When driving on AZ-77 between Tucson and
Globe/Miami, or on AZ-177 between Superior and Winkelman, it may seem like the
middle of nowhere. But there actually are a number of towns located in the
area, and the history of the northern San Pedro Valley area, including the
Black Hills, where the remnant of Tiger is located, cannot be told without also
talking about other towns in the area.
In the years before the Civil War, settlement of
the area by Americans began. However, most of the early settlements were not
permanent, and were apparently abandoned by 1854. Plus there was always the
danger of Apache raids. When people did settle down, they often traveled back
and forth between towns or to Phoenix and Tucson for jobs. Families scattered
across the Copper Basin like ripples on a pond.
Although it was rugged living, there was a lot
going on in the Basin during those years. The 23 known ghost towns in Pinal
County, as well as a handful of “populated areas” barely hanging on, attest to
this.
Southwest
Corner
Vekol
Between
Phoenix & Casa Grande
Camp Rivers
Maricopa Wells
Between Eloy
& Tucson
Sasco
Stage Station Homestead
Near Florence
Adamsville
Martinez Canyon
Near Phoenix
Goldfield
South of
Mammoth
American Flag
Tiger
Between Mammoth
& Winkelman
Alma
Cochran
Copper Creek
Between Winkelman
& Superior
Barcelona
Kelvin*
Queen
Ray
Ray Junction
Riverside*
Sonora
Troy
North of
Superior
Silver King
Between Phoenix
& Superior
Denoon
Pinal
Reymert
*Still people living here.
The Copper Basin Chamber of Commerce website has this brief history:
Before large scale mining
operations began in the Copper Basin area, many pioneers and colorful
characters passed this way. The ghost towns of Troy, Cochran, and Butte were
host to a multitude of fortune seekers trying to tap into the mineral wealth of
the region. Now, all that is left of Butte, are the coke ovens once used to
smelt ore. Built in 1850 by Welsh miners, the cost of mining, smelting and
hauling the ore exceeded its worth; so, the ovens as well as the surrounding towns
were gradually abandoned.
Between Kearny and Ray Mine, the
small settlements of Kelvin and Riverside were once bustling little towns. A
Butterfield Overland stage stop was established in 1879 at Riverside along the
Globe-Florence route. It was there in 1889 that the Apache Kid escaped from
lawmen transporting prisoners to Casa Grande to be placed on a train destined
for the territorial prison at Yuma. Riverside is also the site of the last
stagecoach robbery in America, which occurred in 1899 when a young diminutive
woman named Pearl Hart and her associate, Joe Boot, held up the Globe-Florence
stage. Miss Hart served some time in the Yuma Territorial Prison for that
ordeal, then used her notoriety to launch an unsuccessful stage career.
Kearny was founded in 1958, and
is named for Brevet Major General Stephen Watts Kearny. General Kearny led 100
dragoons through this area on his way to California in 1846. The official log
of this trip kept by Lieutenant William H. Emery records, under the date of
November 7, they traveled down the Gila and camped that night at the junction
of the Gila River and a creek that Lieutenant Emery named Mineral Creek,
because of its rich mineral content. It is on this creek that the (ASARCO,
Inc.) Ray Mine is now located. It displaced the towns of Ray, Sonora, and
Barcelona, three small copper mining communities that were once "boom
towns". They were engulfed by the mine after Kennecott Copper Corporation
converted from underground mining to open pit mining operations in 1948. Most
residents of the communities moved to Kearny, which Kennecott built to relocate
the miners and their families.
Of Ray, Arizona, nothing that was not moved to the
new town of Kearny remains, not even the dirt, as the copper mine has taken
even that.
But there was activity in the area early on.
On August 31, 1857, the San Antonio & San Diego
Mail Line, operated by James E. Birch (1827-1857) delivered the first mail from
Texas to San Diego on a road that ran through the San Pedro Valley, with posts
at what are now Benson and Winkelman.
Early advertisement for the SA&SD.
(Courtesy of California Dept. of Parks & Recreation.)
There are records of a mine in operation near the confluence of the San Pedro River and Aravaipa Creek in 1860 and the August 15, 1934 issue of the University of Arizona Bulletin, an issue subtitled “Arizona Lode Gold Mines and Gold Mining,” states that “prospecting was done in the Mammoth vicinity prior to the Civil War.”
Barnes & Granger’s Arizona Place Names (Falconer Publishing Co., 1983) states that “Frank Schultz located the first mine in the Mammoth district and, as early as December 27, 1872, the Mammoth Mine was being worked by E. M. Pearce, C. O. Brown and members of Tully Ochoa Company [sic].” (Tully, Ochoa & Co. was a premier freight transportation company in the southwestern U.S. prior to railroads being laid through the area.)
Pinal County was created out of parts of Maricopa County and Pima County on February 1, 1875.
