The gold and silver rushes, more than anything else, provided the inspiration for people to give up relative comforts in the East and come west. Opportunity to get rich quick is a uniquely American article of faith and was virtually born in the West. With a single lucky break, one could instantly make more money than he could lend, spend in a lifetime. So, it was “off to Californey, Coloradie, or Arizonie with my wash pan on my knee,” looking for, as Bret Harte said, “a fresh deal all around.” Most were either trying to get something or get away from something. It was called the “greatest mass migration of greenhorns since the children of Israel set out in search of Canaan.”
Most scientists believe the Hohokam arrived in Arizona from Mexico around 300 B.C. Apparently, they arrived with a strong culture intact and had an immediate influence on the area and the people already living here. In time their influence would be felt as far west as the Colorado River, to the east, New Mexico and north to the Flagstaff area.
The 13,000 square-mile watershed above the Salt River provided a reliable water supply. During normal years, the river was probably a hundred feet wide and five to six feet deep. The banks were held in check by tall stands of willow and cottonwood trees. Digging by hand without beasts of burden (the Spanish didn’t introduce oxen, horses or mules until the 16th-century) they engineered the largest prehistoric irrigation project in North America.
Q: I admit that I’m not new to the Valley, but I have a burning question which in all my 36 years, I cannot answer. How did Bethany Home Road get its name? Is there such a place as “Bethany Home’’? I can understand how Camelback, Washington, Central, Indian School and just about all the other major thoroughfares got named, but not Bethany Home. Do you know?
A: Do we know? Do we know? Do you think the state’s largest newspaper, a powerful media colossus such as Phoenix Newspapers Inc., a newspaper for the new millennium, would blithely hand over the awesome responsibility of teaching the Valley 101 course to someone who didn’t know something as simple as that? It is to laugh. Ha, ha.
Actually, no, we don’t know. Or at least we didn’t know until we asked around a bit.
Ol’ Ma Nature’s rough hands couldn’t have created a better place on this earth to hide a treasure than right here in Arizona. It’s also a good place to lose one and we’ve got more lost mines here in the heart of Arizona than politicians got plans.
Most of these mines have a history of being found then lost again. The stories stay pretty much the same—prospector finds rich treasure, thinks he has memorized the exact spot, and then leaves. Upon his return, his mind starts playin’ tricks on him, and he can’t relocate the elusive strike.
In the 1870s a pair of itinerant sourdoughs followed a Yavapai Indian into the narrow canyons east of today’s Black Canyon City. Earlier, in Phoenix, they’d seen him pay for his supplies with a handful of nuggets and were determined to find the Indians mine and claim the riches for themselves. Some¬where along the Agua Fria, they lost him, and, while trying to pick up his trail, they stumbled upon a granite outcropping laced with pure gold.
