Arizona republican., 1907-05-20
WALLER SCOTT THE
 DEATH VALLEY SPORT
The True Story Where He Got His First Big Money-His Subsequent Operations Are Still Shrouded in Mystery.

Nobody ever secured quite so much
 n@toriety concerning his present &C., ] tvities. without more real facts being
 known about him. as Walter Scott, | better known as Scotty the Death | Valley miner, has done in the last two
 or three years The newspapers paint
 him as everything from a stage robber
 To a hero. and all kinds of stories are | told about him. The main fact in most
 of them Is that he always has a pocket full of money and spends 1t like a | prince when he Is out among people.
 and when it is gone or Is running low.
 he goes back into Death Valley and gets another "roll' as big as he can carry around. Stories that do not em- bellish this main idea. assume the op- | posite and paint him as cheap sport. one who makes big flash but seldom ! makes good Part of the stories make him fine sport and the rest of them
 make him a four flusher.
 Between the two the public is di- vided in its opinion. so far IS i; is interested in having an opinion and
 both impressons are undoubtedly very
 much overdrawn. IL s certain that he
 has done some very spectacular things
 and spent as much as his admirers
 claim. The amazing part of it Is that
 he is always when showing provided
 with big rolls of greenbacks and mo- body tells of any occasion when he ex-
 changed wagon load of gold dust for
 greenbacks. though if his money comes
 from gold mine he must do SO for it
 Is hard to believe he has a ledge of Y.
 :. bank notes in his mine Sometime
 ago. currency was given a story ema-
 mating from a Nevada town. to the ef-
 feet that he is q highwayman and that
 whenever he gets short he goes out
 and holds up somebody. This story
 does not look very good on the face of
 it. for the business is most too pre-
 carious as a dependable source of rev
 enue. however accomplished he might
 be in the arts Of the highwayman.
 c. NJ. Miller of Greenwater. the thriving young city in Death Valley.
 who was here a few days ago. was asked about Scotty and the wonderful stories told of him. He said the man was rather a mysterious character. even tO the Death Valley people. though he is not half as strange as some of the stories paint him. He said he had had a personal acquaintance with Scotty for several years and that he IS genial sort of a chap. People generally respect him as he attends to his own business and his l!berality makes him very agreeable when he is in town. which. however. Is not often. even in Death Valley parts. As for his source of revenue. MT. Miller said he knew the facts concerning Scotty's of does not account for his later resources and just where he gets his money now is yet to be disclosed. It is something though to know where he got part of it and MT. Miller says he knows that positively. His original find was a | sort of placer or nugget deposit l which was very rich. He ran into !! place in the bed of an old stream ! where a sort of an eddy had formed i sometime in the past. which had gath | cred the nuggets together. From this | deposit he secured a lot of gold but | how much MT. Miller does not know. I and only knows that that find is sup | posed to have been worked out long | ago.
 Scott however has great many | quartz claims in one part or another | of the Death Valley region and some | of them are supposed to be very rich l in gold while others in the copper dis I tricts are very promising. It is sup ! posed that he has raised some money | from selling or bonding some of these | claims, but how many or where MT. | Miller could not say. He says Scott | seems tO be marvelOuslv lucky man. for whenever he wants to he goes off ! in the hills and only stays a short time when he returns to the settle ments with ore that cannot help but excite mining men when they look at 1t. While he does not pretend to know. Mir. Miller advances the pos sible theory that Scott may have some chart or document secured of old pioneers directing him to prehistoric workings in one place or another
 When ScOtty is in the valley he works as hard as any other prOspec- tor. says MT. Miller punching his pack outfit along and tending strictly to his own business. MT. Miller met him on the trail only a few weeks ago when he was last in Death Valley. He was very sociable and pleasant. though of course did not take the pub lie into his confidence concerning his business. Mir. Miller says though that he is always welcomed in town. for his rule in Death Valley is the same as when he is starring the country and that is when he does buy a drink he wants everybody else to drink with him. The last time he visited Green water he took in all the saloons seri- atim and there are eight of them. In each he asked the house to have drink There were only a few men in the first one or two but by the time he had reached the last one ev- erybody in town had heard of Scotty's arrival and in the last saloon he "set em up to some 250 or 300 men.