to steam drills in the 1890s, hand drilling contests were popular events bringing out huge crowds for another couple decades. This is a Globe team in 1908. The little girl is ready with a water hose to cool and lubricate the bit and clear dust.

Globe Becomes a Hotbed of Labor Union Strife

Copper mining at Globe became increasingly profitable, leading workers to join unions and demand higher wages and better benefits. After a number of strikes, the Greatest Copper Camp finally suffered the greatest miners strike in 1917. When the United States entered the European war that year, patriotism reached a fever pitch. President Wilson criminalized speaking against the war effort and demanded greatly increased copper production for shell casings and electrical wiring in battleships. Globe was a multi-ethnic community with Hispanic workers paid less than union scale. Rumors spread through town that Austrian immigrants working in the mines were planning fifth-column sabotage on behalf of the Huns. Irish workers were also suspect. Hadn’t their country just kicked out British rulers through revolution? The unions were fractured between socialists like the Industrial Workers of the World who took a moral stand against warfare and moderates like the Mine, Mill & Smelter Workers Union. The Fourth of July holiday fell right in the middle of a desperate and extremely contentious walkout by 2,000 miners from both unions. The companies hired armed guards and the county sheriff deputized citizens. Republican Governor Thomas Campbell showed up with federal army troops since the National Guard had gone off to war. A Loyalty League recruited patriots to oppose the workers. There were mass arrests. Replacement workers were brought in from Texas, though they couldn’t get production going. It seemed chaos reigned for nearly four months, but in the end a compromise was found and most of the workers went back to work for higher pay and somewhat better benefits. Jurors refused to convict the only union leader brought to trial. Remarkably, with all the brandishing of loaded guns, only two deaths occurred, a train ran over a soldier and a horse kicked a federal conciliator. (see, James W. Byrkit, Forging the Copper Collar (1982); Daphne Overstreet, “The 1917 Walkout at Globe, Arizona,” Journal of Arizona History Summer 1977; and “The Arizona Copper Strike,” The Outlook 25 July 1917, pages 466, 468)

This Arizona Historical Society photo shows one of several poses for the camera made by the famous/infamous 14 armed guards at the Old Dominion smelter during the strike of 1917. Their pistol-packing leader is sitting down in front.

This truck was one of the entries in the Fourth of July parade at the beginning of the strike. It was labeled a “scab car,” so the men must be some of those brought in from New Mexico and Texas to cross picket lines.

In contrast to labor wars, Globe’s history has long been animated by genuinely violent stories of murders, holdups and hangings in the 1880s. When it wasn’t an Apache brought to the gallows, then it was a claim jumper, drunken cowboy or highway robbers masquerading as Apaches. Long after hangings at county jails were banned in 1909 and hanging was replaced by the gas chamber in 1933, Globe holds the distinction of claiming the last legal hanging in Arizona. It was a gruesome, botched strangulation of an Apache under the federal death penalty statute in 1936. (see, “Globe Arizona History” by Paul R. Machula [1996] at http://www.geocities.com/~zybt/globe.htm)

Despite the violence, despite its remote location and despite unstable copper prices the boomtown survived. It rebuilt after fires in 1885 and 1894. Earthquake damage in 1887 and periodic floods, the worst in 1891, couldn’t dampen profits for long. The 1880 census found Globe the seventh largest town in the territory. By 1890 it had dropped to tenth. After the railroad came it bounced up to fifth place in 1900 and fourth in 1910. Being county seat helped. Government jobs, taxes and appropriations have always kept some Arizona communities afloat, as others faded into ghost towns. Nearly half of all employment in Gila County in 2008 was in some level of government.

The town was built around a single main street, Broad Street, seen here about 1913. This is the block between Oak and Sycamore on the west side of Broad Street. At left is the Dominion Hotel, Globe’s finest when it was built in 1905. It’s now gone, having burned in 1981. Next is the office of Globe Light & Power Company which also piped gas into homes, and then Charles T. Martin’s theater. By 1940 the electric company had become part of Arizona Edison Company, next door to the renamed Fox theater.

