that this agreement was not kept; that the plaintiff was forced to borrow, under unfavorable terms, later to lose the hypothecated stock and that the mines finally had to be closed down for lack of funds to continue their operation.

The Commonwealth mine was discovered in 1894 by a miner, from whom the resultant camp of Pearce took its name. Two years after the property was sold for $275,000, though the deepest shaft was one of only fifty feet. A 200-ton mill then placed on the mine was destroyed by fire in June, 1900. It was succeeded by an eighty-stamp mill, which continued in operation till December, 1904, when the mines were closed down. The ores are assumed to have been much leaner than had been known, though the cause given for the stoppage was a serious cave-in. It has been told that the output for four years approximated $4,000,000, mainly in gold. The owners were Pennsylvania people, including Senator Boise Penrose. The following year Swatling & Smith, former heads of the mining and reduction departments, paid the owners $200,000 on lease percentages and are assumed to have cleared at least as much more for themselves, during the one year. In 1909 Swatling & Smith, having bought the property, added to its equipment only to again see the mill destroyed by fire. In all, the mine is credited with production of at least $10,000,000 in gold. The property still is operated.

A GENUINE INDIAN MINE

Of romantic history is the old Vekol mine, thirty miles south of Casa Grande, once a large producer of silver and lead. It was an Indian mine, one of the few of the many such reported that proved to have real existence. Its secret was given about forty years ago by Pima Indians to John D. Walker. Walker, who rather prided himself that in his blood was a strain of Wyandotte Indian, had lived with the Pimas for years and had secured their confidence both by his generosity and the fact that he had married into the tribe. The Indians brought in specimens of ore, which he had assayed, finding that they contained several thousand ounces of silver to the ton. He passed on the secret to his friend, Peter R. Brady, but the Indians refused to show the mine if he was accompanied by anyone save his brother, Lucien. The locators went out at night, but Brady followed on the trail in the morning, reaching the Vekol ground while Walker was putting up his monuments, and was welcomed as a third partner. The ore outcrop from which the Indians had taken their specimens was worked out within a day, but Lucien Walker stayed with the mine and sunk a deeper shaft on the spot from which the specimens had come. Following a talc seam, not thicker than a knife blade, after three weeks' labor he found a large chamber of rich ore, and by the same method of following the seam other and larger lenses were discovered, some of them containing phenomenally rich ore. In gratitude to the Indians, only Pimas and Papagos were employed underground, where the workings were of the crudest sort, running irregularly as the seams were drifted upon. An offer of $200,000 was made for the property and refused by the Walkers, who thereafter paid Brady $65,000 for his third. interest. It is told that they made the payment from the proceeds of ten carloads of ore they already had available for shipment. The fortunes created were the cause of a number of bitter lawsuits that originated in Los Angeles, around the claims of John D. Walker's Indian daughter.

CHAPTER XXXIV

GREAT COPPER DEPOSITS

The History of the Globe Section-Miami's Recent Development-Ray's Mines and Hayden's Reduction Works-Clifton, a Pioneer Copper Producer-Bisbee's Real Discoverer-Growth of the Camp-Mining for a Meteor-Copper Production.

The first recorded locations in Globe were the Globe and Globe Ledge claims, the stakes set, in 1873, upon a great iron capping by B. W. Reagan, the Anderson brothers, Charles Mason, De Long and Copland. Their claims now are included within the main workings of the Old Dominion Copper Company, one of the largest copper producers of the Southwest, but the locators thought they had a silver mine. Little was done on the property for about three years. Then Reagan, having become the sole owner, employed "Bud" Woodson and Phil Phelps to dig a hundred-foot tunnel. The first copper mining was done in 1878 by Garrish & Van Arsdale, who had bonded the Hoosier and Gray claims from Woodson & Phelps. Some ore was taken out and hauled to Wheatfields, down Pinal Creek, where permanent water was available and where there had been erected a simple sort of adobe smelting furnace.

