The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1895-07-21
MINING CAMP STAMPEDES.
MANY WILD RUSHEs OF GOLD
SEEKERS IN THE SOUTHWEST.

Rumors of Rich Finds That Have Set
Thousands of Men Moving Through
Deserts and over Mountains Only
10 Find DisnppOintment-SO Fa-
nous Stumpedes.
From the New York Sun.
/ Los Angeles.-The recent rush of sew
eral thousands Of the old time gold seek
ers from the mining camps OF Arizona,
/ New Mexico. and California TO the new
/ gold fields in Oklahoma recalls the STAN
/ pedes Of excited men that have occurred
| in the southwest in the last two decades.
/ Hundreds Of miners have passed through
a dozen periods of wild excitement and
rushes for new diggings, and there IS
/ hardly miner Of experience anywhere in
this region who has not Joined in several
I stampedes from a played out camp for
| the district where the latest pay rock has
| been found. The history of the terrific
I ries is full Of stories of unrealized expec-
| tations among miners. and Of sufferings
and privauons endured in attempts to
reach distant mines. from which reports
Of riches had gone out.
J From the finding Of the Big Ben gold
mine on San Antonio creek in September,
1874, until two years ago there have been
| frequent stampedes to new diggings. The
mining population has picked up and mi
grated almost in a week from Gold Run to
Benson, from Jones creek to Never Die,
from Tombstone 10 Sonora. from King
man to Harqua Hala, and now, after long
years Of bitter disappointments and two
decades of constant hardship, there is
not a miner who would hesitate to-day
to sell the proverbial shirt on his back to
! join once more in rush to any locality
whether in the desert or the mountains,
where pay ore might be discovered.
Probably the widest and craziest STAN
pede ever known in the southwest was
that TO the Rocky Belle camp in northern
Arizona, in the region of the Moqui Indian
reservation, in December, 1876. The region
is 5000 feet above the sea and lies among
snow-clad mountains 1t was an unusually
cold winter when the news went abroad
that Hank Binford and his companion had
struck a whole mountain of gold rock that
assayed over $500 to the ton. The report
seemed incredible at first, but when sam
pies Of the ore We're seen by miners in
| Tucson, Albuquerque. and Los Angeles
| they proved sufficient to satisfy the most
skeptical A week more and over 1000
/ miners from every part of Arizona and
Southern California were moving day and
/ night, scarcely stopping for food and sleep
toward the Rocky Belle camp. Hundreds
/ of men travelled 700 and 500
miles on foot and with mules and donkeys
to the new dggings, and nearly all trav-
! eled across desert and mountain for dis
lance Of $50 or 800 miles. AS the multitude
! Journeyed on the report of the richness of
] RiDfnr1fG II ,.,1
as II wagon loads of rich gold ore awaited
| the travellers. Merchants and professional
men in Maricopah and Tucson and that
/ part Of Southern Arizona became imbued
| with the spirit Of the miners, and turning
/ their business over to others, Joined in the
/ movement on Rocky Belle. The hardshps
| that the fortune seekers suffered in the
/ mountains will never be fully known. A
/ large number of men coming out of the
! warm, balmy air Of the semi tropic valleys
/ lost their lives amid the snow banks and
/ Ice in the mountains, and many a man
/ was made an invalid for life because Of
/ exposure to the biting cold during the
! stampede. A severe blizzard ragged in the
4 mountain for several days while the min
/ ers were slowly trudging through them
| IN one party OF over 100 men from New
| Mexico, four men were frozen to death
/ one morning, and 1t is thought that fully
twenty more died in the same way in the
I
are in California and Arizona gray-headed
miners who lack finger a toe, or an ear
| lost In the terrible cold Of that stampede
When at last the Rocky Belle diggings
| were reached it was soon seen that there
was no ore in the district worth the dig
ging except in the claims held by Hank
Binford and his friends and that the re-
| ports of their find had been exaggerated
beyond all reason. Binfords own mine
/ petered out year or two later, and he
got only few thousand dollars from it.
! The specimens of ore shown in Tuscan
| and Los Angeles were the very choicest
from the mine, and not hit or miss pick
| ups, as had been said of them.
During the summer Of 1873 miner nam
ed stevens wrote to friend in Phoenix
| that he had found a claim that beat any
! thing in mining this side of the Comstock
lode in Nevada, and that with a common
| IRON mortar and pestle he had pounded
| out from $40 to 500 worth of gold dust a
| Gay. The claim was located 120 miles
northwest from Kingman, near the since
famous Harqua Hala mining re-
glon' s. and there was a chance,
/ men to strike ii rich up there. OF course.
such news could not be kept quiet. 1t
travelled with miraculous speed through
| every camp in the Salt River valley and
over to Prescott. In less than two weeks
| all that part of Arizona was deeply stirred
~ TIC ASuOIlS, winch no one seemed to
have time to investigate, of the richness
| OF the mines that Stevens had found
! thousand or more miners caught the
| fever so badly that they started on foot
across the country for Stevens camp with
| out delay. 1t was a hot, dry summer,
/ and the journey entaned several weeks
of severe physical labor, torturing thirsts,
| and the endurance of a temperature that
usually stood over 10 degrees in the shade.
Having arrived at Stevens camp they
| realized that there were claims worth
| working by about 100 men. Several hun
dred claims were staked out in less than
/ a day after the excited miners got to the
! scene, but in a fortnight the camp popu-
/ Iatlon fell from 1,2OO to less than 400. In
! a month more about 100 persons were left
| to do all the mining. The camp was
| abandoned entirely ten years ago.
With the possible exception of the rush
| to the Leadville mining district in Color
| ado, there has been none anywhere in
| forty years attended with the excitement
that followed the news of the finding of
| great deposits of gold and silver in Tomb
| stone in 1879. Miners from every part of
| the Pacific coast caught the fever for
| gold, and as week after week SAMPLES of