Old Bookaroo
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The Old Padre's Dream Mine - A 19th Century Mining Yarn
THE OLD PADRE’S DREAM.
How Harvey Hanson Found a Manuscript and a Mine.
A Prospector's Story of the Way a Lost Mine Was Found.
Hanson's Remarkable Literary Treasure Trove In the Old Mission of Santa Gertrudes
and His Quijotoa Mine
How Harvey Hanson Found a Manuscript and a Mine.
A Prospector's Story of the Way a Lost Mine Was Found.
Hanson's Remarkable Literary Treasure Trove In the Old Mission of Santa Gertrudes
and His Quijotoa Mine
| Harvey Hanson is one of the old-time prospectors of the Pacific coast. There was never a "rush" but what Harvey is there. Wherever there is a mining excitement Harvey shows up. He always has a pocketful of fine specimens of the choicest chlorides, virgin silver or free milling gold ore, all "lousy" with the shining staff, the sight of which sets the heart at a quicker beat and fires the ambition of the most sluggish. As a real estate boomer Harvey would have been a great and howling success. There is not a mining camp on the coast from Stickeen to Santa Gertrudes which he has not visited. High mountains, vast plains, sandy deserts, lonely wastes, lurking savages, heat, cold, hanger, wearisomeness, danger, toil and trouble, are all parts and parcels, and prominent ones, too, of his career. He is widely known among mining men, and like them has shared the fortunes and failures of the great army of prospectors, of which the world will never know their full history. As a class the men of the pick are shy and suspicious of the men of the pen. It is only when one of the latter disguises himself, and gets out into the wilderness with these prospectors, and shares with them, around their camp fire, coffee, beans and bacon, that anything like an insight can be had of their lives. Such was my good fortune, a few years ago, while doing newspaper work in the "ancient and honorable pueblo" of Tucson. And, by the way, its proper pronunciation is not Too-sawn but Tuk-son, sounding the k and giving the vowels their long or continental sound. Our English has violently butchered the vocalization of the six old vowels. Tucson is a compound Indian word and means black soil, referring to the adobe, which is the foundation and superstructure of the city by the Santa Cruz river. Towards the close of 1833 a prospector by the name of Alexander McKay came in town from the desert on the west. McKay was a little Scotchman and sunburned as a mestizo. He had some samples of very rich silver ore. The specimens were horn silver. The point of a penknife would penetrate them as it would cheese. McKay confided to a few friends his discovery. It was 80 miles west of Tucson, where there was a high mountain rising out of the level plain. The mountain had hitherto been inaccessible. One could climb its steep slopes for some 2000 feet, but then its sides became perpendicular; in fact, in most places leaned a little over. A thousand prospectors had attempted to scale these palisades, but had always failed. These cliffs averaged a full 1000 feet in height, and completely circled the mountain for a distance of five or six miles. McKay had discovered a place on the west side where he could and did climb up, and found silver galore. One report was that on the very summit of the mountain there was a large reef of horn silver, which stood up 30 feet in height. A great excitement at once broke out about it. W. S. Lyle bonded the mines, then known as the Quijotoa group, and began a systematic development by tunnels, winzes, etc. Several large corporations were formed in San Francisco, which bought the mines, and people were frantic for stock. A town at once sprang up on the eastern slope of Quijotoa mountain, and in about six weeks had a population of over 1200. Every foot of the country within a radius of 50 miles was thoroughly prospected. Among the hundreds there was the ubiquitous Harvey Hanson. There in the Horseshoe bend of the Quijotoas I found him one day in February, 1884, working in a shaft, picking out some very good-looking silver-copper ore. I had more faith in business than in mines, and was canvassing for a guidebook of the section, which was afterward published. I found Hanson a good talker, and I listened with pleasure to his many interesting stories, and will tell one just as he told it to me. "This mine,” he said, "I named The Padre's Dream. Don't you think it is a romantic name? No, I didn't get it out of any novel; it is truly the name of the mine, and was named more than a hundred years ago; maybe two or three hundred years ago. You see the Spaniards were in this country more than three centuries ago, and I believe that all these prospect holes in this placer ground were made by peons of Montezuma. “Anyway, this is a very old mine, and was lost for many years till I rediscovered it in the most singular manner. Early last year there was a big mining excitement in Lower California. I went down on the railroad to Guaymas, and crossed the Gulf of California in a schooner to Trinidad bay. There we took burros and struck out across the desert on the eastern elope of the Sierra Madre to the placers. “When near the old mission of Santa Gertrudes, a sand storm came up and we took refuge within the deserted building, I went prying around to see what I could find. Up in one corner I discovered a lot of decayed and musty old books and manuscripts. I looked them over with little interest. They were a lot of registers and other things, prayer books and such. But one piece of paper had the word 'mina' written on it in a bold round hand. I can't read Spanish, but I knew enough to know this meant something about mines. There were several other pieces in the same handwriting, and apparently on the same subject, so I got them all together and put them in my pocket. “When the storm was over we continued our journey. There was no water at the mines, so I returned to Tucson. I did not forget my Spanish manuscript, and had it translated into English. I then sat down and carefully read the translation. Imagine my astonishment to find that it described this very country, which I thought I had already thoroughly explored. “The manuscript began by reciting that the Apaches were so bad that further mining was useless, and that the Spaniards had decided to abandon a very rich silver mine known as The Padre's Dream. It further stated that the mine had been anciently worked by the Aztecs, and shown by them to the Spaniards at the request of a priest who learned that in the Pimeria country sufficient silver would be found to pay the expenses of converting the Papago Indians to Christianity. The ore had been shipped to Port Lobos on burrows and thence by ship to Muleje for reduction. "The translation accurately described the location of the mine, and I came right here and found it. It was so many leagues south of a great bend in the Gila river to a peak-shaped mountain with a hole through its top ridge. It was then so many leagues southwesterly to a basket-shaped mountain, the Quijotoa of the Indians. One league north, in a horseshoe bend of the Quijotoa foothills, was the mine. “I hunted around about two weeks before I found the shaft. Yonder is the old stone cabin the Spaniards built and used. It is mentioned in the translation as being at the mine, but you see it is a little way off. "Where is the original manuscript? Well," said be, with a merry twinkle of one of his large, gray eyes, "I lost it in Tucson." There before me was certainly a very old mining shaft, and in it was the rotted remains of an old pine log, with notched steps, such as the peons use in going down or coming up a shaft. Hanson had cut away the overgrowth of mesquite and cactus, and had fired a blast, and had laid out the ore "as pretty as a paint shop," and was ready to sell mine, shaft and cabin, and throw in the manuscript. He did find a purchaser, and I saw nothing of him for several years. Hanson next turned up in connection with the onyx quarries in Arizona. Later I met him in Los Angeles, which he makes his headquarters. Recently the San Francisco Examiner gave him some notoriety as hunting for some lost people on the Colorado desert in connection with the mythical Peg-leg mine. Still later he is reported to have found a hill in San Diego county of nearly pure gold. The account did not state it was discovered by a manuscript, but it may have been. Don Estrvan. from: Los Angeles Herald, 23 April 1893 (Volume XL, Number 12) Good luck to all, ~The Old Bookaroo |
