This was actually a pretty ideal situation, because as he roamed the area on the lookout for renegade Apaches he could also be searching for signs that indicated an ore deposit. One has to wonder how dedicated Schieffelin was to his official duties with the distraction of the next big strike constantly on his mind. It is also beyond fortunate that he did not get picked off by renegade Indians during his far-and-wide wanderings, which he continued to do alone so as not to tip anyone else off if there was ore to be found.
He made sure his mule was with him wherever he paused to do some prospecting. Rifle in one hand and pick in the other, cartridge belt and six-shooter around me day or night just the same. After doing so for a while, I would pack up and go off to some other part of the country for a week or so, return and try it again and so on all summer.
Eventually, Schieffelin found his way to the Dragoon Mountains. He later contended that he had a hunch about this range. They could mean nothing, or they could have been washed away from a substantial deposit.
Ever a patient man, on his daily treks Schieffelin traced the source, which he hoped would be a mother lode of silver. He brought his float ore to Tucson but found no takers. An unhappy irony for Schieffelin was that he might have a financial tiger by the tail but could be too broke to do anything about it.
The prospector, by then soon to turn thirty, roamed through Tucson with all of thirty cents in his ragged pocket. His first claim, which he had named Tombstone, might well be his last.
His solitary wanderings in the Dragoons had not improved his appearance from previous years. Archival Resources. Papers and photographs, Edward Schieffelin notes on Arizona, [ca. Schieffelin family papers, Papers of Edward Schieffelin, David Bushnell papers, inclusive. Schieffelin papers, Vosburg papers, Ed Schieffelin's trip to Alaska : typescript, University of Arizona Libraries. Bibliographic and Digital Archival Resources. Role Title Holding Repository.
Connection Graph Radial Graph. The scouts had dodged and fought their way back from the Dragoon and Mule mountains, down the San Pedro Valley, and were now on their way to the military post at Fort Huachuca to report.
The captain had learned to like as everybody did that big, quiet, good-natured young fellow, Ed. Schieffelin, who could laughingly draw his belt up another hole when rations were short, whose eyes never wavered between the sights of his rifle, and whose nerves never faltered although a horrible death in the form of hideous Chiricahuas might be lurking behind the next clump of mesquite, or the heap of boulders beyond. The scouts were on a spur of the Huachucas, and Schieffelin, with a powerful glass, was examining the ground over which they had passed, when he expressed the determination to leave the command and prospect the country, he having told the captain when passing the buttes between the Mule and Dragoon mountains that the country abounded in good mineral signs, and then the captain expressed his opinion as quoted above.
But Ed. In his eighteenth year he spent six months building a flume to carry water from Rogue River to some placer ground he had discovered, but the first cleanup was so discouraging that he abandoned his workings. A short time afterward the great mining boom in Nevada attracted his attention, and after fulfilling every duty to the kind and indulgent parents who had allowed him full scope to follow the bent of his inclinations, he engaged his services to a stockman and started with a cattle outfit for Nevada.
It was on this trail that he was initiated into the first degrees of Indian warfare, but nature was an open book to him; he had a practical mastery of her secrets, and the lessons were easily learned.
Arriving in Nevada, he secured employment in the mines, where he worked until he had learned to follow an ore body underground as well as on the surface; there is a vast difference which you will learn if you ever engage in mining.
Having acquired the necessary craft as a miner, young Schieffelin, with the money thus earned, bought an outfit and started into the hills of Arizona and Nevada, generally with one or more partners, but he early learned to place more reliance in his own judgment than that of others, especially after having deferred to the opinions of men older than himself they were obliged to fight their way out of very close quarters, sometimes with the loss of a man or two and sometimes losing only their pack animals and outfit.
After a few experiences of this kind he determined to travel alone; this he did for nearly ten years, and those [were] ten years of ceaseless work and travel through the wilds of Arizona. The complete record of toil, suffering and privations, the single-handed fights and hairbreadth escapes of that lone prospector, his deeds of daring and heroism when opposed to bands of murderous Apaches, will never be known.