Looking north at the east side of Broad Street about 1927 in the same block shown above, the Gila County Courthouse (1906) is on the corner with a flag on the roof, across Oak Street from the Hotel Globe. The other building with a flag, farther down the street, is the Trust or European Building (1906). The photo (colorized) was undoubtedly taken from a balcony on the Dominion Hotel. In the distance you can just see the Old Dominion smelter smoke stack. The courthouse, now Cobre Valley Center for the Arts, is still a point of pride. The Trust Building burned in 2005.


The opening of large mines at the new town of Miami from 1907 to 1911, a few miles away, benefited the county seat. Copper production from Globe-Miami mines surpassed Bisbee in 1916 and remained in the lead until the 1930s. But while other copper mines in Arizona shifted to open pit extraction, the Old Dominion remained an underground operation. Tunneling reached the aquifer in 1894 and pumps had to be installed, adding to the cost. By 1914, 3.8 million gallons of water had to be brought to the surface every day. With the coming of the Great Depression copper mines all over the state closed, including the Old Dominion in 1931. It never reopened. When copper prices rose again the workforce in Globe drove to Miami for high paid jobs.

Transportation spending brings prosperity for many Arizona communities. While Globe remained far from a railroad mainline it did end up on well-traveled highways. In 1905, Globe became a freight hauling point on the newly constructed Apache Trail, a dirt road from Mesa to Roosevelt Dam and on to Globe and Miami. Most of this freight would come from Mesa, but the Southern Pacific railroad began bringing tourists to Globe. There, they would board buses for a scenic ride over the Apache Trail, returning to the train in Mesa. When transcontinental highways were built and lined with gasoline stations and motels, Globe was a stop on the Lee Highway beginning in 1921. Later it would be numbered US Highway 180 and by 1938 renumbered Highway 70. Another highway, connecting Phoenix with Springerville, Highway 60, was routed through Globe in 1932.

Travel on Highway 70 led to a healthy food and lodging industry at Globe’s northeast entrance, from the junction with Highway 60 to the downtown. The common design of cabins with garages around a central court provided a bed for the night. They were called auto courts or motor hotels or by some variation. The El Rey (still in business) opened in 1938 and probably issued this card the same year. “One of Arizona’s finest,” said the back of the postcard, “recommended by Duncan Hines.”

These photos appear to have been taken when the new eatery opened in December 1938. There’s a sign on the covered wagon tarp that says, “Welcome! You’re in the West. It doesn’t matter how you’re dressed.”

The last few decades have been brutal for Arizona copper towns, finally leaving most of Globe and Miami out of work. Housing development peaked and investors turned to driving up metal prices. Just before the present economic depression, high copper prices looked to reopen the Miami mines. In 2007 the Arizona Republic reported, “Many of Miami's houses and commercial buildings were abandoned years ago and are crumbling and uninhabitable. Neither Miami nor Globe, four miles to the east, has enough dwellings to accommodate the new miners and their families. Miami's aging water and sewer systems can barely handle existing residents, and in Globe there is little private land available on which to build homes.” Nobody expected copper prices to go up so fast, explained the Miami Vice Mayor.

Flagstaff: The Skylight City Was On the Beaten Path

This northern Arizona city in the pines exists because it is on a convenient transportation corridor spanning the continent. Between 1857 and 1859, Army troops under the command of Lieutenant Edward F. Beale built a wagon road across the Colorado Plateau following the “middle route” between Santa Fe and Los Angeles. Staying close to springs and abundant grass for animals, Beale’s road was shorter than the Old Spanish Trail through Utah and safer than the Gila Trail through the blistering desert frequented by Apache raiders. Travelers on the road would have sight of the landmark San Francisco Peaks for more than 75 miles in either direction and could water at Leroux Springs at the southwest base of the mountain.

