The
Lost Adams Diggings
©Lee Paul
Possible Adams Routes
Nothing is more tantalizing to the imagination than the prospect of finding lost gold. Whether it is a lost mine, a lost ledge, or a lost canyon packed to the rim does not really matter, as long as there is a chance of finding it. Such is the story of one of the most elusive lost gold legends in the annals of the American Southwest. Known as the Lost Adams Diggings, it has stymied treasure seekers for more than a century.
There is an old saying among fortune hunters: "As long as a man believes there is a treasure to be found, he will be the one to find it." People have been forever obsessed with the prospect of finding legendary loot. When Army troopers found Adams wandering in the desert, his tale of gold tantalized treasure seekers everywhere, driving them mad, pushing some to commit suicide, yet his gold-laden canyon remains as elusive as the will-’o-the-wisp. Adams was a greenhorn, a tenderfoot, and he did not know where he was when he ran for his life. But it is his story of gold which continues to intrigue to this day. Although no one really knows where the canyon lies, one thing is certain: Adams’ gold canyon did exist.
The border country between New Mexico and Arizona is alive with wild, untamed wilderness. It is filled with mountainous beauty and desert pall, icy peaks and burning sand, stretching as far as the eye can see. Lazy rivers and dry creek beds snake through the rugged landscape, cutting deep grooves into the face of the earth. Everywhere, canyon fingers comb through mesas and divided peaks. It is the world of the Apache, of loneliness and thirst. It is also the world of Adams and his lost gold.
There are two similar, yet different, versions of the Lost Adams Diggings, as told by two of the survivors of the massacre, Adams and John Brewer, twenty-five years apart. Although each agrees that the gold canyon exists, they differ on the massacre and what happened afterward. Possibly because he told his story first, it is Adams’ tale which has become the legend.
Adams’ side of this strange story begins in September 1864. In the rugged, eastern Arizona territories, army troopers found two half-starved prospectors wandering in the desert. They were sick, dehydrated, and suffering miserably from the blistering sun and lack of nourishment. Their clothing hung in tatters on their bony frames, and the soles of their boots were worn out, stuffed with buffalo grass to ease the discomfort of ulcerated blisters. Almost delirious and incoherent, they said they had been wandering in the desert for thirteen days, hiding from the Indians, traveling by foot over country so rough that some days they made no progress at all.
By the time the troopers reached their fort, the two men were barely alive. One of the prospectors, known only as Adams, told the Army surgeon a fantastic tale. "Gold," he whispered, pulling a hen-sized gold nugget from his pocket, "there is a fortune in gold still out there." That tale, passed through generations of prospectors and treasure hunters, became the story of Adams and his lost zigzag canyon of Apache gold.
Adams seems to have no first name. He has been called William, Henry, and John, but these names may be pure fabrication, or linked to the legends surrounding the Lost Adams Cave of Arizona or the Lost Adams Mine of California or the Lost Adams Ledge of Colorado. There is even a record of Joe Adams searching for the lost canyon as late as 1888. Over the years of retelling Adams’ story, his name has become forgotten, lost as surely as his buried gold.
It is known that he was born in Rochester, New York, on 10 July 1829. Around 1861, he began a lucrative business as an overland freighter, or one who hauls goods for a price, between Los Angeles and Tucson. Adams was married, having a wife and three children living in Los Angeles. He made good money and enjoyed his work, but something happened in August 1864 which caused him to change his profession. That something was gold fever.
After delivering his last load of freight to Tucson, Adams started back to Los Angeles alone. His helper had decided to remain and prospect in Arizona, and that left Adams to manage the team of twelve horses, the big freight wagon, and the attached trailer by himself. He also claimed he had two thousand dollars in cash as payment for the last load of freight he had delivered. Leaving Tucson, he could not say where he was when he decided to camp at a small oasis on the Gila River for the night. All he knew is that he was south of Phoenix, and speculation is that he camped somewhere in the vicinity of Florence.
After unhitching the team, he hobbled his horses, keeping one horse saddled and tied at camp in the manner of all cowboys on the prairies at night. Most accounts agree that he tried to sleep, but he was bone weary and too tired from a long day on the trail. All he managed was a fitful night of tossing and flopping. He said that just as the sun cracked on the horizon, he managed to drop into fitful slumber, only to be awakened a short time later by rude sounds of unearthly warhoops and hoofbeats. He grabbed his rifle, jumped in the saddle, and gave chase, using the same strategy as that of his tormentors---yelling and hollering like a banshee wailing in the wind.
Racing through the underbrush, he finally managed to recapture his stolen herd, but he remained uneasy. Indians did not relinquish stolen horses without a fight, and it seemed to him that they had given up all too easily. He wondered why. A few miles from camp, he had his answer. The unmistakable aroma of charred wood hung in the air like a pall. Hurrying into camp, he found the worst. His wagons were burnt to ashes, his harnesses and traces were cut to pieces, and all his provisions, including his cash, were gone. The Indians had taken everything of value in the camp and had left him nothing. All he had was his saddle, his gun, and twelve horses. There was nothing else in sight.
Deciding it was useless to return to Tucson for supplies without a wagon and having no cash to purchase anything anyway, he drove his horses ahead of him toward a nearby Pima Indian village, planning to barter for the necessary supplies to sustain his journey to California. He found the village virtually swarming with mining men, all highly excited and all eagerly anxious to trade him out of his twelve horses.
Adams claimed the miners had been panning gold near the Pima village for about two weeks, but they were not having a great deal of luck. Their efforts, however, had been watched with keen interest by another visitor to the village, a young Mexican - Indian half-breed in his mid-twenties, who had one ear crumpled into a shapeless knot. Legend claims the young man was called Gotch Ear, and he had an exciting tale to tell.
Gotch Ear said that when he and his brother were just boys in Mexico, they had been captured and then raised by the Apache. He had eventually become trusted enough that the Indians had shown him a canyon of gold, but he was now on the run from the tribe because he had killed the Apache who had killed his brother in a fight, and he feared the retaliation of the tribe. He would show the men where the canyon of gold lay, if they would provide him with the means to cross the desert. He wanted a horse to take him back to his home in Mexico.
When Adams arrived with his team of horses, it was a godsend to the miners. Gotch Ear had said the canyon was at least a ten day journey to the northeast...a journey fit only for a dead man to walk. The miners decided that if they could barter for Adams’ horses, they could give one to Gotch Ear in payment for showing them the zigzag canyon of gold.
Adams very much wanted to be part of the expedition. He had never been mining. In fact, he had never been prospecting, but he had nothing to lose because he had already lost it all. After several hours of negotiation, the miners finally decided that since Adams had all the horses, he would be the leader. The miners would defray all other expenses of the expedition. Adams also claimed that they agreed to pay Gotch Ear two horses, a saddle, a gun and ammunition, two fifty-dollar gold pieces, and a red silk bandanna one of the miners owned which the Indian admired. Gotch Ear further said that if he could not show the miners the canyon of gold, the miners could shoot him dead. He asked for no advance payment for the journey. It seemed too good to be true and a deal the miners just could not refuse.