He knew not the meaning of the word "fear"; he was never a communicative man, and it was only occasionally that he would talk of his experiences to members of his own family. But at that time Arizona was infested with hordes of bloodthirsty Ishmaelites whose hands were against every white man, and up to that time the records show that over men, women and children had been murdered and tortured by those fiends. By the water holes, by the lonely trail and public stage road, behind rock, bush and tree, the red assassins lay in wait for their victims, and the complete list will never be known until that "last great day.
Schieffelin carried on his explorations, traveling by night, by day studying the formation of the hills through his glass or turning it back to watch the movements of Indians following his trail, thirsting for the blood of this hated Americano who was among the first to penetrate their mountain fastnesses.
There he purchased an outfit and began packing for his dangerous trip. A few days' crawling about the buttes proved to him that he had found that for which he was seeking. Simple tests of the ore, such as prospectors make in the field, showed the ore to be fabulously rich.
He made no locations, having sufficient confidence in himself to keep his find secret and conscious of the fact that few, if any, would have the temerity to follow his trail; then, besides, the erection of monuments would inform the Indians of his visit and probable return. Taking a few pounds of the float, or surface ore, in his pack, he started across the territory for the Silver King mine, miles and miles away over trackless deserts and rugged mountains infested by hordes of hostile Indians.
At the Silver King mine his brother Albert, or "Al. He arrived there in time, weary and worn with nights of travel and days of ceaseless watching, but was made heartsick by Al. You have been at it for ten years and what have you got?
You had better stay here and go to work. But he was in error; both were of the same stock, and each had a will of his own. A year and more passed, and the brothers were still at work at the mine, Ed. Then it was that the new superintendent came to the Silver King mill, Dirk Gird. There seemed to be an affinity between the two men, and it was not long until Ed. It did not pan out very well, but they were not discouraged.
That settled it. They were in too much of a hurry to use great caution but were well armed and all good Indian fighters, so they went "through" instead of "around.
The superior weapons and marksmanship of the white men won; the redskins were not educated up to the magazine rifle by which "white man load gun in morning, shoot all day. The animals crossed the river and stopped to graze. They were still within easy range of the rifles the Indians had learned to respect, so under their cover Ed. The approach of a scouting party from Fort Huachuca drove the Indians back to the dragoons, and the three prospectors began their explorations.
In a few days they ascertained they had a "big thing" and staked off the Contention, Tough Nut, Lucky Cuss, Goodenough, Graveyard and one or two other claims, all of which have since become world famous. This they sent to San Francisco, and invested the entire amount in improved machinery for the reduction of silver ores.
The report of their rich discoveries spread like wildfire to every camp east and west of the Rocky Mountains, and an army of adventurers flocked to the new silverado.
Thousands of locations were staked out, a city sprang into existence as if by magic, reduction works were erected, and a steady stream of bullion began to find its way out of the camp. When law and order organized against disorder the founder of the camp was called upon to christen it, and thinking of the old captain's prophecy, he suggested "Tombstone," and Tombstone it was and is, famous as one of the greatest producers of silver bullion the world has ever known.
The Pacific Coast newspapers have been full of stories about Edward Schieffelin, one of the discoverers of the Tombstone mines, who was found dead in a cabin in Eastern Oregon. His remains, according to his wish, now rest upon the top of a granite peak two miles west of Tombstone, A.
He desired, he said, "to be buried in the garb of a prospector, my old pick and canteen with me, and a monument such as prospectors build when locating a mining claim built over my grave and no other monument or slab erected. That lonely granite cairn in the desert, rising upon the extreme point of a treeless promontory, will long be pointed out as the grave of one of the most famous of American prospectors.
At various times in his adventurous career he plodded painstakingly over the wildest portions of the Rocky Mountains and Sierras, he visited Alaska, Mexico, South America and South Africa, but never again found such a mine. The story of the finding of Tombstone, that briefly famous Arizonian mining city, has been told in many different ways, until it is fast becoming one of the most attractive of Pacific Coast myths. The simple facts are that late in the seventies the two Schieffelin brothers and Dick Gird were prospecting, sometimes together, sometimes separately, in various districts of Arizona and New Mexico.
It was a time of terrible Indian outbreaks, and the Apaches were on the warpath, killing lonely miners and prospectors, attacking the stage coaches and running off cattle. One day, while hunting up a stray horse, the hitherto unsuccessful prospector stumbled into what was afterward called Tombstone Gulch and found some copper-stained rock on what became the Tough Nut mine.