Even before completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869 plans called for two more, one to follow the Gila Trail and another taking the 35th Parallel middle route with Beale’s road. Knowing the Atlantic & Pacific railroad would build close to Leroux Springs a few sheep ranchers and two immigrant parties from Boston arrived at the base of the peaks in 1876. The second Boston party arrived in Antelope Valley on July 4th and made a pine tree into a flagpole to celebrate the centennial of the Declaration of Independence. Finding the clearings between the copious Leroux Springs and the meager Antelope Spring 12 miles south a disappointing location for farming the Boston parties moved on, but their patriotic flagpole was the talk of the territory. When a government surveyor arrived two years later he found one of the sheep men living at the “Flagstaff” ranch not far from Antelope Spring.

As soon as it became clear that rails would pass by Antelope Spring, very early in 1881 a Prescott merchant and his nephew established a store on the side of the hill where water trickled out of the ground. That April Atlantic and Pacific Railroad surveyors staked out curves along the hillside and a group of Mormon entrepreneurs settled close to Leroux Springs to grade roadbed and cut ties all along the line. By the time rails were laid to Canyon Diablo west of Winslow the following year, a Chicago businessman was already hauling a complete steam powered sawmill by wagon train to Antelope Spring with a contract to supply the A & P. A primitive line of tents, log cabins and board buildings soon graced the hillside with a post office named Flagstaff in the general store.

This is a small portion of the 20-30 commercial buildings that first lined the single street of Flagstaff, pictured by Albuquerque photographer Ben Wittick, probably in March 1883. There is a telegraph line and across the street out of view, railroad tracks and the spring. In the center is a sign that says “Monarch (Mercantile?), P. B. Brannen (Prop.?).” Next door is the “Arizona News Depot” with a canvas roof. Then another store, then the two-story Beal’s restaurant and Pioneer Hotel and finally John Drain’s saloon. To the left of Brannen’s store is the Log Cabin Saloon and then another saloon and dance hall. These buildings would burn 22 July 1884 and be replaced only to eventually become “Old Town” as commercial development moved east.



After struggling to bridge the devil’s canyon, the railroad arrived at Flagstaff August 1, 1882 and 18 days later the sawmill boiler was fired and its steam whistle echoed through Antelope Valley. But the silence had already been broken by more than a dozen saloons serving railroad workers 24/7. Like every other town on the railroad front, Flagstaff was a dangerous cauldron of male exuberance supported by hefty railroad paychecks. “Cattle rustling was rampant and only conquered by stringing the culprits to a limb of a tree and riddling the bodies with bullets. Many were the shootings in the town. . . . They write about Tombstone and other early settlements, but Flagstaff was as bad as any of them” (p.37, Charles C. Stemmer, A Brand From the Burning, 1959).

The railroad put a water tank for their thirsty steam locomotives and a couple box cars for a depot in a relatively flat part of the valley about a mile east of the town on the hill. The general store and the larger saloons moved to a site opposite the depot in 1883 and built substantial buildings. This was “New Town” and Antelope Spring became “Old Town Spring.” Most of the money flowed into the orderly stores and rowdy saloons, giving their owners almost total control over the community.

Another Wittick photo likely taken in late summer 1883 documents the first buildings in New Town, down in Antelope Valley about a mile east of the spring. P. B. Brannen has moved his store and the Post Office into a masonry structure on the NE corner of what would soon be Railroad Avenue and San Francisco Street. Across SF Street is the new home of Black’s Bar owned by James Vail. Both of these buildings burned in 1886 and 1888, but the masonry walls of Brannen’s store survive today, while a brick replacement for Vail’s saloon is also still standing. Like almost every other town along the A & P railroad, there are no buildings across the street, only railroad tracks and the depot.

If anyone tried to make Flagstaff a nice town, they were plagued by too much fire and too little water. Old Town burned down in 1884, then New Town burned in 1886 and 1888. The sawmill, despite a supply of water pumped from a spring, burned in 1887. Then the business district burned again in 1889, taking the railroad depot too. The town had to ban wooden structures downtown, opting instead for sandstone cut at a quarry about three miles east. Soon after it opened in 1887, the quarry was shipping rail cars of stone all over the west.