They all set out on 20 August 1864. According to Adams, there were twenty-two men, including himself and Gotch Ear. Other stories claim only twelve men accompanied Gotch Ear and Adams because that is all the extra horses that Adams had, and Gotch Ear had said they could not walk it. The truth may never be known. Most accounts indicate twenty miners and Gotch Ear went with Adams, making twenty-two men and thirteen horses. They headed northeast up the Gila River to its confluence with the San Carlos River, where they turned north, following the river until it took a turn to the east. It is generally believed that the mining party then turned northward into the mountains, looking for a zigzag canyon, a canyon that was supposed to be filled with gold. None, except Gotch Ear, had ever been into the territory they traversed and none, except Gotch Ear, knew any of the landmarks by name.
After four days of travel through heavy timber, they skirted a high mountain which fits the general description of Mount Ord, only today’s Mount Ord is located north of Phoenix and is wrong for their journey. Years later, Adams and Brewer would separately insist that they skirted the White Mountains of eastern Arizona, rounding Baldy Peak on the north side. This has been a source of real confusion for treasure hunters because there is also a Mount Ord in the vicinity of Baldy Peak in the White Mountains and could actually be the mountain which Adams described. Adams further claimed that after leaving the Gila River, they crossed only two large streams.
For the next two days, they followed the course of one of the rivers and its east fork up into the White Mountains. The headwaters of the East Fork are formed there in the rugged terrain between Mt. Ord and Mt. Baldy. Somewhere in this area, from a mountain lookout, the miners observed several mountain ranges. Among those were the San Francisco Mountains, near Flagstaff, and other peaks lying to the north, northeast, and east. Gotch Ear pointed out two close-setting, mountain points to the east and told his party that the canyon was not far from those two peaks. According to Adams, those two peaks appeared to be at least one hundred miles away, and the direction was northeast from their vantage point. The problem is that no one knows exactly where the vantage point was located.
Following long established Indian trails, Gotch Ear led the miners generally northeast. When they finally came to a wagon trail, Gotch Ear told them to mark it well, that ‘it leads to the fort in the malpais rocks.’ This fort has generally been taken to be Old Fort Wingate near the present town of Grants, just west of Albuquerque, New Mexico. But which direction it lay from where Adams crossed it, no one knows.
The band finally reached what appeared to be a box canyon and camped for the night in an elevated mesa having abandoned, eroded irrigation ditches with many vines growing in a tangled mess. Whether or not they were pumpkin vines in anyone’s guess, but Adams named the place Pumpkin Patch, and the name has endured. When Adams attempted to retrace his journey many years later, he was unable to say exactly where the field lay.
In the morning, they rode up the canyon toward a reddish-colored bluff described as a solid rock wall sixty to seventy feet high. Not long after midday, they reached the bluff. One of the miners, Jack Davidson, asked if they were going to climb the wall. Gotch Ear made no reply. He just smiled and led the party behind a huge boulder at the base of the wall, through a hidden portal, the famed Secret Door for which so many men have searched, and into a zigzag canyon. It made a perfect "Z," and Adams said it was the roughest trail he had ever ridden. In some places, it pinched in so tightly that a rider stretching his arms out wide could touch both sides of the canyon walls at the same time.
Inside the canyon, the men encountered a broad expanse that supported some timber and contained much exposed rock and large boulders. They traveled most of that day going upstream, until they reached the upper end of the canyon. After following the trail up a steep climb, they found themselves on a high mesa where Gotch Ear pointed out the two mountain peaks they had seen while in the White Mountains a few days earlier. He then pointed east and said the gold was in a canyon near the two mountains. It appeared to Adams that they were only hours away.
Gotch Ear then led the riders down from the plateau into a deep canyon. Running along the floor of the canyon was a stream, which they followed to an acre-sized meadow, where they made camp for the night. Immediately, the men fell to panning gold in the stream, although Gotch Ear said it was not the place to which he was leading them. To the amazement of the miners, the stream was brimming with gold, and most pieces were the size of small acorns. As the men surveyed their surroundings in glee, it became apparent to them that the gold had rushed down into the canyon following the course of the stream. The men did not want to leave this bonanza. By noon of the following day, they had prospected up- and downstream, and there was gold everywhere. Since several of the men did not have mining tools, it was agreed to pool the fortune and share equally. Gotch Ear was paid, and when he departed, after telling them not to stay long in the canyon because it was a campsite of roving Apaches, the men who could not pan gold were put to work cutting timber for a cabin. They soon set up camp, and the prospecting commenced.
Gotch Ear was never seen or heard from again, although an effort was made to trace him after Adams was unable to relocate the gold canyon. Some witnesses were found who claimed to have seen an Apache warrior wearing a red bandanna and riding a horse similar to what Gotch Ear got from the miners. Legend generally assumes that Gotch Ear was killed by an Apache soon after leaving the miners, while he was enroute to Mexico.
The legend seems to diverge at this point. One story maintains that unexpected visitors arrived at the camp---a fierce Apache war chief named Nana and twenty of his Warm Springs Apache warriors. Chief Nana’s appearance spelled trouble for the miners. The Apaches considered several things to be sacred, and one of them was mountains---all mountains. The zigzag canyon was probably sacred in some way because it was part of the mountains. The Apaches also believed that gold was the tears of the sun. And nobody touched the tears of the sun because it was the source of all life.
The great chief, however, decided to be somewhat lenient with the miners. He laid down strict rules which specified that the miners must not touch any gold above the rim of the canyon. He said that any man caught above the rim would die at the hands of the Indians---a very slow, extremely painful, brutally calculated death.
One morning, one of the horses broke its hobble and ventured out across the mesa. In retrieving the horse, a miner stumbled across a gold nugget the size of a hen egg. He furtively looked around to see if he was being watched by any of Chief Nana’s band, and then quickly stooped over, picked it up and stuffed it into his shirt. Later that morning, he gave the nugget to Adams.
Adams ogled the size of the nugget, but remembering Nana’s warning, reprimanded the miner. He put the hen egg under a rock at the base of a nearby tree stump, but the damage was already done. The huge nugget fueled gold fever in the camp. Unknown to him, the other miners began accumulating gold from both above and below the canyon. Some of the gold was stored in a coffeepot and hidden beneath a flagstone of the camp fireplace. The rest of it was packed and stored in other containers. According to legend, the miners amassed 300 pounds of gold worth nearly $1.5 million dollars. Nearly all of it was hidden in a small pit under the camp fireplace.
When their supplies ran low, Adams dispatched six men to Gotch Ear’s fort in the malpais (bad country) rocks for replenishment. Adams said that John Brewer was delegated the leader of the detail. Not knowing exactly how far anything was from the little canyon, the miners finally estimated the trip would take eight days at the most.
