By William Peck

The Hillside Mine was the legendary silver mine located in 1510 by a member of the Farfan Party as they passed down the Santa Maria River en route from the Hopi Villages to the Gulf of Baja California.

Hillside Station received its name from that mine when a road was constructed connecting the mine to the railroad that had been recently completed. The road shorted the wagon haul that went across Bozarth Mesa through Walnut Creek, a difficult winter route.

It wasn’t until General Crook’s Indian scouts wiped out the last band of “renegades” in Cinco Canyones (Scott’s Basin) in the late 1880s that mining and ranching became viable in the Hillside area.

The Bell Canyon Massacre had occurred about that time. The Indians hid on Blan Creek and in the north end of the Weaver Mountains. Barry Goldwater’s granduncle took two of their musket balls in the back while making a desperate run with Barry’s grandfather for Camp Date Creek. This event occurred within sight of present day Hillside.

Mining was winding down in Oatman, Mineral Park and the McCracken, as well as the Bradshaws, and gold hunters filtered into the winter-friendly region of the lower elevation of the Santa Maria River. They located such claims as the Big Stick, Sultan, Gold Standards and numerous others that produced high hopes, stock offerings, and an occasional bit of bonanza.

It is amazing how fast living history vanishes. When I first arrived in Hillside in 1940, fresh from Ohio, I asked, “Where are the Indians?”

“What Indians?” they would reply. “There never was no Indians ‘round here.”

“And where was the gold?”

“No gold.”

“Who dug all those holes in the mountains?”

“Promoters.”

They had no knowledge of the violent and industrious endeavors that had preceded them by less than a man’s lifetime. For them, history had never occurred.

My arrival in Hillside was the turning point in my life. My father, Ralph Peck, was telegrapher and station agent for the Santa Fe Railroad for the war years of the early ‘40s. Our country needed copper. Never mind the copper mines; that equipment was dismantled and shipped to the Soviet Union to aid in their gold production to help pay us for our lend-lease.

Hillside was the railhead for the Bagdad Mine which was struggling as a low-grade copper producer that had been purchased by J.C. Lincoln. (For more on that, see Bob Bogart’s book, “The Story of a Copper Mine.”)

Steel pipe and cement poured into Hillside by the car loads and was hauled over the torturous, winding dirt tract 22 miles to Bagdad. In those days, Hillside Station was the biggest toll producer for the railroad between Phoenix and Ash Fork and employed three around-the-clock agents.

Most of our foodstuffs arrived via Railroad Express. Things such as sides of beef wrapped in only cheese cloth, fresh milk in those fancy new paper containers that usually leaked by the time they jolted their way to the mines, ice by the 300-hundred-pund blocks (that weighed only 150 after the 100-plus degree ride from Glendale), and crates of lettuce that was pretty well wilted, and cats.

The cats were a gift from the agent in Prescott, which the railroad still serviced. Prescott was the logistical headquarters for our needs at Hillside.

As the damage claims mounted from the depredations of mice upon the beef and milk that sometimes spent the night in the clapboard depot warehouse, the clever Prescott agent somehow rounded up all the stray “alleys” and six-toed tigers that roamed up and down Sheldon Street, slammed the lid down and nailed the crate shut, then shipped them dead-head to Hillside.

Now Pa was an animal lover. He pried the nails from the crate, the nail’s screeching must have primed the cats, and he reached lovingly into the box, calling, “kitty, kitty.” His arm provided a much needed escape route to his head and down his back and up into the rafters, where the cats refused all manner of enticements to come down.

Why should they when so many goodies lay spread like a smorgasbord there on the express cart below them? After a week of the cats eating beef washed down with milk, Pa invited the Prescott agent to come down and get his damn cats. He never did, and even today Hillside sports some six-toed cats.

The railroad was the center of our universe. For $2 you could ride to Phoenix while enjoying a drink or a delicious reasonable-priced meal on the Fred Harvey Diner. It cost a mere dollar to ride to Prescott, a beautiful and serene ride through mountains as yet unblemished with development. The conductor entertained the “dudes” with tales of lions and Indians and of the mysterious white-painted 6-foot-high skull with dark pits for eyes that glared at the passing train like Geronimo peering fro his grave.

The train south boarded at 5:42 a.m. and put you in Phoenix at Central Station downtown, rested, at 8 in the morning, a time hard to beat today. Your return trip left Phoenix and got you to Hillside in one piece at 5:41 p.m. The conductor consulted his railroad-certified pocket watch and at 5:44, exactly, his arm came down, the engineer sounded two short blasts on the whistle and the pistons groaned while filling with steam. If the engineer felt a little exuberant, he’d blow the boiler flues so that they would shoot steam in twin jets a hundred feet to both sides of the engine. By the time the eight or so cars passed, the train was hitting a good 30 miles per hour.

Considering our Model A could barely do 60 downhill, this wasn’t bad.

In a brief three-minute stop, Mrs. Rice, our postmistress, would back her Dodge pickup up to the barely stopped mail car, where an exchange of mailbags occurred. This daily event was the star attraction of our evenings which our entire town gathered to see.

Mrs. Rice would wait until the engine whistled for the “board” a scant half mile down the track before she would grab the 1^st class pouch, snap the lock, call Shawny, her dog, the 4^th class bag into the pickup, start the Dodge (it usually started fine) and spin the rear wheels across the cattle guard that adjoined the tracks a bare 50 feet ahead of the engine. If it was a new engineer, he would hold the whistle down, but the veterans merely resigned themselves to their fate. The sages took odds on the porch whether she would make it or not, but they always lost.

While the mail boarded the train, Pa would back the iron-wheeled express cart flat against the express car’s side and unload the passenger’s baggage and whatever express there was, which usually entirely filled the cart, then jump to the ground getting the cart clear of the departing train before the conductor’s hand dropped.

During this interlude we brought our Arizona Republic papers or magazines from the news vendor on the chair car, a little wisp of a man that always had the right change. As I remember it cost a nickel and was only three hours off the press.

Passengers loaded and unloaded and looked around uncertainly at the total lack of accommodations, wondering if maybe they should just get back on the train.

Pop loved people and would take in the most downcast miner for $2 for the night, meals furnished. We lived in the yellow-painted company house behind the depot. He was a widower and was proud of his cooking and, made the best pot roast beef with tender taters and carrots of anybody I ever met.

One drunk he salvaged from the dark was hung-over pretty badly and complained to Pa about his aching shoulder. Pa obliged with a bottle of Sloans Liniment. The man went into the wash room, there was no such thing as indoor plumbing in Hillside, and could be heard sniffling.

“This stuff ain’t no good! Got any vanilla?”

Pa was a complete teetotaler and probably as naïve as any 2-year-old. He searched our cupboard and brought the poor man his vanilla which he chug-a-lugged right there in front of him.

(William Peck is a long time resident of Hillside. There will be more history in the coming months.)