By Phil M. Blacet, Ph.D
The old Hillside Mine located deep in Boulder Creek Canyon, four miles northwest of Bagdad in far western Yavapai County, has been ghostly silent for many years. Dating back to the 1880’s, this remote site quickly became a bustling mining camp with its own school and post office. This bonanza gold-quartz vein system produced metals valued today at approximately $116 million, including $77 million in gold and $27 million in silver. During its 61-year lifespan, the price of gold never exceeded $35 an ounce.
The Hillside vein system was developed by more than three miles of underground workings, and a 765-foot vertical shaft, connecting drifts at 13 different levels. Profit margins disappeared as mining costs rose, and the mine closed in 1951. Later, when lightning struck the steel head frame and discharged down the shaft igniting the timber, fire sounded the death knell for this remarkable mine.
The booming mining camp at John Lawler’s the Hillside bonanza as it appeared in 1890. This view is looking northwest up Boulder Creek (Photo Courtesy Sharlot Hall Museum Call Number: M-219pa.)
A testament to the initiative and abilities of its locator, John F. Lawler, is the fact that throughout the mine’s early years it was developed and prospered without capital from any publically traded companies. Owing to a detailed 1890 account of a trip to this remote mine, including an interview with its discoverer, John Lawler, a rather complete story of this “rags-to-riches” gold strike can be pieced together.
John “Jack” F. Lawler was a “Johnny-come-lately” in the Arizona gold fields. In 1876, at age nineteen, he left Kansas to follow his brother, Michael, to Arizona Territory where he found work in the mines of Bisbee, Tombstone and the Bradshaw Mountains. In his mid-twenties Jack left the Bradshaws to prospect the remote canyon country of far western Yavapai County, prospecting along Copper Creek where the Bagdad and Hawkeye claims had previously been located in 1882. Jack purchased these claims for about $200, and soon located and patented six more claims, although none showed promise for precious metals. An industrious, intelligent fellow, Jack soon was a driving force behind the organization of the Eureka Mining District. Twenty-five years after arriving in the district, long after he’d discovered, developed, sold and reacquired the Hillside mine, he sold those copper claims for $150,000.
The Atlantic and Pacific Railroad, precursor to the AT&SF, crossed northern Arizona in 1882. Anxious to take advantage of new economic opportunities offered by the coming of the railroad, merchants, miners, and cattlemen of Prescott clambered for construction of the 60-mile-long Prescott and Arizona Central Railroad, hastily completed in 1886 to link Prescott with the transcontinental railroad at Seligman. Excitement related to the arrival of the railroad extended all the way to Copper Creek where Jack Lawler and his partner, B.T. Riggs, decided to expand their prospecting into the rugged canyons northward toward the railroad.
The bustling Hillside mine about 1935, nearly 50 years after Jack Lawler discovered iron-stained quartz, impregnated with gold and silver (Photo Courtesy Sharlot Hall Musuem Call Number: M-219pc).
The following is Lawler’s account of his fabulous gold strike from an interview given to W. H. Storms at the Hillside mine: “About three years ago [March 1887] I and my partner, B.T. Riggs, determined to come over to this section … We intended to prospect … northward as far as the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad. We started with a horse packed with grub and about $10 in our pockets, and finally made our camp down the creek [Boulder Creek, three miles north of Lawler’s Copper Creek claims]. I came around here and even walked over this mine, but my day had not come. One lucky day, however, I came up here again, and went around the hill … came down along the mountainside, passing down the gulch right over the Seven Star [a later claim] … and went on down to the creek to get a drink. I was tired and worn, but thought I would go up the next little gulch a way, and as I walked along I saw about a foot of iron-stained rock and climbed up to it. I knocked off a few pieces and saw at once that it was good ore. I then commenced to search for the continuation of the vein, for it was not afloat. I traced it easily, and by nightfall had located the Hillside …”
Dr. Blacet will present a talk entitled Yavapai Mining History – Prehistoric to Modern at the Sharlot Hall Museum at 2:00 PM on Saturday, July 26, 2014.
(“Days Past” is a collaborative project of the Sharlot Hall Museum and the Prescott Corral of Westerners International (www.prescottcorral.org). The public is encouraged to submit articles for Days Past consideration. Please contact SHM Library & Archives Reference Desk at 928-445-3122 Ext. 14, or via email at dayspastprescott@gmail.com for information.)