This he sent to Gird for an assay, and soon after sent ore from the Lucky Cuss. When development was begun, a thin vein in granite widened, and promised immense riches.
The claims were sold for very large sums, and when the Apaches were driven out capitalists poured money into the district. But the mines did not justify expectations. Tombstone was very far from being a second Comstock. The unlucky Bronco never paid a dollar. The Schieffelin and Gird claims yielded for a time but soon ran out, and the camp sank into decay. The first time I met Schieffelin, that most typical of western prospectors, was about six years ago.
After hearing some of his picturesque prospector yarns I told him about the various treasure expeditions to Cocos Island and the legends which had caused these excitements.
He seized upon the glittering tale of diamond-hilted swords, bags of doubloons and bars of gold with the faith of a child and at once offered to fit out a schooner for the islands and to pay my expenses as well as give me a third of the treasure if I would go along to repeat the legend as often as desired.
He had prospected for almost everything, he said, except pirate treasures, and he wanted those diamond-hilted swords to "put in his parlor. I never heard what his wife thought of this unique furniture, but there is no doubt that the diamond-hilted swords would have rested peacefully on the quartz pile, and it was with sincere regrets that I acknowledged to him my entire lack of faith in the picturesque Spanish legend of Cocos Island.
Schieffelin's Alaska experiences have long deserved a chronicler. He fitted out an expedition years ago and prospected over vast areas of that region. His little steamboat ascended the broad Yukon, and the party wintered in the interior.
One man, since dead, Charles Farciot , remained behind when the steamer returned to prospect further. When he desired to return, he built one of the most remarkable little steam engines ever seen on the coast. It was made from a few pieces of pipe and some old cans picked up about the deserted Schieffelin camp, and his only tools were a file and a pocket knife, with a stone for a hammer.
He put this rude little engine in the stern of a small rowboat left behind for his use and steamed 2, miles without an accident. The outfit was afterward on exhibition in San Francisco and excited the astonishment and indeed the profound admiration of the best machinists, who agreed in saying that Farciot's mechanical genius was of a very high order. Greensburg Standard, Greensburg, Indiana, August 20, , page 7. This article was distributed in stereotype and widely printed in August Fate remembers the coming to this part of the country of Mr.
Ed Schieffelin in about the year [ sic ]. Schieffelin was a very successful mining man from Arizona, where he had located the famous Tombstone mine, a placer [ sic ] property which Mr. Schieffelin had just sold for a very large sum of money. He could not resist the urge of the pick and shovel nor the lure of the miner's trail.
So he went to Jacksonville, Oregon and picked up the lode or mineral belt which ran a little east of north through the southern part of the state and which gave great promise of becoming very valuable. He traced this lode through the southern part of the state to Douglas County, doing his last prospecting near Days Creek. These mineral lodes develop occasional pay streaks, ranging from moderate values to some of immense gold deposits.
Schieffelin had followed the lode very carefully from Jacksonville, and was convinced there were good pay streaks to be located in this part of the country. He found that the lode which he was tracing runs through Coffee Creek and goes to the north in an east by northerly direction, towards the Bohemia district, one of the famous mining districts in the Pacific Coast country.
This lode, he found after careful and thorough prospecting and development work, cuts across Days Creek and the headwaters of Myrtle Creek, continuing in a northerly direction across the headwaters of the South Umpqua and the North Umpqua, also the Calapooia to Bohemia.
He kept with him at all times a daily diary in which he made a careful and detailed record of his movements each day and the result of his work and findings. It was a very valuable book of facts.
Many mines placer have been located and worked out along this lode. In the past years there has been much activity and much gold taken out.
At the time of his death, Mr. Schieffelin was working on Days Creek, about nine miles from the post office at Days Creek. He was found dead by the mail carrier, at which time he was lying face down just outside of the door to his cabin. It was without any doubt a case of heart failure. The peculiar thing is that the last entry written by Mr.
Schieffelin in his diary and just a few hours before his death stated that he had "camped on the mountain the night before and that he had found a real prospect at last. With him was found a quantity of gold-bearing ore, very rich and [of] unusual promise.
The body was taken back to Oklahoma [ sic ] for burial but the news had leaked out and miners from all sections began to flock in and start to prospect in the district, hoping to find what Mr.
