THE MINER’S MEAL By Lynn Downey (Wickenburg Sun, 12/1/10) Of all the ways to make money in the late 1800s and early 1900s, mining had to be one of the toughest. The work itself was hard, no matter whether you used a pick underground or worked a noisy stamp mill. The tasks of daily living were sometimes no easier, and what was often on a miner’s mind was his next meal. Whether a miner worked on his own in the mountains of California and the Southwest, or labored for a large mining operation such as the Vulture, near Wickenburg, food was surprisingly abundant. In general, the miner’s diet consisted of dried meats (jerky), eggs, bread, milk, and cheese. Available fresh meats were generally fowl, lamb, mutton, or game. Even if there was plenty of food around, miners sometimes had trouble paying for it. In the days before refrigeration, wagon teams would haul foodstuffs into town which had mercantiles or restaurants, and buyers would never know how much a dozen eggs or bottle of bitters would cost. Local merchants like Michael Goldwater and Isaac Levy, whose stores served the Vulture Mine and Wickenburg, never knew what they would be able to offer their customers until the wagons rolled into town. Crop damage due to bad weather would of course make scarce products more expensive, and if a store or camp was more difficult to get to, the simple costs of transportation – paying a driver, feeding the horses – would add to the price. Spoilage was another problem, so many perishable foods would be preserved, either through pickling, curing, drying or preserving in sugar as jellies. Fresh fruits and vegetables could only be eaten when in season. No matter what the weather or cost, there was one item miners could always count on: beans. In the Broadway musical, “Paint Your Wagon,” a group of miners have hit it big and sing a song called “Hand Me Down That Can of Beans,” with the refrain, “Out the window go the beans, I had a lucky day.” In other words, when the pickings were good, miners could afford something more than the ubiquitous beans. But more often than not, they were a staple of the frontier diet. They were always available, they were cheap, easily cooked and were also a traditional part of the late 19th century diet. Larger mining camps offered a place for the locals to eat, but the name of “restaurant” didn’t always apply to some of these establishments, which were often crudely constructed tents in the open air. But the camp cook, whether he (or she) worked in a fine restaurant or plopped piles of beans on a tin plate under the stars, was always a respected figure. A few photos of mining camp cooks survive in historical collections, and it’s always easy to spot them: they are the ones in the clean clothes. Canned food was also available to miners, but it was only in the 1870s that canning was common. Unfortunately, the first containers for meats, fruits and other foodstuffs were soldered together with lead, often contaminating what was inside and affecting the health of the eater. A few canned items in the diet weren’t too dangerous, but relying on early preserved foods did cause many an unpleasant death. By 1904 the “sanitary” unleaded can was being used and lead-related deaths dropped. Miners did their cooking in cast iron pans or Dutch ovens, and the latter could be used to make everything from scrambled eggs to peach cobbler. One of the most common uses of the Dutch oven was for biscuits, and to end today’s story, here is a biscuit recipe fit for any outdoor cooking pot. Sift together dry ingredients, then rub in lard with your fingertips until the flour is flaky. Pour in about a cupful milk to moisten. Turn out the dough on well floured board and pat it down to about ½ inch in thickness. Cut out with a drinking glass or coffee cup and put in a greased Dutch oven that has been slightly preheated (including the lid). Biscuits should be touching but not crowded together. Place the lid on the oven and cover with hot coals. Place it on a bed of red coals and let the biscuits bake for about twenty minutes or until brown on top and bottom. (Lynn Downey is the Historian for Levi Strauss & Co. and serves on the board of the Vulture Mine Preservation and Restoration Association. She is working with the group to develop a timeline of the mine's history, and is writing a history of Wickenburg and the Vulture Mine for Arcadia Publishing, to be released in early 2012.
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Digging for Vulture gold
by Roma Hagan (Wickenburg Sun 11/3/10)
Desert lore is steeped in tales of lost gold and treasures squirreled away in hidey holes whose locations were grudgingly, if at all, revealed only when the grim reaper was at hand. Many a secret cache was filled with gold stolen from the Vulture Gold Mine, the richest in the Arizona territory.
As the story goes, in 1871 four men overtook the stage traveling hell-bent from the Vulture to the Southern Pacific Railroad station in Maricopa and made off with two pristine bars of gold bullion valued at $15,000. Lawmen from Phoenix gave chase, hunting the hills and washes for several weeks only to see the thieves disappear without a trace. The search was called off.