At the end of eight days with no sign of Brewer, Adams and Jack Davidson rode back up the torturous canyon determined to travel until they found some sign of Brewer and his men. They found it at the entrance of the Secret Door. Dead men, several dead horses, packsaddles, and flour scattered all over the rocks were all that remained of the supply detail, obviously victims of a surprise attack from the Indians.
Carefully concealing the dead bodies of the men in a crevice and covering them with the packsaddles and some rocks until they could return and properly bury them, Adams and Davidson hurried back down the canyon to warn the others at camp. They were a mile out of camp when they heard the sounds of dwindling gunfire. Chief Nana had been true to his word. From a lookout above the camp, Adams and Davidson stared down helplessly.
In telling the story to the Army surgeon, Adams said that they went back to their horses, threw their saddles in a crevice, and then turned their horses loose in a side canyon. They were sure that Nana’s warriors had counted the bodies and would be looking for them above and below the canyon walls. They then hid in a thicket until the sun went down, listening to the warriors evidently searching the canyon’s perimeter for them.
After the Apaches had left and under cover of darkness, the two men stole into camp. They wanted to retrieve as much of the gold as they could carry from the hiding place under the flagstone hearth of the cabin. But the Apaches had set the cabin ablaze, and the heavy, smoldering rafters had fallen right over the hidden cache. The rocks were too hot to touch. With an ax and buckets of water, they could have retrieved the cache in no time, but they were afraid the noise would alert any Apaches that might be lingering in the dark shadows of the canyon.
After waiting for the cinders to cool with no success, and with dawn rapidly approaching, Adams and Davidson reluctantly stole back out the canyon. Before leaving, Adams retrieved the gold hen egg nugget from under the tree stump. It was this gold nugget that he later showed to the Army surgeon as proof of his story.
The Army doctor’s name was Spurgeon. When the two tottering wrecks arrived, he was sure they would not live long. Jack Davidson in fact, being fifty-four and older than Adams, died shortly after arriving at the fort. But Adams slowly recovered and flabbergasted Spurgeon with the fantastic tale. "I wanted right then to go with Adams for the gold, but the only people to organize were a few soldiers," Spurgeon reported. "Their orders did not include gold mining."
Spurgeon never got the chance to go with Adams back for the gold because several days later, five peaceful Apaches visited the fort. Adams, still partly deranged by his experience, thought he recognized the Indians as part of Nana’s warriors from the gold camp massacre. He grabbed a gun and shot two of them dead before being disarmed. While Adams awaited trial for murder, he seized an opportunity to escape on a black horse belonging to a lieutenant and made his way back to Los Angeles.
Adams remained in California operating a secondhand furniture store for several years, but he never forgot the fortune hidden under the flagstone in the camp in the zigzag canyon. And although he tried, he never got enough money together to finance an expedition back for his gold. Being a wanted fugitive for the Apache murders also made him somewhat afraid to try it. It did not stop him, however, from telling every living soul who would listen of his fabulous wealth hidden in the burnt-out cabin’s fireplace. Unfortunately, in a land of ten thousand canyons and mountain peaks, he could provide only sketchy details of the canyon’s geographic location. These details include:
1. They traveled northeast from a friendly Pima village somewhere on the Gila River northwest of Tucson.
2. The trip would take about two weeks from the Pima village to the canyon.
3. They traveled through the mountains in a generally northeast direction, rounding Mt. Baldy on the north side.
4. They crossed only two large streams in their trek.
5. From a mountain vantage point somewhere in the White Mountains near Mt. Baldy, they could see two peaks to the east about 100 miles, a round timbered mountain about thirty miles to the right, the course of the Little Colorado River about fifteen miles to the north, and three lofty peaks to the northwest about 200 miles away.
6. They would cross high lava hills and rough canyons in the malpais.
7. The wagon road led to a fort in the malpais.
8. There were two mountains which looked like haystacks in the setting sun.
9. There was a pumpkin patch in the meadow.
10. There was a tall, reddish bluff which had the Secret Door.
11. The canyon was filled with switchbacks, making it a zigzag canyon.
12. The canyon pinched in tight in some places.
13. Gold was in this canyon near the two mountain peaks.
In 1874, Adams found a man willing to finance the trip back to the canyon. But Adams, as he demonstrated over and over, had no sense of direction, and the men with him soon became angry. Ten years had also passed, and Adams was confused about details that were only hazy memories in the first place. They ended up about one hundred miles north of Silver City, New Mexico. Adams’ excuse to critics was, "The Apaches made me forget."
Adams, like many prospectors since, searched for the zigzag canyon the rest of his life. He just could not give up on his dream. He knew the gold was there, waiting for him, and he had to continue his search until he found it. But the zigzag canyon was lost, and Adams died at the age of ninety-three, never to see the gold again.
Although Adams never did find his Mother Lode, apparently several others may have stumbled upon it without realizing it. About 1877, a man named Edward Doheny rode across New Mexico into Phoenix, Arizona looking for a job. Doheny reported that he had traveled down into a box canyon before he realized he could not cross it. He noticed the ruins of a burnt-out cabin before turning back, but he knew nothing of the Adams story. When later grubstaked, he was unable to find it again.
In 1881, Doctor Spurgeon, now a retired doctor living in Toledo, Ohio, hired John Dowling to find the Adams Diggings, as it was now being called. He was unable to go himself at the time, but he gave Dowling as many details as he could about the placer deposit the miners had worked. According to Spurgeon, Adams had said the canyon lay about a two week’s journey northeast of Tucson, and that the party had crossed two large rivers, one of which might be the Little Colorado. Adams also said he saw two peaks called "Sugar Loaf Mountains" shining like haystacks on his journey toward destiny.
Dowling then set out with two men into the general area the doctor thought the lost gold canyon to be. Within a week of leaving Socorro, New Mexico, the three men entered a canyon fitting the description Adams had given the good doctor nearly twenty years earlier. There were tree stumps all over the hillside, a blackened ruin of a chimney, and a waterfall at the far end of the canyon. Since the men with Dowling had been bickering between themselves for days on end over who would do what chore, Dowling, by that time, was totally disgusted. He decided they would all leave instead of panning for gold. According to Dowling, Spurgeon did not tell him of the hidden wealth under the fireplace, or he would never have left the canyon without retrieving it.
When the three men reached Socorro, Dowling sent a message to Spurgeon in Ohio advising the doctor that the canyon had been found, but that he did not see gold in the stream, and since he was in need of money, he was taking a job in Mexico. Years later, he learned of the hidden treasure, but by that time, he was totally blind and unable to return for it.
