By Ann Hibner Koblitz
When people think of mining, typically they conjure up images of the large enterprises of Virginia City in Nevada or Jerome and Globe in Arizona where prospectors and miners could become rich almost overnight, and millions of tons of high grade ores were extracted and processed during the course of decades-long operations.
The elaborate 19th century mansions and the mountains of tailings in and around Jerome bear mute testimony to large-scale mining activity in Yavapai County. But there was another kind of enterprise - much more common and much less successful economically - that was equally important to the social history of mining in our state.
A couple of years ago, I purchased a 20-acre mining claim on Copper Mountain outside of Mayer. The land bears the remnants of at least four shafts, a 600-foot tunnel, and other relics such as antique nails and barrel staves, blasting caps, and rusted-out miners' lunch pails and food cans. The nearby hills, both private and government lands, are similarly dotted with exploratory shafts, tailings, claim markers and other artifacts. But, except for one medium-size mine a short distance to the north which produced copper in the first half of the 20th century, most miners apparently had as little success with their claims as did those who sank shafts on my property.
As an historian, I was naturally interested in learning more about the abandoned shafts that add such a ghostly presence to my land and that of my neighbors. As a result of discussions with surveyors and research in Sharlot Hall Museum Archives and Bureau of Land Management records, I have pieced together a story of hope, desperation and dreams.
My property was registered in 1936 as the "Defiance Claim." The patenting documents declared that it was worth $36,000, divided into twelve shares of $3,000 apiece. Now, 1936 was the height of the Great Depression. At first, I was astounded that the mine owners thought they could get anyone to invest so much in a small new mine at such a time - $3,000 was a year's salary for a Harvard professor. But one of the surveyors I spoke with said that probably it wasn't so much money being invested as time and labor. In other words, a group of unemployed men got together, pooled scarce monetary resources and contributed most of their investment in the form of 'sweat equity.' According to the surveyor,
The hills northeast of Mayer feature some beautiful quartz and onyx formations, and many of the tailings contain enough "peacock" (bright teal-colored rock faces that indicate traces of copper) to make it clear why the miners might have had their hopes raised. But the fact is, there is barely enough metal there to justify extraction even with today's sophisticated mining techniques. In the 1930s, the situation would have been even bleaker.
This does not, however, mean that the Defiance enterprise was unsuccessful from a social point of view. At a time of enormous unemployment, the men would at least have kept themselves busy. They had the companionship of their fellow miners, they were getting fresh air and exercise and the wild hope that they might, after all, strike it rich probably kept them sanguine for quite a while. If they had families in the vicinity of Mayer, their steady occupation at least made it unlikely that they were abusing their wives and children. And they might have brought back the occasional rabbit or quail or rattler to sweeten the stew pot at home.
In fact, late 19th and early 20th-century reports of mining throughout Yavapai County tell a similar story: mining was socially useful and at times profitable, but most of the profit did not come from the ore itself. From its beginnings in 1865, the Arizona Miner, as befitted its name, devoted a lot of attention to mining enterprises, and its tone was usually optimistic. But, most of the time, the Miner spoke of mines in the early stages of development and the glorious results the editor was certain could be obtained if only a bit more money were invested and more equipment were brought in. And it was usually the money being poured into mining operations in Yavapai County, rather than any windfall profits being brought out, that was the theme of enthusiastic reports in the Miner.
This is not to say that nobody got rich. A clever entrepreneur like "Diamond Joe" Reynolds or Professor Poland (for whom the settlement of Poland was named) could milk a weak strike or even a salted claim for far more than it was worth and there were plenty of gullible people (mostly from the East) who were willing to invest in Arizona mines so long as the front man sounded plausible and the stock certificates looked impressive.
Most of the money, however, was in the spin-off enterprises of a mining boom. Miners and prospectors needed supplies, and merchants were willing to furnish them, usually at a premium. Miners had to eat and sleep, get their laundry done, be entertained - and so rooming houses, restaurants, laundries, bathhouses, saloons and bordellos all sprang up quickly in the vicinity of mining activities, whether or not the earth ever gave up much valuable ore. Freight companies and railroad branch lines grew if the minerals lasted long enough, and a real town with enough momentum to withstand the playing out of the ore could emerge.
Mayer itself is an example. Joe Mayer founded the settlement in 1882 to service the prospectors who trekked hopefully into the hills around Copper Mountain as well as the better-known mining operations that stretched into the Bradshaw Mountains toward Tip Top and Crown King. At one point, Mayer was a railroad junction and thousands of tons of ore were shipped through there. But the ore ran out, the mines closed, and the miners on Defiance and neighboring claims found other things to do. Mayer, however, survives to this day.
(Ann Hibner Koblitz is a Professor of Women's Studies at Arizona State University. She is currently working on the history of women's health and fertility control in territorial Arizona.)
Sharlot Hall Museum Photograph Call Number:(m271pa)
Reuse only by permission.
Copper Mountain Mining Company on the Agua Fria River east of Mayer near the former site of the Defiance mining claim.