THE HISTORY OF TUCSON

"Gold Mining in Tucson"

Since the first conquest of the New World, the search for precious metals drove European exploration and colonization of North and South America, starting with Cabeza de Vaca’s search for the “Seven Cities of Gold.” Spanish explorers began digging mines on the Pimería Alta and other areas of the colony in the 16th century.

During an expedition in the Santa Catalina Mountains in 1697, Spanish Lieutenant Cristobal Martin Bernal reported that natives had given him stones that resembled silver. For this reason, it was believed that the precious metal had to be buried within the nearby Santa Catalinas. Natives reported to the Spaniards that they had also found gold in the area. Natives discovered gold while hunting deer in the western slopes of the Catalinas.

Natives mined the gold, ground it using primitive mills, hid the bars in a secret room dug in the mountainside, and sealed the entrance with an iron door. The original native mining camp was attacked and wiped out by Apaches. When the Spanish were expelled from the area in 1821 after Mexican Independence, they left behind no records of mine locations, and many became overgrown and were lost in the wilderness.

One became the elusive Lost Iron Door Mine, the exact location of which is still unknown.
In 1736, slabs of silver, or “Planchas de Plata,” were discovered by a native Yaqui miner north of a mining settlement called El Real de Arizonac, giving the future territory and state its name. The California Gold Rush ended in 1859, and prospectors relocated to Arizona after hearing the rumors of lost Spanish mines in the Santa Catalinas. The Cañada del Oro, or Canyon of Gold, was an intermittent creek, which flowed year-round in the late 19th century but is mostly dry today. Sightings of gold bits floating in the stream set prospectors to digging, leading to a smaller gold rush in Tucson in the 1880s. Prospectors - including prominent Tucson businessmen and lawmen - reportedly found many quartz veins streaked with gold and silver.

In 1902, Western entertainer “Buffalo Bill’ Cody was attracted to the Tucson area by mineral prospects, becoming an owner of the Campo Bonito Mine along with Colonel L.W. Getchell, and Captain J.D. Burgess. By 1911, Cody and his partners owned one hundred mining claims over two thousand acres, sources of tungsten, gold, silver, copper, and lead, including the very successful Southern Belle mine, which produced over one million dollars worth of gold in 1908, which would be over $63 million today.

The Santa Catalina Mountains remained a successful mining site for silver, gold, and copper throughout the 1900s. The Gould Mine, established in 1906, was one of the more successful mines, acquiring over 45,000 pounds of copper by 1911. In Oracle, a small mining town nearby, the San Manuel mine was the largest copper and gold mine in Arizona.

By 1932, Pima County had yielded more than $5 million in gold, mostly from gold trapped in quartz in the Mammoth district. But soon, the Southern Belle and many other mines in the area had been mined out. The Oracle Ridge Mining District, once a regular stop for stagecoaches and home to hundreds of miners, is now overgrown and remote, and only accessible on foot or horseback. Since 1994, mining operations have resumed at the Oracle Ridge Mine, Mammoth Mines, and Little Hills Mine. Arizona is still the leading producer of copper in the United States, which is why it's flag features a copper star.