A few years after the unsuccessful Dowling venture, Adams arrived in Magdalena, New Mexico. He met a man named Bob Lewis in the local saloon. Lewis had been searching for the Diggings off an on for years and was mightily glad to meet the originator of the gold story. By now, the Adams legend had spread throughout Arizona and New Mexico, only those searching for the treasure were beginning to call Adams a liar and cheat. This made Adams so mad that he confided in Lewis. "Go and look for the bones of those men who were carrying supplies into the canyon. Show me the bones, and I’ll show you the gold."
Lewis did look for the bones. Thirty years later, he found them. Stacked into a crevice were the skeletons of several men covered with pieces of packsaddles and rocks. He was in the Datil Mountains of New Mexico, but he could not find the Secret Door. All he knew for sure was that the door was not far away. Since an earthquake shook southern Arizona and New Mexico in 1887, it is also possible that the scenery was rearranged in the Datil Mountains.
The missing John Brewer finally turned up at the Ammon Meshach Tenney, Jr., ranch at Walnut Grove, south of St. Johns in the mid-eastern border country of Arizona and New Mexico in 1887. Adams had said that he and Davidson had only found five bodies of the Brewer detachment sent to Gotch Ear’s malpais fort for supplies, and Brewer was not one of the bodies. Assuming Brewer was dead and not having time to look for him, the Adams saga began.
Brewer, however, had not only survived the massacre, he had made his way into Colorado where he had lived for twenty-five years as a happily married man with his Ute Indian wife in the Ute wilderness. His version of the events varied somewhat from that of the legend surrounding the Adams tale.
According to Brewer’s story, he was working his way from California eastward in late summer of 1862, riding first one freight wagon and then another. While resting up in Tucson with his companions, four other men from California, they chanced to meet with a half-breed Pima-Mexican, who would come to their corral to chat with the Americans.
The Americans had with them several coins from California, which included some $50 gold pieces. The Pima-Mexican had never seen gold coins before, and he became highly excited when he saw the money, as he knew what money was for. In subsequent conversations, he revealed that he had seen pieces of gold larger than the coins, and he volunteered to take Brewer and his companions to the location if they would pay him one thousand dollars in the gold coins.
The Pima-Mexican said the gold country lay east beyond "snow mountain" where each shovel full of sand would show color, if not a nugget. After dickering for a week, the men agreed to a deal with the half-breed. They would furnish a good outfit and pay the expenses of the trip, and their guide would receive $50 in gold from each of the five men for his services. However, their guide had to furnish his own mount and saddle equipment. The Pima-Mexican agreed to this arrangement, and the next morning, he rode into Tucson, announcing he was ready to go.
It should be noted that John Brewer did not say his guide had a crumpled ear and was called Gotch Ear. This may be another fabrication of the legend. In fact, describing their guide in 1887, Brewer said, "He stood about five feet 10 inches high. His hair was as black as the plume of a raven. His eyes were large and round, and he seemed to have the power to decide at a glance what to do…He was excellent company and had a large fund of information about trails and travel. The map he drew for us at Tucson before we left was just one straight line a little north of east…Every move he made added testimony to his claim that he had been over the trail before…There was nothing in the world that he cared more for than the horse he rode. He would pet his horse all day, never letting it out of his sight, and at night, he would sleep at the end of the animal’s picket rope."
Brewer said that none of the miners had horses, having worked the freight system from California to Tucson. He borrowed the half-breed’s horse and made the rounds of the surrounding ranches and houses in search of horses for the trip, but met with no success. On his return journey to his friends, he met up with another man going the same direction, and they fell into conversation. The other man was Adams, and Adams said he would be willing to rent his horses for a share in the gold findings. Brewer thought Adams had about ten horses in his possession, horses Brewer thought had been bought "near Tucson from farmers because they all bore collar and harness marks indicating that they were veterans at the plow."
Although Brewer said he met with Adams on the trail, the truth is that no one knows which direction Adams traveled to get to the Pima village. It is entirely possible that Brewer and his men were already at the village and not in Tucson, just as Adams claimed. It would also account for the reason that Brewer had no luck in obtaining horses in the surrounding area, as one would suspect that horses were readily available in Tucson.
Brewer further said that there were just the five miners, Adams, and the Pima-Mexican half-breed in the party for a total of seven people. They traveled northeast through torturous timber country of the White Mountains. "On the fourth day, we rounded Baldy Peak on the north, and crossing the north fork of the White River, soon found ourselves on what is known as the continental divide. We had been crossing streams that flowed to the west, but now the watershed was to the north and east."
Before leaving the timber, he took note of the surroundings. "Directly in front of us and on the route we were to take, we could see a vast area of open country with high lava hills and rough canyons which we would have to cross. To the right and about thirty miles distant, we could see a round, timber-covered mountain. Directly in front of us and about fifteen miles distant, we were able to trace the course of the Little Colorado River, as it made its way out of the mountains toward the north. But the best sight of all was to the north and a little to the west. We could just make out through the hazy blue, three lofty peaks 200 miles away."
Brewer’s description of where they were puts them north of Baldy Peak in the vicinity of the Arizona-New Mexico border just south of Eagar, Arizona. From here, Escudilla Peak and Escondido Peak are to the east and the three lofty peaks north and west about 200 miles are the San Francisco Mountains near Flagstaff. The question arises, of course, was he referring to Escudilla Peak in Arizona, or Escondido Peak in New Mexico, when he referred to the rounded, timbered mountain?
The small party rode out onto the plains and crossed the Little Colorado River, where they were dismayed to discover human footprints along the river’s bank. Rightly reasoning the prints were recently left by the Apaches, the party hightailed it east into the hill country and out of sight of the river. They traveled into a broad, open canyon for a few miles and then turned left up a canyon wall to high ground. They turned again almost north and continued on about five miles to a high plateau, where they spent the night. The next morning, the guide led them about 300 yards to a cedar tree and pointed, announcing, "See esas dos piloncillos? (Two sugar-loaf cones in the distance). Near them is our destination."
They headed straight toward their intended destination with the guide and Adams in the lead. After about five miles of travel and descending all the while, they could see what appeared to be a deep canyon in the distance across their path. Several hours later, they worked their way down into the gulch, and as they watered the horses at the bottom, the guide said, "There is a little gold in this canyon, but not as much as over yonder."
Everyone wanted to see the gold. They all dismounted and panned the stream. "We selected a spot 200 yards back and a little upstream from where we found the ‘color’ in the shade of a cluster of large cedars to unpack and hobble the horses. Then every man grabbed his pan and made a rush for the gravel." The party panned up and down the canyon finding color everywhere. When darkness brought them back to camp, they estimated the half day’s panning to be about a pound and a half of gold.
The men decided to work their camp for a few days before continuing their journey to where the guide wanted them to end up. On the morning of the third day, they discussed making that area their permanent camp, or moving on with their guide, who was anxious to terminate his contract. While they discussed the matter, "Adams said that regardless of what was decided, he must go to look for the horses which had wandered away. Taking one of the party with him, he set out. The boys were anxious to get back to work. I proposed that they go ahead and that I would wash up the dishes, set the camp in order to join them soon. Remaining in camp that morning saved my life. Little did I realize, as I watched those three boys pick up their pans and start off to work, accompanied by the half-breed guide, that they were going to their death."
