AZentertain: Arizona Gold Rush: The Lost Mine

The search for the Lost Mine of the Santa Catalinas

By Robert Zucker

The legend of the lost mine is one of those stories that may have some base in fact.

While only stories of buried treasure have been told for generations, there have been no archelogical excavations in the area.

But, there have been pieces of evidence and documentation to point to some possibilities that could have spawned the lost mine legend.

The lost mine, made famous as the Iron Door Mine in the 1920s, could have also been the Lost Escalante Mine dated from the 1700s.

During the late 1880s through the 1930s, countless newspaper articles in the Arizona newspapers publish stories of people who claim to have found either a lost city, the lost mine or other great treasures in the Santa Catalinas. Included in this report are links to the those articles.

But, the exact location of either the lost city or lost mine has never been fully disclosed or documented.

Either they have never been found, the secret has been taken to the grave, or passed on by word of mouth. Maybe a few might still know of its actual location.

Today's technology can define once and for all whether the legends have any substance using metal detectors, ground penetrating radar, re-exploration of the area to unravel the mystery.

There are actually two mysteries.

The legend of the Lost City in the Santa Catalinas is in a different location from the lost mine, made famous during the 1920s as the Iron Door Mine. This page examines the Lost Mine legend.

Areas deep in the interior of the Cañada del Oro basin, could have been in operation up until the time the Jesuits were expelled in 1767, or later, from Pimeria Alta- as this land was called by the Spanish. The U.S. Bureau of Mines conducted a mineral study of the Santa Catalina and Coronado National Forest and reported that:

"Gold placering in Canada del Oro ("gold gulch") was undertaken in the northern Santa Catalina Mountains by Spaniards as early as the mid-1700's. The canada drainage flows northward from its headwaters in the central Santa Catalina Mountains through about 9 mi of the Forest Unit, then crosses the Unit boundary and turns south, flowing parallel to and mostly outside of the Forest Unit." (1, p. 24).

1700s: The Escalante Mine is the Iron Door Mine

The legend of the Lost Escalante Mine, also known as the Iron Door Mine, has survived for hundreds of years. Claims of secret mining operations, a lost civilization that once inhabited the great Cañada del Oro basin, the gold rush of the 1800s and the famous Iron Door book and movie still spur the imagination. The real hidden treasure may have already been discovered and carted off. But some remnants of this "rich mine" in the Catalinas may still be buried away. Some of the naturally occuring gold deposits may still be undiscovered. Read more about the Lost Escalante mine

Arizona Gold Rush Index

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Read the original newspaper articles digitized by the Chronicaling America Newspaper Project, a National Endowment for the Humanities project of the Library of Congress. Select a link to open the newspaper page in a new window. Choose from several viewing formats from PDF to JPG.

1. "Mineral Appraisal of Coronado National Forest, Part 5." U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau ofMines, MLA 25-94, 1994. Funded by a program between U.S. Bureau of Mines, U.S. Geological Survey, and the U.S. Forest Service to assist the Forest Service in incorporating mineral resource data in forest plans as specified by the National Forest Management Act (1976). USBM_MIA_025-094. 177 pages.

2. "Spain in the West a series of original documents from foreign archives, volume III," "Kino's Historical Memoir of Pimeria Alta," Kino, 1683-1711. By Herbert Eugene Bolto, Ph.D., published 1919, The Arthur H. Clark Company. Vol. 1 page 364. http://ia700409.us.archive.org/2/items/kinoshistoricalm00kino/kinoshistoricalm00kino.pdf
more versions of this document: http://www.archive.org/details/kinoshistoricalm00kino

3. "Lost Mines of the Great Southwest, Including Stories of Hidden Treasures," by John D. Mitchell and "Lost Mine WIth the Iron Door," in Desert Magazine, July 1952.

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