Thirty years later, Elbert Hendrickson, a cowboy from the Cook range near Prescott, hearing the call of the grim reaper, confessed to three friends that he had been one of the bandits. He gasped that one of the gold bars was buried in the yard of an adobe house near today's Adams Street and Second Avenue in Phoenix. The second bar had been buried beneath the floor of a saloon for a couple of months before being cut up and split among the thieves.
Six months after the holdup, two of the robbers were killed by Apaches and not long after, Evans, leader of the gang and owner of the adobe house, was stabbed and killed. Hendrickson never went back for the buried treasure fearing that he would be arrested and hung.
Upon hearing Hendrickson's confession, his friends lost no time in digging up the backyard on Adams Street. They worked for nearly an hour then left with a heavy oblong package. Neighbor's speculation as to what the men had found fueled rumors and provided fodder for the newspapers.
The mystery was solved when William Odam, a Phoenix assayer, told about three men who had come to his home at night not long after the dig asking him to cut a gold bar into three pieces. They gave him $10 and demanded that he keep quiet for a week. The bar had been stamped "Vulture Gold Mine, Wickenburg, Ariz., 1870."
The men then needlessly disappeared; the Vulture Mining Company had long since gone bankrupt and there was no one to pursue them to recover the gold.
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Miners' Tools Included 'Overalls'
by Lynn Downey (Wickenburg Sun 10/2010)
Picture a hard rock miner, toiling away in the Vulture Mine. You probably see him using a pick, manning an ore crusher, or shoveling slag. These were some of the tools of his trade, essential to his work and – sometimes – his life.
Did you picture the clothes he was wearing? It’s not surprising if you didn’t. But the clothes a miner wore were just as essential to his work as the tools he carried.
Work clothing in the 19th century was made out of some of the sturdiest fabrics around: denim, cotton duck or canvas, and “hickory” stripe. Depending on the time of year, a miner could wear pants, shirts, or outerwear made from these fabrics. But these garments had different names back in the day.
For example, what we call “jeans” today were called “overalls” in the 1800s and early 1900s. If you wanted bib overalls, you called them bib overalls. Jackets were called “blouses” - from the French, blouson, because they weren’t as fitted as jackets you see today. Then there was something called a “jumper,” which isn’t a cute girl’s garment; it’s something that you wore if you wanted a top that was heavier than a shirt, but not as heavy as a jacket.
When Levi Strauss & Co. began to make men’s denim work pants with copper rivets for strength in 1873, there was one more item for a miner to choose from. In fact, these riveted pants were the very first jeans. The company then started to make all of these other work garments with rivets, which not only made them stronger, but they lasted longer, too. Which was a good thing if you worked miles away from the nearest general store. If you toiled at the Vulture Mine, you could buy your clothes in Wickenburg at Brayton’s Commercial Co., Etter Bros., or a few other small retailers.
Miners didn’t particularly care how they looked in their clothing. It was meant to keep them from getting scratched or scraped or otherwise bruised while working, and nothing else. However, when Levi Strauss & Co.’s riveted clothing first appeared in the marketplace, a farm and ranch magazine called Pacific Rural Press printed a glowing article about the new style of pants, and included an interesting commentary on the appearance of working men:
...we do not doubt that this manufacture, of overalls especially, will become quite popular amongst our working men, as the overalls are made and cut in the style of the best custom made pants. Nothing looks more slouchy in a workman than to see his pockets ripped open and hanging down, and no other part of the clothing is so apt to be torn and ripped as the pockets. Besides its slouchy appearance, it is inconvenient and often results in the person losing things from his pockets.
If clothing did get torn, it wasn't thrown away. Miners would cut up their pants or shirts to make patches for other garments they had on hand, or would wrap the denim or heavy canvas around their hands to protect them while they wielded a pick. Which explains why mine explorers find pieces of clothing in old shafts or tunnels all the time: those guys used the whole buffalo.
Miners chose their clothing carefully, with an eye to durability and strength. They knew that a tough pair of jeans was just as useful as anything they carried in their tool box.
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Wealth was Water at the Mine
by Roma Hagan (Wickenburg Sun, 10/6/10)
In 1863, Henry Wickenburg stumbled upon the ledge of gold-laced quartz that gave rise to the Vulture Mine, but he soon discovered that water trumped gold.
With nary a drop of water at the mine the ore had to be hauled for processing 12 miles away to the Hassayampa River at a cost of eight dollars per load. Barrels of water were carted back to the mine at a fee of ten cents per gallon.