The Indians struck that morning without mercy. Brewer heard what he thought was thunder, climbed up the canyon wall to see what the noise was, and was horrified to see his companions surrounded by upward of "80 and possibly 100 of the Indians, some on horseback, but most of them afoot. Suddenly they began to let forth horrifying screams and yells that fairly split the air, and forming a cordon around the helpless boys, butchered them in an instant."
Realizing his precarious predicament, Brewer hid in a thicket of cedars, where he remained until late into the night. He had no gun, pistol or provisions, but he deemed it foolhardy to drop back into camp for anything. When all was quiet, he crawled down to the bottom of the canyon, seeking the trail of the horses. Following the trail upstream, he was dismayed to discover that the Indians had unhobbled the horses. However, he found no indication that Adams and his companion had been overtaken and slaughtered like the others, and it gave him some comfort.
Before heading out, he decided to return for a last look at the camp. "I crossed the canyon to the opposite wall and, climbing out on top, saw that the country had been fired and was still burning. Cautiously, I felt my way along the rim until I was sure I was opposite to where the slaughter took place and in sight of the camp. But all I could see was a raging forest fire, and I abandoned my plan of seeing if there was anything which could be salvaged." He was further frightened to see in the faint glow of the smoldering embers, the shadowy shape of two men. Thinking the two men were Indians, he crawled back out the canyon and headed east, following the rising crescent moon, never once turning back.
The first night he covered eighteen miles before exhaustion overtook him. The only food he found was a small cluster of sour berries, only several hours after eating them, he had such painful attacks that he thought he would die on the spot. He was delirious, sick with fever, and badly malnourished and dehydrated by the time he stumbled upon a friendly Indian village five days later. His clothes hung in tatters from his headlong plunge through the thorny thickets, and he was covered in dried blood from the numerous scratches and cuts.
Brewer remained in the village for nearly a week recovering from his ordeal. While there, he got the impression that Gotch Ear had been from the village, and he said, "I saw at once that it was to my discredit that I couldn’t tell them his name." He also asked for a detachment of armed men to return to the canyon, saying, "…the guide and three of my companions were beyond human help, but that in the interest of humanity, we owed it to Adams and the other man to attempt their rescue."
The friendly Indians were much afraid of confrontation with the hostile Apaches, however, and Brewer was unable to enlist any help in a rescue attempt. As soon as he was well enough, he headed east, eventually hooking up with a pack train headed north to Santa Fe from Old Mexico. The train was following the course of the Rio Grande and took every opportunity to make frequent stops along the way. These unnecessary stops irritated Brewer, who was wanting to get help to search for Adams. He said that he thought he could have made better time if he had walked.
It took Brewer a month to reach Santa Fe, and knowing Adams could not have survived that long in the wilderness unassisted, he gave up any ideas of forming a search party. He soon found a job as a teamster, eventually making his way into Colorado, where he spent the last quarter of a century trapping and hunting in the Ute Indian wilderness. He did not really know if Adams and Davidson had escaped, but he said he had never suspected that it was Adams and Davidson he had seen in the faint glow of the cabin’s embers. Returning to look for the Diggings in 1887, he was just as confused and lost as Adams had been.
Ammon Tenney, Jr., John Brewer, and several men from the neighborhood searched for the lost canyon off and on all that summer in 1887. Tenney made many trips looking for landmarks along the route over which Brewer said the Pima-Mexican guide had taken, but he never did discover the diggings.
It wasn’t the first time Tenney had been approached to act as guide in the mountains. Growing up in the area on his father’s ranch, Tenney had more than a working knowledge of the local topography. In 1885, Captain C. S. Shaw hired him to show Shaw certain landmarks and trails in the area. Shaw had once been the captain of a merchant ship, and the title had stayed with him on the deserts of the Southwest, where he eventually became interested in the mining game. Virtually everyone who had anything to do with this story gave Shaw high marks when it came to integrity and a sense of responsibility. He knew the difference between men of honor and the bilge rats who always infiltrated society, and he had total faith in Adams. His searching began in the 1870’s with Adams and continued until 1910, when he simply grew too old to meet the rigorous demands of the quest.
Tenney was able to lead Captain Shaw to the timbered area of Brewer’s account of the crossing of the continental divide. Shaw was looking for a certain tree which had grown out of the ground to a height of about three feet and then had been bent over and grown horizontally for about twelve feet before turning up again. But timber fires had swept over much of the mountains, and they never found the strange landmark.
"We immediately set out on the plains toward the river," Tenney said, "and our route took us through and over some rough malpais country. The place was about two miles below Round Valley, now Springerville, where the river enters the gorge. We crossed the river and headed east into the malpais."
Having not found what he was seeking, Shaw and Tenney returned to the farm, which was located about ten miles down the river, to rest and prepare for an extended trip to the east. Two days later, they set out, again going east from the river crossing. For five days they wandered up and down through cedar thickets and rough country in which Shaw was completely lost. On the fifth day, they returned to the farm, and Shaw left, heading for St. Johns.
Tenney learned later that Shaw made another trip from St. Johns, heading eastward into the Salt Lake country. Shaw’s party was gone ten days, but failed to find any landmarks. Their journey took them east to Los Pilas, then to Salt Lake and Los Tules and over to Ojos Bonitos, returning to Salt Lake where they turned south to within sight of Escudilla Mountain, where Tenney had been with Shaw two weeks previously.
Shaw and his new guide then turned east and north, going by what is now called Horseshoe Springs and on to Quemado. They covered the area between the Datil Mountains and Escondido Mountains and still Shaw did not find what he sought. The guide then departed at Quemado and returned to St. Johns, but he gave instructions to Shaw and his party to head for the malpais fields, keeping to the east of the lava beds and going around the north end of them and heading a little west, where they would find Old Fort Wingate.
"Shaw never would tell me much regarding his trips," Tenney reported, "but one of the boys with him fell into conversation with me one day out in the hay field at the farm. From him, I learned that they were looking for a gold diggings which Shaw said was less than two days’ ride from the Little Colorado eastward."
In the 1920’s, a railroad man named John D. Mitchell began an extensive search for the treasure. It is his writings which are the basis for most of today’s ongoing quest for the Lost Adams gold, and according to some theorists, studying Mitchell’s guides could lead to the Lost Adams Diggings. By comparing Mitchell’s references with today’s modern maps, it is possible to determine that many rivers and landmarks had gone under different names long ago.