A prospector named Stowe is said to have worked in the hills around the location of Globe as early as 1864 and to have been an occasional visitor to Camp Goodwin, where he secured his supplies. In 1869 W. A. Holmes, far better known as "Hunkydory," was a member of a party that passed through the same region. Locations are said to have been made in 1870 by Holmes, H. B. Summers and Cal. Jackson.

In 1881 the Old Dominion Mining Company erected a thirty-ton furnace at Bloody Tanks, about nine miles across the hills from Globe, at the head of Miami Gulch, only a short distance from the present site of Miami. This furnace was run about three months only, on ore from the Philadelphia, New York, Old Dominion-Keystone and Borva claims. It being evident that the site was poorly chosen, the company purchased the Globe claim, which by that time had also been equipped with a small furnace and moved its own water jacket down to the Globe, the two furnaces occupying a location on the edge of Pinal Creek, just below the spot where the Old Dominion smelter of to-day now stands. Beside the 100-foot tunnel, the Globe and surrounding claims had only a few ten-foot prospect holes, a very small showing on which to base the operations of a couple of furnaces. But a shaft promptly was started on the hillside above and the fact remains that, from that day onward, there was never a time when an ample ore supply was not available, ahead of all demands of the smelter.

A couple of other small water-jackets had been installed about the same time for working the surface carbonate and oxide ores of the mines, particularly the Carrie smelter, which stood on a little point of land on the western side of the creek, now within the residential section of Globe. Its manager was John Williams, a pioneer smelter man.

In 1881 Gen. A. A. McDonald built a couple of adobe furnaces, but abandoned them almost immediately for one of the water-jacket type, wherein were worked the silicious ores of the Buffalo group. Still nearer town was the Hoosier smelter of the Long Island Company, operated by Frank Nicholson, who made a remarkable record in smelting free ores and established the first eight-hour shift of the district. Both mines now belong to the Old Dominion group. E. O. Kennedy and John Williams, son of the Carrie's manager, made some remarkable records with the Old Dominion smelter. It was told of the latter, working three thirtyton water jackets, that he handled about 150 tons of ore a day for two weeks, with a return from the ore that averaged 23 per cent black copper.

Transportation was the main expense and trouble of the pioneer copper days. Most of the travel came around by Casa Grande, Florence and Silver King, at the last point the passenger mounting a mule for a thirty-mile ride across the mountains, via Devil's Cañon, with its famous rock slide. The mail came in by the way of Florence, Riverside and Pioneer, across the Pinal Mountains. Wagon transportation had only one way into camp, from Willcox or Bowie, on the Southern Pacific, 140 miles, through the San Carlos Indian Reservation. There were all sorts of teams upon the road, from two-horse wagons driven by struggling Mormon colonists from the Gila Valley, up to the famous bell team of sixteen immense Norman-Percheron horses. There were teams of twenty-four mules, of the best Kentucky breed, and again, into camp would roll a mile or so of "rawhide" equipment, of Mexican mules, with Mexican drivers, both, seemingly, living off the country as they passed.

There was little sulphur in the ores of that day and coke consumption was relatively heavy. Some of the coke came all of the way from Wales. It cost $5.50 duty paid in San Francisco, $20 was added for the railroad freight to Willcox, and then it cost $40 more to haul from the railroad to the mine. Naturally, under the circumstances, the best coke was the cheapest in the end.

In 1882, when copper had reached 19 cents and the district was on the highest tide of prosperity, occurred the failure of the Credit Foncier, through which most of the copper of the world then was being marketed. The red metal dropped at once to about 9 cents. The furnaces of the district necessarily closed and Globe entered upon a period of depression that was not lifted till the arrival of cheaper and better transportation with the completion of the Gila Valley, Globe & Northern Railroad, December 1, 1898.

SILVER IN THE GLOBE SECTION

It was the history of mining in the Southwest that practically all copper districts have silver in their croppings. This was pre-eminently true of Globe. One of the most noted of the early silver mines was the Stonewall Jackson, at McMillen, located in February, 1876, by Harris & McMillen. Though it was worked for more than four years, its location really was on the San Carlos Indian Reservation, from which it afterward was cut off by congressional enactment.