As the story goes, these outrageous costs along with theft and embezzlement eventually bankrupted the Vulture Mining Company and the mine was sold to Central Arizona Mining Company. Central planned to turn things around by building an 80-stamp mill right at the mine and pumping water to run it from the river at Seymour,15 miles east.
Thirty men set to work in the spring of 1880. Large sheets of flat iron were cut, rolled and riveted into three-foot pipes which were then strapped onto mules and rushed to the end of the line where they were fitted together and covered with sand and rocks to hold them down against the rush of the water. It's amazing that, with only the crude tools the men had to work with, half of a mile of pipeline was finished each day.
At the same time, other men built a pumping station along the river and a reservoir two miles away on a hill with an elevation three hundred feet higher than the mine. Water would be pumped to the reservoir then drained by gravity flow through a nine inch pipe.
The entire project was completed in less than six weeks and four hundred thousand gallons of water per day could flow through the pipeline to the mine. Two hundred tons of ore each day were crushed with gold production averaging $4,000. Daily expenses plummeted to $2,000.
The pipeline worked well but there were problems. Seems that when men traveling through the desert needed water they would simply shoot a hole in the pipeline, reducing the pressure of the water.
The Central was profitable for several years before it too was driven into bankruptcy by theft and mismanagement. Pieces of Central's 1880 "pipe dream" are now on display at the mine and a few sections are still scattered in the desert.
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Vulture Murder and Mayhem
by Roma Hagan (Wickenburg Sun, 9/22/10)
Where there's gold, there's murder and mayhem. The Vulture Mine was no exception and, in its heyday, getting the gold to market was often times the deadliest job at the mine.
Cyrus Gribble, Vulture Mine's superintendent who was hated and feared by the miners for his heavy-handed tactics and wage cuts, was determined to get his gold to market without interference.
As the story goes, Gribble along with his wagon driver Thomas Johnson and guard Charley Doolittle set out for Phoenix in March 1888 with a thirty-six pound bar of solid gold worth more than $7,000, a meaningful sum in those days. From Phoenix the gold was to be shipped by rail to San Francisco.
Before daybreak the following day, travelers along the freight wagon road stumbled across the bodies of Gribble and Johnson piled together with the horse and smashed up wagon less than 20 miles from the mine (near present day Morristown). Doolittle's body was later discovered in the brush a few hundred feet away.
The bodies were riddled with bullets. The gold was gone.
Sheriff Halbert wasted no time in sending his men and a posse to the scene with orders to hunt down the murderers. The posse split up and rode hard after the five sets of horse tracks in the soft sand of the roadbed.
Mine owner Horace Tabor and outraged citizens offered nearly $7,000 in reward money for the bandits and the gold.
The posses gave chase for more than a week and rode nearly 500 miles through some of the roughest parts of the territory before catching up with three of the murderers near Gila Bend.
One of the men tried to run from the posse and was shot dead. The bullion and Gibble's watch were found rolled up in his blankets.
Tabor was satisfied to get his gold bar back and didn't worry about the other two murderers who had slipped away. The Sheriff collected only a thousand dollars of the reward but earned Tabor's friendship and support from that day on.
Tabor hired another superintendent and got back to business.
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The "Truth" About the Vulture Mine
by Roma Hagan (Wickenburg Sun, 8/25/10)
Henry Wickenburg staked his claim to a place in the history books in 1863 when he stumbled upon one of the richest gold ledges in the American West. It's widely known that ore from his Vulture Gold Mine financed the growth of the Town of Wickenburg and development of the Salt River Valley, but much about Henry himself remains a multiple choice of unknowns.
As the story goes, Henry was born in 1819 or 1820 in Austria, Prussia or the Ohio Valley and may or may not have escaped to the California gold fields after killing a man or running afoul of the government.
His given name may have been Johannes Henricus Wickenburg, Heinrich Heintzel, or Henry Wickenburg.
The truth about how Henry actually discovered the Vulture gold is equally elusive. In one version, Henry's burro wandered away and, tired of giving chase, he picked up a rock to throw at it. He noticed that the rock was streaked with gold at the very moment that a flock of turkey vultures flew overhead.
Or, maybe he was panning for gold on the Hassayampa River when two smiling Indians approached him and traded three pieces of quartz heavily laced with gold for his burro. Henry being the man he was fixed the Indians something to eat and they spent the night with him. The next day, Henry traded the Indians ten burros for the exact location of the gold.