But it is also possible that Mitchell wrote his history of the Adams legend in such a way as to direct would-be fortune hunters into the wrong canyon, while he continued searching for the right one. Adams had said that he had crossed only two large rivers, one of which he later claimed was the Little Colorado River, which differs from some accounts which claim it was the Black River and the White River. Only Mitchell wrote, "As nearly as can be ascertained, the place where Adams and Landreau were rescued was about 25 miles northwest of Silver City, New Mexico. It was to this place that Adams came in later years, and he was often seen in that region."
Mitchell bases his writings on an Army lieutenant’s notes about the Prieto (Black) River which flows down from the mountains just south of Springerville, Arizona, freighted with gold. In this account, it was Adams and a man named Landreau who panned for the gold and were ambushed by the Indians. It must be pointed out that the lieutenant, whose name was W. H. Emory, published his notes in 1848, which is at least fifteen years prior to either Adams’ or Brewer’s acclaimed account of their disaster. Can this be the basis for the confusion over the Lost Adams legend? Are there two different lost placer deposits, one located in southeast Arizona and one in New Mexico, each bearing the name of the Lost Adams Diggings? The answer might well be "Yes."
In following Mitchell’s writings, it is possible to conclude that at least one of the lost canyons may be located in the Clifton, Arizona area, or two hundred miles northeast of Tucson. This area lies about thirty miles west of Silver City, New Mexico, and it is well-known that the mountain regions lying between the two towns was a favorite stronghold of the hostile Apaches. In fact, folks living in both towns heeded their own caution and seldom ventured beyond their own city limits, as Chiefs Nana and Victorio concentrated their war parties in the area.
Mitchell further writes, "The fact that the two men had traveled south after the massacre would indicate that the rich deposits were located near the headwaters of the Black River." The headwaters of the Black River are up in mountains just south of Springerville, Arizona, which implies that Mitchell is writing of Adams and Davidson as they ran for their lives. By traveling southwest out of the mountains in that location, the two miners would have been in the area of what later became Fort Apache, which was also mentioned. Fort Apache did not exist until May 1870, so the nearest fort anywhere in the area would have been Fort Whipple, established in 1863. It was troops out on patrol from Fort Whipple who found the two deranged men at a site which later became Fort Apache. This location is about 150 miles north of the Clifton, Arizona area.
But Mitchell was referring to Adams and Landreau of the 1848 account when he wrote, basing his suppositions on the writings of Lieutenant Emory. Was Mitchell confusing the two stories, based on the common surname of Adams? It would appear to be the case. It must be remembered that Adams was born in 1829, and he was the father of three children when he and Davidson ran for their lives from the Apache. It seems highly unlikely that Lieutenant Emory would be writing in 1848 of the Adams who was born in 1829.
In an effort to validate Mitchell’s supposition, two friends set out in January 1990 to explore Eagle Creek, located just west of Clifton, Arizona in an area once notorious for copper mining. These two men, one a geologist, were determined to journey along Eagle Creek in an effort to discover if there was a location which could possibly fit the description associated with the legend of the Lost Adams Diggings. Their story was profiled on the television program, Unsolved Mysteries.
They journeyed down the Eagle Creek canyon on horseback, until they finally discovered a little hidden portal that led into a zigzag canyon. Both men thought they had found the spot where Adams had been. It fit the stories they had read, and it appeared to be an appropriate place where gold could have been concentrated in great quantity as a placer deposit. Everything about the location seemed to fit the basic story Adams told in 1864. The canyon was a zigzag canyon, very narrow, and the two men could reach out and touch both sides of the canyon walls at the same time.
It emptied into a somewhat larger canyon with a stream bed coursing down the center. The two men even found a trickle along the canyon wall where a waterfall had once flowed. It was easy to see that if more water were in the system as it was during Adams’ time, there would have been a beautiful, cascading waterfall into an open pool at the base of the fall. Both men were very excited. Knowing the legend of the coffeepot filled with gold buried in the floor of the cabin, they searched the canyon for the ruins of a cabin. Eventually finding one, they dug in the floor, finding many relics, but no pot of gold.
Among the relics that they did find were the tools for making horseshoes and a section of railroad track. The men are convinced they have found the location of Mitchell’s writings, but what happened to the treasure? In the early days, John D. Mitchell was actually a railroad man and worked on the railroad. The two searchers thought of Mitchell when they found the relics, and they thought of Mitchell when they did not find the pot of gold.
It is possible that John Mitchell found a treasure. He certainly knew the legend of the Lost Adams and was searching for it himself. But was this location in the Eagle Creek canyon the Lost Adams’ canyon of 1864? Or the one of 1848? Or neither? Was there ever really gold in the Eagle Creek canyon? Or was this just a part of the copper mining operation in the Clifton area? The truth is that no one really knows.
To further compound the issue, two other stories have been written into history about the Lost Snively Diggings and the Lost Schaeffer Diggings, both of which bear a striking similarity to the Lost Adams story of 1864. In the mid-1860’s, a German prospector named Colonel Snively, one of the founders of the small, gold-mad town of Pinos Altos located six miles north of Silver City, New Mexico on the south end of the Black Range, pulled his freight into Pinos Altos with ten thousand dollars in gold nuggets. The great Apache war chiefs of Cochise and Mangas Coloradas were raiding in the country at the time, and it was deemed too dangerous to return to the area of his rich find. In fact, Mangas Coloradas would be tricked and murdered by miners in Pinos Altos in January 1863, making the entire area too dangerous for any white man.
Colonel Snively reportedly had a cabin and a sluice box built in his canyon. He also said that he thought that Mexican sheep-herders also knew of the place, as when he first went into the canyon, he found signs of a camp. Snively’s diggings were located west of a place called Island Mountain and north in its direction from a mountain with the painted face of a woman on its eastern side. Colonel Snively never went back to his diggings. He headed west to California, where he presumably lived a comfortable life from the wealth which his gold nuggets brought.
By late 1872, when the Schaeffer diggings situation came to light, the Indian depredations were still in full force. Mangas Coloradas was now dead, a victim of treachery by the miners at Pinos Altos, and Cochise and Victorio fiercely took his place. They had a supreme hatred for the white man. Among the favorite strongholds used by the two bands was the large timbered area near the headwaters of the Mimbres River.
Jake Schaeffer had hired out as a camp cook to an Army detail entrusted to protect a group of loggers working the timber at the headwaters of the Mimbres River. After three months with no signs of Indians, Schaeffer asked permission to go deer hunting with the camp hunter. The deal was struck and on the day of the hunt, Schaeffer shot his deer…and disappeared.
The next day, two searchers from the camp found the deer Schaeffer had killed, but no sign of Schaeffer. It was too late to return to camp, and they bedded down to await daybreak. Just before dawn, the Apaches struck. One of the searchers was killed, but the other man made it back to camp, only to find all the loggers and two of the soldiers slaughtered. The Indians had also run off all the riding and pack animals.