According to Bureau of Land Management (BLM) records, the earliest mining claim recorded at Tiger was the Hackney claim, filed by Charles Dyke and T. C. Weed, on July 14, 1879. The claim was on a quartz vein that has come to be called the Collins vein.
It is commonly accepted that Austrian prospector Frank Schultz, Sr. (1839-1918) located the Mars claim and the Mammoth claim on what he referred to as a “mammoth lode gold vein” in 1882 (either on February 8 or April 21). The vein has ever since been called the Mammoth vein, and the first mine developed on it was the Mammoth Mine. Schultz is also credited with giving the mining district its name, the Old Hat District.
Schultz took on a partner, a prominent Tucson-based businessman named Joseph Goldtree (1844-1897), who immigrated from Germany and became an American citizen the same day in 1870 as another Tucson heavyweight, Samuel Drachman. The two erected a small, unsuccessful “cannonball” mill on the San Pedro River.
When the mill proved a failure, Schultz had a Nevada company come in to develop the mine under the direction of Merril P. Freeman (1844-1919), who arrived in Tucson in 1880 and served as postmaster in 1884 and president of Consolidated National Bank for 15 years. The company sank a shaft on the vein, but then lost the “pay streak.” Meanwhile, the Hackney claim was being developed by an open cut on the vein. The first recorded production of gold from the district was in 1881.
In 1884, Schultz sold the Mammoth Mine to a Michigan lumberman named George N. Fletcher, who put the management of it under the direction of a Captain Johnson.
Johnson’s crew sunk a shaft down to a depth of 300 feet and found the Mammoth vein; construction was begun on a mill on the San Pedro River, three miles away, where water was available. Most methods of ore processing require large amounts of water and, at that time, it was more practical to haul the ore to a source of water than to haul water to the mines.
Over the next several years, Fletcher’s employees built a 30-stamp amalgamation mill along the San Pedro River to crush the ore from the mine and liberate the gold. The free gold was then taken up in mercury by a process called amalgamation.
The little town which grew up around Fletcher’s mill came to be known as Mammoth. In 1887, a U.S. Post Office was established there. A school was opened early in the history of the community, while the mill was still under construction. A number of stores and saloons sprang up, including the store of J. N. Dodson, former postmaster of Mesaville. Johnny Dubois operated a saloon in Mammoth for many years.
Ore was hauled the three miles down the hill from
the mine in 20-mule team wagons, on a contract with William “Curly” Neal
(1849-1936) of Oracle. Many of the miners lived in Mammoth and traveled to and
from work on the wagon road. Neal also had a contract to furnish wood and water
to the mines.
William "Curly" Neal
(Photograph courtesy of the Oracle Historical Society.)
On July 8, 1887, Fletcher located two more claims in the vicinity of the Mammoth Mine, the Remnant claim and the Raven claim, which was a millsite claim. During that year, he began negotiations with a British syndicate for the sale of the entire property. In 188, the Mammoth shaft was deepened from 300 to 500 feet in anticipation of the sale.
In 1889, the sale of the Mammoth Mine and Mill was completed; the new company was called Mammoth Gold Mines Limited. Although all newspaper accounts and engineers’ reports at this time referred to the transfer of the Mammoth Mine and Mill as a sale, later reports, dated around 1900, refer to it as a lease.
By this time, a little settlement of miners’ shacks had grown up around the mines. The community was called Schultz, after Frank Schultz. During the year 1889, Schultz opened a store to serve the residents there.
In 1890, Mammoth Gold Mines Ltd. enlarged the mill on the San Pedro River from 30 to 50 stamps. The average value of ore produced that year was $14 per ton; it cost the company $4 per ton to mine and process it. By 1890, the Town of Mammoth had a population of 600 to 700. The school had 70 pupils and one teacher, but the town had six saloons.
The ore which occurred near the surface on the Mammoth vein was “free milling,” which means that simply crushing it with the heavy stamps was sufficient to separate the gold from the enclosing quartz and other minerals. Amalgamation could then complete the recovery. The deeper the miners went on the vein, however, the less ore was free milled. More and more of the gold was being lost in the “tailings,” the waste material left after processing.
On January 1, 1891, Andrew Dannon and J. G. Fraser located the Mohawk claim on the Mammoth vein, southeast of the Mammoth Mine. In 1892, they sold the claim to a group of capitalists from Hartford, Connecticut, who organized the Mohawk Gold Mining Company. Over the next three years, this company sank a shaft and developed the vein down to a depth of 300 feet. They also built a small 10-stamp mill on the property.
Mammoth Gold Mines Limited continued to mine the Mammoth vein. Timber to support the expanding mine openings had to be brought to the mines from the forested slopes of the Santa Catalina Mountains, which was quite a long haul. For this reason, the miners tended to cut corners and did not provide adequate support for many of the open stopes along the Mammoth vein. So much ore was taken from the vein without properly supporting the open ground that, in 1893, a massive cave-in caused Mammoth Gold Mines Limited to cease operations for several years.
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