Or, maybe Henry and his prospecting partners were coming through a canyon worrying about being ambushed by Indians. Guns at the ready, they made it safely through the canyon and, being very happy about it, fired off shots that killed a circling buzzard. Henry yelled, “Vait…I Vant the Vings,” and picked up the buzzard that had fallen on a fist-sized piece of gold-laced quartz.
Regardless of the number of stories about its discovery, the truth is that Henry Wickenburg did find gold in October 1863 and filed official papers for the claim on May 21, 1864.
His Vulture gold mine is still there for all to experience though the remaining buildings are rapidly collapsing. The Vulture Mine Preservation and Restoration Association needs your help to preserve this cornerstone of the Town's history.
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Story of 'glory hole' at Vulture Mine revealed
By Roma Hagan and John Brooks (Wickenburg Sun, 8/11/10)
A "glory hole" is an unofficial term for a large and impressive hole made when the surface is undermined and collapses. At the Vulture Gold Mine it was a pathway to everlasting glory.
As the story goes, in 1923 seven men crept into the Vulture mine to do some "Sunday mining," also known as high grading or, in layman's terms, stealing. These seven high graders, like today's dumbest criminals who write their robbery notes on the back of their utility bills, have become famous in Vulture lore for being plain, downright stupid.
High grading was a favorite and very lucrative past time for miners. From the discovery of the mine in 1863 by Henry Wickenburg and it's closing in 1942, estimates are that $20,000,000 in gold ore was processed for the mine's owners and at least that amount was stolen.
On that fateful night while everyone in the camp was sound asleep not knowing what was going on, or maybe they did, the men sneaked into the depths of the mine with a very bad plan and 12 burros to pack out the rich ore. Down they went until they reached the huge abandoned chamber 100 feet below the surface. This was a favorite spot for Sunday miners because it was no longer officially being worked.
Some of the men chipped flakes of gold from the walls while others chipped away at the rock pillars left in place to support the cavern's roof and overhead tunnels. This night's work was no different than any other except for one thing, the pillars were getting weaker and weaker.
Suddenly, everyone in the camp was awakened by loud rumbling and the shaking of the ground. We will never know if the thieves had any warning or not as they chipped out that one last bit of and tons of overhead earth rock collapsed inward and, you guessed it, sent the men and their burros to their final "glory."
Today at the Vulture Mine you can walk past the glory hole and peer into the depths where the dead men and burros still lie buried, forever a reminder that greed can become a tomb.
(Roma Hagan and John Brooks are Vulture Mine Preservation and Restoration Association board members. Visit VMPRA's web site: www.savevulturemine for more information on what is being done to save the mine and find out how you can help.)
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Mine’s history colorful with tale of ‘good doctor’
By Roma Hagan and John Brooks (Wickenburg Sun, 7/28/10)
In its heyday, Henry Wickenburg’s Vulture Mine, Arizona’s most productive gold mine, sported a sizeable population along with the usual problems of an early western mining town.
As the story goes, the tight-fisted mine superintendent James B. Sexton fired Dr. Jones in 1869 and hired Dr. John H. Pierson at a lower salary to tend to the sick, injured and bullet-wounded miners.
Not long after Pierson started, a number of miners with money in the company safe and no apparent heirs or immediate family began dying of “natural causes” under the care of the good doctor. With no one to lay claim to the money, Pierson stepped in to take it as being needed to keep his practice going. During this rough period in the history of the old west, doctor’s abilities, ethics or morality were not usually questioned.
Two years later, Pierson moved to Wickenburg where he took over the Miner’s Hospital and built himself a nice large house. He married Louisa Grant, daughter of James Grant, owner of the California and Arizona Stage Line. Later Pierson would take over as manager of the stage depot.
It did not take long before strange deaths began occurring around the doctor. One death in particular stands out - that of a fellow doctor who had a long enough list of faithful patients to make Pierson jealous. The healthy young doctor dined with Pierson and died of “food poisoning” after taking a dose of medicine given to him by Pierson.
When wealthy Wells Fargo stagecoach passengers began dying shortly after their arrival in Wickenburg, Wells Fargo sent an investigator. He too died after dining with Pierson, leaving questions that remain unanswered to this day.
Pierson’s scandalous ways and wealthy lifestyle were catching up with him.
He moved to Peeples Valley where once again his neighbors mysteriously died. Threats were made. Pierson moved on.
The “good doctor’s” criminal misdeeds that had started out years earlier at the Vulture Mine ended with his death many years later in a California insane asylum.