When the survivors finally made their way back to Fort Cummings, located about twenty miles north of Deming, the commander left a small detail guarding the post and took the remainder of his men into the hills, searching for Schaeffer and the marauding Indians. After burying the ambushed men at the logging camp, the Army troopers followed the Indian signs up the north end of the Black Range, across the San Augustine plains, and into the Datil Mountains, eventually backtracking down the west side of the range, cutting across the Burros Mountains and into the San Simon Valley, following it to Mexico. They never found Schaeffer.
Meanwhile, soldiers from Fort Craig, near the present town of San Marcial, New Mexico, arrived at Fort Cummings, located fifty-three miles west of the Rio Grande on the Mesilla - Tucson road, with news of Jake Schaeffer. He had roamed for days and wandered at least two hundred miles before finally drifting into Fort Craig. The day he arrived, he was as crazy as a loon and almost naked. What clothes he was wearing were hanging from his body in shreds. According to the report, Schaeffer had "no gun, bare feet on the ground, no coat or hat, but he was holding on like grim death to his haversack, which held about 10 pounds of pure gold nuggets." In the hospital, all he could remember is that he had wounded a deer and while following it, he had gotten lost. He could not recall where he found the nuggets, except that he recalled crossing a wide plain. He also talked about a mountain with a woman’s picture painted on it in bright colors.
In 1876, Jason Baxter and a friend named John Adair set out to locate the Snively and Schaeffer Diggings, thinking that both were also the same as the Lost Adams Diggings. They knew it had to be located between the headwaters of the Mimbres and the headwaters of the Little Colorado Rivers, according to the Snively and Adams legends. They felt sure the plain that Schaeffer had said he crossed was the San Augustine. They also felt sure that the mountain with the picture of the woman’s face was the Magdalena. According to Baxter, "On the east slope of this mountain, the head of a woman can be made out without any trouble. The shrubs on the mountainside have grown around a rocky outcropping, and it sure does look like a woman’s face. This mountain of many colors in its lonesome setting, stirred up good feeling in the Spaniards, and they called it Our Lady of Magdalena. The mountain is located near the north end of the Black Range, close to the edge of the San Augustine plains." Today, the town of Magdalena sits in its shadow.
The only problem Jason Baxter and John Adair had was whether or not Jake Schaeffer had come in sight of the "Kneeling Nun" of the Santa Rita Mountains. This geological formation is a jutting needle of a rock which takes the form of a kneeling woman on the rim of the Santa Rita basin and can be seen from a long distance.
Since Colonel Snively claimed that he had traveled south from his canyon for 125 miles as the crow flies before entering old Fort West on the Gila River near the present town of Cliff, New Mexico, Jason Baxter and John Adair decided the woman’s face on the mountain had to be the Magdalena site and not the Santa Rita kneeling nun site. They started from Silver City, headed north through the Black Range, and left the range at the head of Diamond Creek. Keeping north, they headed into the San Augustine Plains on the west end and into the Elk Mountains, where they finally located a pleasant canyon to camp.
With food and water plentiful in the canyon, they stayed a few days. During their stay, they ran across a deserted sheep herder’s camp with a stone barricade around it. Lots of empty shells and a good deal of flattened lead showed there had been a terrible fight. They even ran across goats as wild as deer and shoes containing foot bones of what they presumed were the slaughtered sheep herders of the deserted camp.
They left the northern end of the Elk Mountains and looking east, they saw the woman’s face on the Magdalenas. Taking that as a good sign that they were in the right area, they crossed the basin into the Datil Mountains looking for a canyon with water flowing through it. At nightfall, they bedded down in a deep canyon, but it was a dry camp, as they found no water in the canyon. A mule they had with them, however, which had once belonged to sheep herders in the area, broke it’s picket during the night and headed for a low range which lay by itself off to the east. This range, Baxter described as "a group of mountains standing as lonely as pyramids in the desert."
The next day, Baxter and Adair tracked the mule. They found him tangled in a mesquite bush where he had stopped to browse, and suspecting that he knew the way to water, they untangled him and let him lead. The mule led them to the Island Mountain, and late in the afternoon, they found themselves in rough country with deep arroyos and washed out gulches everywhere. "The mule headed to a ridge which looked like the hub of a crater. The vegetation changed to scrub oak and a few pinon and juniper trees. To the northwest, we could see the White Mountains of Arizona. After a hard climb, we found ourselves on the ridge, which we followed to its end, dipping from there into a wooded box canyon to a straight face of rock which seemed to bring it to a sudden end. The mule kept right on, and when almost against the face of the cliff, near an immense boulder, he seemed to pass right through the wall. We followed and came into a small park through a natural gateway which had been hidden from us by the immense boulder. The mule still went on, and at the end of the park was another face of rock and another opening, which led us into a much larger park where a deep gulch went up to a small peak. The mule headed straight up the gulch. We saw signs that proved someone had been here before us. The mule pawed the sand, and the hole soon filled with water. We made up our minds to look for running water a little further up the gulch. Soon, we found a running stream."
Suspecting that the Apaches knew of the stream in the canyon, the two men built a barricade of rocks before bedding down for the night. The boulders appeared to have been washed into the spot from a deserted placer, or rolled there by a waterspout at sometime in the canyon. Debris and brush were still hanging on the sides of the canyon and also on the trees. Before retiring, they got pans and headed up the canyon, planning on retrieving gold, as they were sure they were in the location of the Snively, Schaeffer, and Adams placer deposit.
Night was upon them, however, before they had journeyed more than a few yards up the canyon, and they reluctantly returned to their makeshift fort of rocks. During the night, the Apaches struck, and during the night, a fierce thunderstorm also struck. Thinking they would either be killed by the Indians or drowned in the canyon from the cloudburst, they slipped from their barricaded protection and made their way up the canyon under the cover of darkness. They were followed by the Mexican mule. Through the lightning flashes, they made out "an old partly-burned log cabin standing to one side of the valley. There was no roof and only a few logs were standing. Close to the ruined cabin we also made out what looked like a sluice box and a pile of lumber, and a short distance away thought we saw two piles of bones." Hearing the Indians close on their heels, they caught the mule, made a harness of his tether, and rode the mule up the canyon, turning left where the canyon forked. At daybreak, they climbed out on top of the canyon, located their position, and headed south for the Mogollon Mountains and the safety of the copper camps of Morenci and Clifton, Arizona. Neither man ever went back to the canyon, both deeming it foolish to venture far away from the settlements with Apache Chiefs Nana, Juh, Cochise and Victorio on the warpath.
Did Jason Baxter and John Adair find the Lost Adams? Is the Lost Adams Diggings the same diggings as the Snively legend and the Schaeffer diggings? The answer can only be "perhaps."
Another interesting note to this legend was reported in Frontier Times in April, 1928. According to Colonel C. C. Smith, U.S. Army, Retired, he served in the country of the Adams Diggings and was actually under orders to accompany a party to search for these diggings. It is his opinion that John Brewer was rescued by people of the Cubero, Laguna or Acoma Pueblo, "…though this implies wonderful traveling powers of Brewer, but a man fleeing for his life is capable of wonderful endurance." In Colonel Smith’s opinion, Brewer skirted the Zuni Pueblo, reaching the Rio Grande in the vicinity of Los Lunas or Belen, New Mexico.