Looking northwest toward Flagstaff and the San Francisco Peaks around 1893, the sandstone railroad depot built in 1889 is at left, with the commercial district behind it. You can see the steeple of the Methodist-Episcopal church completed in 1888 and the Babbitt Brothers store with awnings open over its first floor windows. At the right edge of the photo, sandstone walls are going up for the new courthouse completed in 1894.

Water supply has always been a problem for Flagstaff. Beginning in 1883, the railroad and sawmill pumped water from O’Neil Springs over eight miles to the south. What Old Town Spring couldn’t provide was hauled in barrels from Leroux Springs and sold on the street at exorbitant rates until 1896. It took a lot of money and much work to finally lay a pipeline in 1898-99 from springs high on the Peaks. Surface water had to be added from upper Lake Mary reservoir in 1941, followed by an ever increasing number of deep wells beginning in 1954.

Workers are stacking rough-cut lumber for air drying at the Arizona Lumber and Timber company mill in the 1890s. Chicago lumberman Edward E. Ayer sold his sawmill established in 1882 to D. M. Riordan in 1887. Rebuilding after several fires, it continued production under a number of owners until 1954. Old Town is behind the mill on the hill seen at left, while New Town is in front of the trees in the distance at right. Behind New Town is the hazy outline of Mount Elden.

In 1886, Flagstaff got a second big sawmill built about five miles east of town by the Greenlaw family. Then a third sawmill was located in 1910 on the southeast side of town called the Flagstaff Lumber Manufacturing Company. The “City in the Pines” had become the biggest forest products manufacturer in the state by far. This postcard view from about 1912 shows the Santa Fe Railroad mainline in the foreground, successor to the old A. & P. railroad. And the dirt road along the rail line is the National Old Trails Road, a major highway across the USA that would become Route 66. Today, Flagstaff has no sawmills and the county jail has been built on the site shown here.

Five Babbitt Brothers came to Flagstaff from Cincinnati beginning in 1886 and started the CO Bar cattle ranch, and a mercantile and Indian trading business organized in 1889. The locally quarried cut sandstone building had been greatly enlarged in 1891 and then again by the time this photograph was made in the early 1900s. By the 1960s, the business had expanded to include trading posts, a supermarket chain and lumber yards in towns across northern Arizona.

Flagstaff’s livelihood expanded over the years to include more than stone, cattle, sheep and lumber. By the 1890s the small town was publicizing its sunshine, pure air and mountain spring water. It became a lodging and outfitting point for tourists going to the Grand Canyon. The local cycling club blazed a trail and stages were making the trip three times a week by 1892. Silent film production crews came in the 1910s with Zane Grey scripts. When tourists started driving automobiles in addition to taking the train, Flagstaff’s middle route became a major cross-country highway, the National Old Trails Road beginning in the 1910s which became Route 66 in 1926. Arizona Snow Bowl ski runs opened in 1939, and expanded after the war. By 1957, the Black Canyon Highway connected Phoenix with Flagstaff, bringing more visitors for winter snows or cool summers.

A large sandstone building to house a reform school was constructed on the far south side of Flagstaff with a state appropriation in 1894. Money ran out and the community had to wait until 1898 before the building could get windows and doors. By then, community objections sent the reform school to Benson, giving over the Flagstaff building to the state’s third institution of higher learning, a Normal School to train teachers. When this photo was published as a postcard about 1910, the main building (at right), had been joined by a men’s dorm (Taylor Hall, 1905, center) and a women’s dorm (Bury Hall, 1908, at left).

The Sisters of Loretto at the Foot of the Cross were assigned to teach a parochial school in Flagstaff from 1899-1966. A small building for St. Anthony’s Academy was built on Cherry Street in 1895, with a convent added in 1899. Increased enrollment led to the addition of a larger school building on the block in 1903, then an addition shown here in 1911. The 1903 building is seen attached to the rear and then farther behind is a separate building, the 1899 convent which became the rectory from 1903-1958. The parish church was also in the 1911 addition until 1930. Everything seen here was torn down in 1956, replaced by a modern school building which is still in use. It’s now called St. Mary’s School.

