By Al Bates
The Walker party's route from Fort West, New Mexico, took them through Apache Pass (at night, since the Apaches after Chief Mangus' death were even more aggressive than before), through Tucson and the Pima/Maricopa villages at the juncture of the Salt and Gila rivers, and then to Maricopa Wells. From Maricopa Wells they most likely duplicated the path taken by Swilling three years earlier to encounter and then go up the unnamed river to its headwaters.
Above the bend where the Hassayampa River turns sharply to the east within the Prescott National Forest, they came to an open and fairly level spot on the north bank of the river and declared that there the journey of exploration would end. There on May 10, 1863, they formed the Pioneer Mining District on what they named the "Ookilsipava" (later Hassayampa) River.
That meeting, held at a site some six miles south of today's Prescott Courthouse Plaza, marked the beginning of modern civilization and the first steps towards law and order in the Prescott and "tri-city" area of Central Arizona.
The newly formed Arizona Territory was, as yet, without law, courts or government. The Governor and his retinue would not arrive for another eight months; there was no military presence within 100 miles or more. The miners were completely on their own.
Faced with these conditions, the members of the Walker party chose to establish their own set of rules based on what had worked in California's gold rush days.
The stated purpose for the initial "Walker Prospecting and Mining Company" meeting on May 10, 1863, was to establish "Laws and Resolutions for their mutual guidance & protection." The first order of business was to establish boundaries for the Pioneer Mining District on the "Oolkilsipava" River. Next, they confirmed that laws, disputes, and all other business of the miners would be settled by majority vote.
They then established the offices of president, secretary, and recorder and set their duties. After Capt. Walker refused the office, T. J. Johnson was elected president. S. Shoup was elected both secretary and recorder.
Rules regarding establishment of the initial claims and fees for future claims filled most of the meeting. These rules exclusively concerned placer mining; they were later amended to include rules for claiming of quartz lodes.
The initial placer mining claims, both up and down the river from their encampment, were distributed by lot, with each original member assigned two claims. Each claim consisted of 100 yards along the river from and extended 50 yards to either side of the river's centerline.
Formal registration of these claims was not completed until June 12, 1863, after the miners made a trip to the Pima Villages and Ami White's flourmill, to restore their depleted supplies of flour, salt, coffee and other essentials, including tobacco and gunpowder. It may be that another purchase at that time was the ledger book that they used to formally record events at their new mining district. That book is now located in a vault in the Yavapai County Recorders office, and an accurate facsimile may be seen at the Sharlot Hall Museum archives.
The news of the gold find spread at the Pima villages and was broadcast widely by travelers back to the "states" and to Mexico, and soon a rush of prospectors followed them into the mountains. By the time a special census was completed less than a year later, in April 1864, the non-Indian population around the new community of Prescott had grown from the original 25 to 1088!
When the Walker group returned to the original site from the Pima Villages, they began swapping claims and started selling claims to the influx of newcomers. They also began to look for new sites to pan and the search for quartz lodes.
One thing to keep in mind about the Walker Party and many other "miners," is that they were, first of all, explorers and prospectors and many had little wish to actually work their claims. Their primary intent was to find and claim the latent wealth and then sell to investors who would provide the equipment and labor necessary to tap a claim's potential. In some cases they found partners with the needed capital and stayed to oversee the work for a share. Others, such as Jake and Sam Miller, who soon began freighting in supplies from the Colorado River, established local businesses with their gains and kept prospecting only as a sideline.
When the original placer claims proved less bountiful than expected, the miners began to enlarge the district's size, extending it over a nearby ridge and into the Lynx Creek drainage. Soon afterward, quartz lode claims in the new Walker Quartz Mining District also were being recorded in the log.
Captain Walker formally disbanded the exploration party at the end of 1863 with the remark, "We opened the door and held it open to civilization, and now civilization will do the rest."
On their way back from the Pima Villages to their claims on the Hassayampa in early June 1863, the Walker party, including several newcomers, but without Jack Swilling, was surprised to discover that they were not the only ones exploring for gold in the Central Arizona Highlands. A mounted band, at first feared to be Apaches, turned out to be a group guided by old mountain man, Paulino Weaver, that had come into the area from the Colorado River near La Paz.
The Weaver party found gold traces near Antelope Mountain, but soon ran short on supplies and a cross-country trip to the Pima Villages was necessary. (Weaver knew that if they headed south they must come to the Gila River and hence to the Pima Villages.)
At the Pima Villages, the Weaver group encountered Swilling, who joined them on their return journey to what became the Weaver Mining District. There, Swilling was involved with five others in one of the most unusual gold finds ever encountered. John A. Clark, New Mexico Surveyor General, described it thus in his personal journal:
"August 29, 1863 Left camp & walked with Mr. Benedict to the top of the mountain [Rich Hill] where Jack Swilling's placer is situated-a fatiguing walk-was well repaid for my labor-found Swilling & men at work. Saw a quantity of the gold which had been picked up in working over the ground with a butcher knife-in a parcel of 500 or 600 dollars there was not a piece worth less than 10 or 15 cents. Swilling gave me a fine specimen weighing [sic] 21.50 dollars & sent two specimens to Genl. Carleton-one weighing 18.50 & the other about 10 dollars. He also gave me a nice specimen for Capt. Pishon-The placer has already yielded over 20,000 dollars & not half of the ground has yet been worked over. The dirt that has been worked with a knife yields from 2 to 6 dollars to the pan dry washing and would yield much more if washed in water-The mines are on the very summit of a high mountain where there is a level-or nearly level-place and must have been left there by the decay of the quartz rock a vein of which passes through nearly the centre of the placer."
Gold in 1863 was valued at $20 per ounce, less than 1/25th of today's value, thus Swilling's one-sixth share just to that point was worth over $80,000 in today's dollars. The expected quartz lode was never found. A popular story had it that Swilling, for years, carried a nugget of almost five ounces from Rich Hill that he would hock when short of cash and later retrieve.
General Carleton wrote Swilling a letter of thanks for the samples, and soon established Fort Whipple nearby to protect both the miners from Indians, and the Union's interests in the gold fields from the Confederacy. Two of the gold specimens from Rich Hill were forwarded to Washington, D.C., where they were presented to President Abraham Lincoln, thus further spreading the fame of the central Arizona gold fields.
Even today, members of a group called the "Lost Dutchman's Mining Association, owners of the ghost town of Stanton, below Rich Hill, scour that area for traces of the precious metal. Many of them believe that Rich Hill was the true location of the legendary Lost Dutchman's mine, not in the Superstition Mountains, as generally accepted. Incidentally, according to census records, the Dutchman himself, Jacob Waltz, was mining in Yavapai County by early 1864.
Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(po1599p)
Reuse only by permission.
Captain Joseph R. Walker (c. 1870), along with his guide Jack Swilling, established the Pioneer Mining District on the banks of the Hassayampa River, six miles south of town, drawing investors to the area to find their fortunes.