It was also Colonel Smith’s opinion that the person who escaped with Adams was named Shaw and not Davidson. Shaw would be the same Shaw who was searching for the diggings in 1885 with Ammon Tenney, Jr., and this has already been proved false. Colonel Smith found it incredible that none of the survivors of the massacre could re-find the diggings, but he admits that the men were "not good frontiersmen or woodsmen: all of them having come from California, where perhaps they worked under conditions where it was not necessary to note or become familiar with landmarks."
In April 1893, Colonel Smith was stationed at Fort Wingate, New Mexico, located some fifty miles west of Old Fort Wingate, which had been abandoned in 1868 for the new site. He was shown a crudely made map purported to have been drawn by one of the Lost Adams party, but which one he could not remember in 1928, although he was inclined to think it was Adams. The map "placed the diggings in the Navajo country in the Lu-ka-chu-kai Mountains in Arizona and New Mexico, about 100 miles to the northeast of Holbrook, Arizona, and thus considerably at variance with the location as given in Ammon Tenney, Jr’s account." Although this area was searched, the diggings were never found.
In 1994, Richard French entered the picture. French’s experiences in New Mexico began in 1958, when he relocated to the state’s southeast plains. In his endeavor to become familiar with the state’s history and natural beauty, he learned of the Adams legend. For more than thirty years, he combed the wilderness in his attempt to make sense of the mystery, and he thinks he has solved it. He began by trying to locate the actual Pima village northwest of Tucson, where the miners began their trek. Although there are many villages in the desert, only one seems to fit the description. Sacaton has been in existence for centuries, and is a virtual oasis. Using it as the starting point, French determined that the men could follow the Gila River to the confluence of the San Carlos River, where they would then turn northeast into the mountains. Continuing on a northeast course would bring first the Black River and then the White River crossings. The Adams legend was making sense.
By actually retracing all the clues, French ended up at Mt. Thomas in the White Mountains. This mountain, along with Mt. Baldy and Mt. Ord, are in the same area where Adams and his party could have stopped to view the surrounding countryside. By climbing to the top of Mt. Thomas, French could see the three peaks to the northwest, the valley where the Little Colorado River runs to the north, and most importantly, the two peaks to the east that Adams saw from his vantage point. Also to the east, at about thirty miles, he could see Escudilla Mountain. It’s not known exactly which mountain Adams was on when he viewed the surroundings, but Mt. Ord is now closed by the Indian reservation and inaccessible for research. Mt. Baldy and Mt. Thomas, however, definitely do allow a panoramic view of all the landmarks Adams mentioned. Further, French knew that the two peaks one hundred miles distant were Veteado Mountain, located north of Quemado, New Mexico. Veteado shows up as two, close but separate, points from a distance of about one hundred miles. Up close, it is only one mountain with two summits…a double peak. Perhaps this is why Adams and all the other searchers failed to find the double peaks when up close to the mountain?
Veteado Mountain is also only twenty miles west and a little south of the Point of the Malpais, a landmark often mentioned when discussing the Adams legend. It has been a well-known landmark in western New Mexico since the days of the Spanish occupation. Physically, it is the fingerlike, southernmost extension of a massive lava flow, which reaches over thirty-five miles to the south from the Old Fort Wingate location, and Adams himself once mentioned it.
It was now possible to make a guess to the wagon road which led to the fort in the malpais rocks. By necessity, since Adams’ party was traveling eastward after leaving what is now known as the Springerville, Arizona area, they could only cross a wagon road running north and south. There is an unusual situation in the terrain to the north of Pie Town, New Mexico. Extending from near that village north to the Point of the Malpais were a number of old ruins. If the people who lived in them were to travel anywhere, there must have been a trail over which they journeyed. Highway 117 lays along a north-south axis, and from the Malpais Point, it takes a westerly course toward Veteado Mountain. Might not the current road follow an old wagon road?
It was not until later that Richard French discovered an old map, available in the county office, with geographical positions of Indian tribes, old forts, Spanish and Mexican villages, and pueblos on it. In studying it, he discovered there had been an "Ancient Apache War Route Against Navajos" that ran through Pie Town and continued in a northerly course to the Point of the Malpais. It then followed the routing of Highway 117 from the Malpais Point to the area near Grants. In several places along the old war route, ruins were in evidence. Further, there was a notation which read, "These Ruins Existed Before 1860s and Were Mapped in 1860s." It was easy to make the connection that the Ancient Apache War Route could have been used by military wagons moving freight between Fort Craig, a supply depot, and Old Fort Wingate.
The next clue which popped into French’s mind was the mysterious Pumpkin Patch. If the ruins were in existence before the 1860’s then the vine field could be nothing more than an irrigated garden near one of the old ruins.
It did not take long to determine the two haystack mountains mentioned by Adams that he had seen looking from the east to the west in the setting sun had to be D-Cross Mountain and Bell Butte in extreme northeastern Catron County. They are on a line about thirty miles almost due east of Veteado Mountain and just east of the Ancient Apache War Route. Strangely, these two mountains cannot be seen from the west or the south from elevated vantage points because of the ridge lines and heavy forest, which was part of the same problem Adams had when trying to retrace his route to the landmark from the south. Furthermore, when viewed up close from the southwest, they appear as three peaks. It is only when viewed from the northeast that they appear as two haystack mountains, and Adams only saw them from the northeast looking toward the southwest as he fled in terror. They lie in an area of several hundred miles of little-traveled New Mexico, an area containing literally thousands of canyons, ridges, and mesas. Without any question, it was more than capable of containing and obscuring every landmark Adams spoke of as being near his strike.
Over the years, Richard French and his friends have investigated the thousands of canyons in that area lying east of the Continental Divide. He has succeeded in locating and identifying the aspen grove where Adams and Davidson hid to escape the Apaches, and the mesa where Adams stood to view the haystack mountains, seen only as shining haystacks during the late evenings for only a few days in the month of August---all other times of the year, the sun being in the wrong quadrant. French has not found the gold under the hearth of the cabin but only because he has not yet found the exact canyon, although he has been through some zigzag canyons with secret doors. The area has many of them matching Adams’ description. Adams said that it was "next to impossible for anyone who had not been there to find the place," and so far, he has been right.
Adams was stricken by a heart attack while in New Mexico on another searching trip. He was taken to the southern part of the state and put on a train for California, and there, in his Los Angeles home, in September 1886, he died. He left behind a story which intrigues all who know of it. The quest continues, and the truth is that there are many places in the lonely regions of New Mexico where Adams could have found his gold. No one is sure it exists; no one is sure it does not. But one thing is certain---the legend survives.