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Jean's history connects to mine
By Lynn Downey , Special to The Sun (Wickenburg Sun, 7/14/10)
Research is part of my job as historian for Levi Strauss & Co., and in July of 2003 I came to Wickenburg to track down some Levi’s¨ history. My journey took me everywhere from silent mountain roads, to the Desert Caballeros Western Museum (DCWM), to the famous Vulture Mine.
In 1917 a hard rock miner named Homer Campbell bought a pair of Levi’s¨ jeans at Brayton Commercial Co. in Wickenburg. In 1920, he put his jeans in a box and enclosed a letter to Levi Strauss & Co. Headed “Constillation Ariz,” his letter said that the jeans had gone to pieces, and he thought the company should take a look at them (he had covered the pants with denim padding, and that’s what had worn out). He mailed the box from the Constellation post office, and it arrived later that month. The jeans were stored and later put in a frame for display in the company’s museum.
In 2003 Levi Strauss & Co. celebrated its 150th anniversary, and that summer I took pairs of jeans from the archives - including Homer’s - on a U.S. press tour. Before I left, I decided to do some research about Homer. Thanks to the Sharlot Hall Museum, I learned that Homer was buried in the Walnut Grove cemetery near Kirkland Junction. So on my way home from Dallas in mid-July, I decided to take a side trip and track down his grave.
I rented a four-wheel-drive SUV in Phoenix and headed out. After getting lost for more than an hour, I found the cemetery at the end of a bumpy, uphill grade. I soon located Homer’s grave marker, looking as pristine as the day it was settled into the ground in 1944. I went back to my car, took Homer’s jeans out of my suitcase, brought them to his grave and took a few photos. The next day, I visited the DCWM and prowled through their photo collections, adding more details to Homer’s story.
A few weeks later, I went back to Wickenburg with a TV crew to film a documentary about the jeans held in the Levi Strauss archives, and Homer’s mining life was recreated out at the Vulture Mine. And although I haven’t yet found a record of him working there, it makes perfect sense that a hard rock miner would have found his way to one of the most storied mines of the American West.
Today, I show off Homer’s jeans to everyone who visits the archives. And the photos I took seven years ago serve as a remembrance of a connection forged in denim and Arizona ore.
(Lynn Downey is the historian for Levi Strauss & Co. and serves on the board of the Vulture Mine Preservation and Restoration Association. She is working with the group to develop a timeline of the mine’s history.)
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Last Hanging at the Vulture Mine
as told by Roma Hagan (Wickenburg Sun, 6/30/10)
Sobrette was to do the cooking and cleaning of the house while her papa and brothers worked in the mine. Pedro was a little worried about bringing Sobrette to the rough mining camp but he knew that, with the help of his sons, he could protect her.
Pedro was relieved upon arriving at the mine's Vulture City to find that most of the miners, Anglo, Mexican and German, treated Sobrette as they would treat their very own daughters. The German miners even called her "Froilina".
There are always exceptions to the rule; one of those exceptions being the infamous Charles Stanton, whose story will be told at a later time. Another exception was Juan Ramos who was infatuated with Sobrette. She had turned fifteen in the spring and Pedro thought Juan was a proper suitor for her. The Lucero brothers also liked Juan, but Sobrette was not impressed with him. Nor, was she at all interested in him as a boyfriend.
As it turned out, Juan came to visit Sobrette while her Papa and brothers were working. When his marriage proposal was turned down, he became furious. Sobrette asked him to leave. He got so mad that he attacked her. Sobrette fought back. In a fit of anger, Juan grabbed Pedro's hunting rifle from behind the door, and just that fast, shot Sobrette in the chest.
Upon arriving home, the Lucero's found Sobrette’s lifeless body. The whole town turned out to find the killer. It wasn’t hard to figure out that Juan was the killer since he had taken off on horseback immediately after he had shot her.
Sobrette’s brother, an expert tracker, volunteered to track down the murderer. Charley Genung gave Ledemo $30 and loaned him his best horse.
Six weeks later Ledemo returned with Juan. Most of the Anglos in town wanted to wait for a trial, but the Luceros and their Mexican friends would not wait. Juan was hanged within hours, becoming the eighteenth and final man to swing from the infamous “Hanging Tree.”
Juan was left hanging a full day. Two older townsmen finally buried his body in a shallow unmarked grave in the desert surrounding the Vulture Mine.
The ironwood Hanging Tree still stands today in front of the ruins of Henry Wickenburg's home at the mine.