An early promotional nickname was “The Skylight City,” referring to the 7,000-foot elevation. In 1894 Percival Lowell, attracted to the thin air at that altitude, picked a site on the hill above Old Town Spring to point a telescope through the skylight at the planet Mars. His observatory became an important scientific institution, and the site of the discovery of Pluto in 1930. Other scientists came to Flagstaff too. Fort Valley Experimental Forest was established near Leroux Springs in 1908 and is still teaching rangers how to care for trees. The Museum of Northern Arizona was created in 1928 to study the landscape and cultures of the Colorado Plateau. US Geological Survey established an astrogeology laboratory in Flagstaff in 1963 to train astronauts how to walk on the moon. There is a US Naval observatory to the west and a couple of university telescopes to the south.

Here is the same corner of Railroad Avenue and San Francisco Street seen above in 1883, this time photographed about 1920. Prohibition had been enacted in 1914 in Arizona, forcing Black’s Bar on the corner to become a pool hall and barber shop. Next door used to be the Senate Saloon, now a restaurant, next to Bender’s All-American Café. Next is Robertson’s News Stand that sold newspapers, magazines, postcards, tobacco products, candy and soda pop. The newsstand was the last surviving wood-frame structure downtown after an 1896 ordinance required fire-proof construction. The Ford sign points to Babbitt Ford two blocks north.

Along with the rest of the state, Flagstaff experienced a growth spurt after World War II. Sawmill production increased in the 1950s and the railroad built a marshalling yard in 1957 on the east side to ship materials to the Glen Canyon Dam construction site at Page. The population of the “City in the Pines” increased 138% in the decade of the fifties, helped by the annexation of 48 square miles in 1957-59. It had become a college town with increasing enrollment at what had been the normal school. In 1966, the college became Northern Arizona University. Through the sixties and seventies, Flagstaff struggled to attract higher paying jobs as the timber industry collapsed. Nor could it accommodate the increased automobile traffic that came with growth. In the eighties it had a makeover, closing the old cowboy saloons and creating upscale neighborhoods and trendy art galleries, boutiques and bistros downtown. But racial tensions and income inequities persist.

The Beale Road was eventually replaced by an automobile highway and Flagstaff became one long strip development of filling stations, motels, restaurants and parking lots. Tourism and the hospitality industry eventually made more money for the community than manufacturing forest products. The Texaco station seen here about 1948 used to be on Santa Fe Avenue (now renamed “Route 66”) at Humphreys Street. Lane Sharber operated the motel, which is still in business as the Parkside Town House, and I think Norman G. Sharber operated the gas station.

Route 66 was two lanes of concrete when this postcard was published by the prolific Bob Petley (1912-2006) of Phoenix about 1955. This particular section survives, though overtopped with asphalt, leading from Interstate-40, Exit 204 (Walnut Canyon) to Flagstaff Mall. That’s Mount Elden on the left with the snowcapped San Francisco Peaks on the right. There are a few billboards visible (click on picture to see large size). Motorists were greeted on either side of town by dozens of billboards advertising locally-owned small businesses. After a great deal of effort most billboards were removed. Now they are back, bigger ones advertising big nationwide chains.

This agfachrome by Bob Petley shows downtown Flagstaff in the 1960s. The turquoise blue, 5-story Valley Bank building is in the center. The 1889 railroad depot has a bright white roof, while the 1927 depot is the brown building at the left edge of the photo. Route 66 is the street paralleling the railroad tracks. You can see how the city is built up in Antelope Valley (name no longer used) between Mars Hill, the site of Lowell Observatory on the left and McMillan Mesa on the right. At left, below Mars Hill is a little blue pond in the trees, close by where the 1878 Flagstaff ranch was located.

Some sources:
Platt Cline, Mountain Campus (1983)
Platt Cline, They Came To The Mountain (1976)
Marie D. Jackson, Stone Landmarks. . . (1999)
Richard & Sherry Mangum, Flagstaff Past & Present (2003)
Russell Wahmann, The Historical Geography of the Santa Fe Railroad In Northern Arizona (1971)