Schieffelin had discovered. Schieffelin was so well known in the mining world that any statement or opinion from him carried weight and the statement in his diary that he had discovered a good prospect was given much credence and caused a great excitement and a boom in the Days Creek mining area. Much prospecting work was done and money expended but to no avail, as the "find" was never located.
His two brothers and a sister from Southern California came and made a very determined effort. They prospected, sunk shafts and spent a considerable amount of money. Their enthusiasm was not rewarded although they were very persistent. It seems they were devout Spiritualists and it was told that the Spirit World urged them on with promises of.
However it was of no avail and after a time they also packed up and returned south. Memories of the old diary statement survive to this day, and prospectors continue to go into that district and try to locate the "Schieffelin Prospect. He was a man of vast mining experience and cool headed, nor was he to be stampeded by a mere symptom or a promise.
Big Ed Schieffelin laughed in his beard as he galloped his span of four up the one dusty street. It was the year Ed was coming back--in style--to the land of his boyhood! Twenty long years ago he had trudged on foot far to the south.
In Arizona he had prospected, thirsted and burnedand fought Geronimo. And they had told him "All you'll ever find is your tombstone. But he had "struck her rich," and in defiance called his claim "Tombstone.
He sold out, became a millionaire, bought a fine coach and fourand set out for the land of his boyhood dreams. A curious crowd of miners watched the fine outfit thunder into Woodville. Ed's voice boomed out "Whoa!
Wrapping the lines around the long brake rod he leaped to the board sidewalk, stomping the dust from his high leather boots. From under the broad Stetson flowed long dark hair. Two hundred. Four well-matched sorrels, all young and in good spirits, stood impatiently in their handmade harness, as the men's glances swept past them to the coach. It was a thoroughbrace with special compartments, and its leather springs were of the best steerhide.
The body was painted a deep rich blue, and the running gear a yellow as bright as gold. Charlie Warren, a young prospector, voiced the thoughts of the crowd when he said: "The man that owns this outfit must have struck her rich somewhere. I wonder who he is. The saloon door flew open with a well-placed kick as big Ed appeared with a five-gallon keg of whiskey on his shoulder. Making his way through the crowd he lightly tossed it into the front boot of the thoroughbrace.
Turning, he surveyed the encircling men and spoke. I was raised there. As a boy 1 used to walk over here barefoot, to watch the Wells Fargo stage go by. My name is Schieffelin. They wanted to shake hands. Everyone had known his folks and his brothers, and many remembered him. One bearded old-timer suggested they go to the saloon and celebrate. You do the cooking, tend the horses and outfit, and do the driving, I'll cut you in on any strike we make as if you weren't workin' for me.
He could sense adventure ahead. This would be a high-toned way of traveling for sure. I want to see how you handle 'em. With graceful ease he strung the lines through his fingers and kicked loose the brake. The horses gave a spirited surge and the coach rolled swiftly toward Chuck Hatch's blacksmith shop. A satisfied expression was on Ed's face as he walked toward the general store.
That afternoon, completely stocked and outfitted, Ed and Charlie turned into the hills. As evening came on they camped by a crystal stream. Ed hobbled the horses in belly-high grass while Charlie got supper.
Sometimes I almost starved before I dared shoot a deer. A fire would have shown up my hiding place, so I ate my meat raw. That raw meat made me see and hear as sharp as an animal, and so the Indians never got me. Big Ed roared with laughter.
I found what I was after. Almost pure silver. I could push a quarter into it and leave the print of the coin. Soon word got around about my strike. Men started staking ground all over those hills, until there was a sizable camp, mostly tents. That was the beginning of Tombstone, Ariz.
Lookin' up I saw two eastern dudes in striped pants. One of them yelled down at me: 'How much will you lake for your claims? He rolled deeper into his blankets, and his voice went on. I went over into California and bought an orange grove for my folks. Then I married and tried to settle down. Bought a fine home in Alameda. But I don't lake to a fancy life. Well, he did find something — several outcroppings of rich minerals. In August of he filed claims, named the Tombstone and the Graveyard.
He formed a partnership with his brother Albert Schieffelin and Richard Gird. Together, these three returned to southeastern Arizona and began to develop the claims. These claims made them rich.
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