The lost excavations of Adams

Somewhere, in a deep box canyon shaped like a trough, a small stream flows. There are Lost Adams Diggings, as rich as any of the lost treasures of the west, and perhaps the most legitimate in terms of factual evidence. It is a story corroborated by more than one individual.

The man named Adams was a trucker on the way to Los Angeles with 12 horses. Adams (his first name was given as William, Edward, Henry and John) was an overland freighter that carried goods for a price between Los Angeles and Tucson, Arizona. He was married with a wife and three children in Los Angeles.

After his last trip, Adams camped near Florence, Arizona. The Apaches, who were driving away with their horses, woke him up. Adams chased them down and retrieved the animals.

When he returned to his camp, he found his car on fire and all of his other assets, including the two thousand dollars received from his shipment of cargo, were gone. The Apaches had simply used the horse theft ploy to allow them to loot the camp for its true valuables.

With his valuables missing except for the 12 horses, Adams, penniless, went to a friendly Pima Indian village in what is now Gila Bend, Arizona. There he heard the miners exchange stories about prospecting. A mestizo Mexican Apache nicknamed “Gotch Ear” listened as miners expressed their desire to find gold. The boy’s name was Gotch Ear after a deformed and wrinkled earlobe.

The Apaches captured Gotch Ear and his brother as children living in Mexico. Gotch Ear was now on the run from the tribe because he killed the Apache that killed his brother in a fight.

Gotch Ear finally approached the group of miners. If you are interested in gold, he told them, he knew of a canyon ten days away on horseback, where a stream literally flowed with gold nuggets. All he asked in return was a horse that would take him back to Mexico.

It was in 1864 that Gotch Ear led the group of 22 men to the site. Gotch Ear led the gold-greedy group up the Gila River in a general northeast direction for several days. On or around August 25, the group camped low between two towering peaks, believed to be Mount Ord and Mount Baldy.

However, this has led to confusion for treasure hunters, as Mount Ord is north of Phoenix and is incorrect for the journey made by Gotch Ear and his followers.

Since Adams had all the horses, the avid miners for gold chose him as their leader.

After four days of traveling through heavy lumber, the Mexican youth led the miners around a high mountain that, according to Adams and John Brewer, another of the miners, was the White Mountains of eastern Arizona.

The group finally reached what appeared to be a box cannon. Here they camped for the night. In the morning, they rode down the canyon toward a cliff that was reddish in color, but was actually a solid rock wall sixty to seventy feet high.

Gotch Ear led the men around a huge rock at the base of the wall. There, through a hidden portal, they entered a zigzag canyon, so tight, Adams said later, that a rider who extended his arms could touch both sides.

Running along the canyon floor was a stream, which they followed to an acre-sized meadow. There they camped for the night.

The miners had barely settled down and began collecting the yellow metal before a band of Apaches, led by Chief Nana, appeared in the meadow near a waterfall.

Nana told the miners to take what they wanted from the creek, but not to make any effort to locate the gold deposits higher up the canyon, above the waterfall. He also ordered them to leave soon and never return.

Although gold did not attract Indians, the canyon where it was located did. The canyon, called “Sno-Tah-Hay” by Nana, was a very special religious site for the Indians.

The Apaches also believed that gold was the “tears of the sun.” No one touched the tears of the sun because it was the source of all life.

The gold diggers remained in the canyon against Nana’s orders. Not only did they stay, but they soon began the construction of a cabin. In three weeks, they had accumulated around sixty thousand dollars in gold, which they placed in a container and hid in the home of the unfinished cabin.

The intention was to later distribute the gold evenly among the men in the prospecting party, with the exception of a German named Snively. Snively took his share each day and kept his gold separate from others.

Supplies soon ran out. A group of five miners, led by John Brewer, was assigned to Fort Wingate to resupply the camp. The miners carried nuggets, some as large as turkey eggs, with them to use as payment.

At the fort, when the miners paid for their supplies with the huge gold nuggets, the shopkeeper carefully noted this fact.

Meanwhile, Apache Chief Nana, unseen, continued to observe the activity in the creek, and also noted the surreptitious night trips through the canyon to search for the source of the gold.

He was not happy. He ordered his Apache warriors to kill the five-man supply group as he returned from Fort Wingate. This was done with the exception of one man, Brewer, who escaped.

The Apaches then killed all the miners in the canyon, except for two men who were some distance from the Anglo-Saxon camp. Snively, the German, who had already taken his gold and returned to Germany. Years later, Snively verified the existence of gold in detail.

One of the two men who escaped the Apache massacre was Adams, and the other was Jack Davidson. The only reason the two men escaped the wrath of the Apaches is that they had gone in search of the Fort Wingate supply crew, who had been long overdue.

Adams and Davidson decided for safety that it was best to head to Los Angeles to avoid further contact with the Apaches. Traveling at night, they got lost.

They were spotted by American soldiers and taken to Fort Apache, according to one story. However, this casts some doubt on this version, as Fort Apache was not established until 1872.

Jack Davidson later claimed that they were taken to Fort Whipple, east of Prescott.

Adams and Davidson were unaware that John Brewer, who led the supply group, had also escaped the Apache massacre. Brewer climbed the canyon wall and reached the friendly Pueblo Indians. Brewer eventually went to Colorado, married an Indian woman, and started a family.

Adams returned to his family in California and remained there for ten years. He was afraid to go back to New Mexico to look for the excavations.

Adams returned in 1874. He searched and searched for the lost “Adams Diggings” until his death in 1876, but was never able to relocate the gold mine.

There are plenty of stories about the attempts to retrace the path taken by Gotch Ear and his Anglo-Saxon followers.

A man named Edward Doheny, who was traveling through New Mexico to Phoenix in search of work, reported that he had traveled through a box canyon before realizing he could not cross it. He noticed the ruins of a burned-out cabin before turning, but at the time, he knew nothing of Adams’s history.

When food was later taken from him, Doheny couldn’t find the location again.

A cowboy named Jack Townsend claimed to have found the Lost Adams Diggings site in New Mexico in 1894, while working in Magdalena, New Mexico. This was never confirmed.

Once, while trying to relocate the “river of gold,” Adams met Bob Lewis in a salon. Lewis had also been looking for “Diggings”.

“Go and find the bones of those men who carried provisions in the cannon. Show me the bones and I will show you the gold.”

According to an account by Lee Paul, on a website called “The Outlaws,” Lewis found the bones. He found them thirty years later. Stacked in a crevice were the skeletons of several men covered with pieces of saddles and stones.

Lewis was in the Datil Mountains of New Mexico. While he was finding the bones, he couldn’t find the secret door. An earthquake, which struck southern Arizona and New Mexico in 1887, is believed to have reorganized the landscape in the Datil Mountains.

Many, many efforts have been made to follow the path laid out by Gotch Ear. Neither has been fruitful. It seems that The Lost Adams Diggings will remain just that: lost.

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