By Nancy Wright
"Perhaps we will find gold, perhaps not," was the original name of Perhaps, a mining camp down on the east side of the Gila Bend Mountains. When I came across this intriguing entry in Will C. Barnes' Arizona Place Names, I couldn't stop browsing. Arizona Place Names is a mother-lode of interesting, romantic, names of cities, towns, mines, mountains, rivers, and other geographical features, combined with the kind of interesting, but obscure history that rarely makes it into history books.
Many names of mines were coined by superstitious prospectors hoping catchy names for their diggings would bring luck and that they would then strike a mother lode of gold or silver and become rich and famous.
Yavapai County is a treasure of picturesque names such as Wagon Tire, which lies west of Rattlesnake Wash. Barnes reports: "For many years an old wagon tire lay against a tree on this flat. A memento of some pioneer's troubles." Then there was Blind Indian Creek. The pioneer prospector, Charlie Genung, reported that an old blind Indian was camped across the stream from Blind Indian Creek. Nowadays, many of us are amused by the nearby insect places: Big Bug and Bumble Bee.
The champagne salesman who named his mine Sultan may have had lavish harems in mind. On the other hand, some prospectors were looking for divine guidance with Inspiration, Oracle, and Providence.
Wishful thinking named Fortune, Plenty, Reliable, Rich Hill, Silver Hill, Surprise, Oro (gold!), and, of course, Hope. Many places were named tongue-in-cheek: Fool's Canyon, Fools Gulch, Fool's Hollow, and Lucky Cuss Mine. On the other hand Boneyard, Grief Hill, and Tombstone, summon more doleful visions.
Interestingly, Tiger did not make it into Barnes' book, but almost fifty years later Byrd Howell Granger's revision of the book lists two Tigers, one in Yavapai County named for one of the richest silver mines in Arizona Territory. Of the other Tiger in Pinal County, local legend has it that "residents chose the name for their post office because one of them had a tobacco pouch made from a tiger scrotum." However, Granger thinks it, too, was named after a mine.
The first edition of Arizona Place Names was compiled by one of the most colorful characters ever to ride the Arizona Territory. Will Barnes' autobiography, Apaches & Longhorns, reads like a Hollywood movie, complete with Apache wars, the hanging of cattle rustlers with their "long ropes," wild rides down the old Black Canyon Trail with Buckey O'Neill and a couple of nuns, and a challenging twenty-one years service with the Forestry Department.
First printed as a thick University of Arizona Bulletin in January 1935, Arizona Place Names begins with this verse by Catherine Parmenter:
Names are such enchanting things.
Ever do they bring to me
Beauty--vision--lift of wings--
Song--and scent--and mystery.
The price of the first edition was "One dollar and Fifty Cents." Byrd Howell Granger revised and updated it in 1960. When she revised it a second time in 1983, under the name Arizona's Names: X Marks the Place, the price jumped to around $30.00. It is well worth it because the new edition includes Township and Range locations as well as useful maps with T/R coordinates. A helpful appendix cross references hundreds of obscure and variant names. Furthermore, while Barnes' entries are county by county, Granger's citations are in one grand alphabetical array making them easier to find. You can buy a reprint of the original Arizona Place Names at Barnes & Noble (no kin to our Will).
Will Barnes retired from government service at the age of 72, took his wife on a trip around the world and finally settled down in Phoenix in 1930 to finish Arizona Place Names.
In his forward, Barnes says, "For more than thirty years the author has been gathering information from old timers, Indians, Mexicans, cowboys, sheep-herders, historians, any and everybody who had a story to tell as to the origin and meaning of Arizona names. " He also read virtually every book written about Arizona from journals of early Spanish entradas and pioneer explorers to the military reports of the 1800's and U. S. government bulletins. His two years service as Secretary of the United States Board of Geographic Names no doubt helped immeasurably with assigning correct names and locating places on maps. Will Barnes has managed to gather together an exhaustive collection of Arizoniana and present it in a most readable form.
It is a fitting tribute to this tireless lexicographer that you can look in later editions of Place Names and find citations for Barnes Butte located in Papago Park in Maricopa County. The citation in X Marks the Place reads,: "In 1937 this butte was named to honor Will C. Barnes (b. June 21, 1858; d. Dec. 17, 1936) a noted pioneer, stockman, legislator, and historian. Barnes, who was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his part in the Indian wars, was first editor of Arizona Place Names (1935)."
When you open any edition of Arizona Place Names, the "potato chip syndrome" sets in: "Bet you can't eat just one!" The first bite leads to the second and third . . . and you're deep into the bag,. .'er the book. You can't eat just one potato chip, and I defy you to look up only one place name in this seductive book.
(Nancy Kirkpatrick Wright, retired librarian from Yavapai College, is active in Prescott Art Docents and Sharlot Hall Museum. She enjoys investigating the historic confluences of the arts and sciences.)
Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number: (m332pf). Reuse only by permission.
We may never find out the origin of most mines in Yavapai County, such as the Swiss Girl mine shown here in the 1890s. However in 1935 the first of three publications was published about Arizona place names. One, if not all three, is certainly available in libraries throughout Yavapai County.