Weekly journal-miner., 1916-10-18
ROMANCE CLINICS ID MINING IN
 SANTA CRUZ
FRIARS DISCOVERED RICH SILVER DEPOSITS, THE FIRST OF KIND WORK ED ON THE COAST.

Historically probably the most in
 teresting of all of the mining activi
 ties within the State of Arizona are
 those of Santa Cruz county, inasmuch
 as 1t was within this area that the | Jesuit fathers founded a chain of mis- sions in the Valley of the Santa Cruz
 river and farther south into Mexico.
 According to La Historia del Nay
 arit," an account of the "labors of
 !he Society of Jesus in Scmpitroniai
 America" which work was written by Fra Ortega, one of that order, Father Eusebia Kino, whose name has been iimmortalized by his great work. came
 from the City of Mexico in 16S6, and locating in l67S a mission at a point
 about 30 miles south of the present international boundary between the United States and Mexico, he named
 the mission and the river beside whose
 banks it stood, one the Mission Do
 lores and the other Rio Dolores.
 From that point as base of opera
 tions the devoted missionary estab-
 lishcd missions at Cocospcra, Reme-
 dios, Santa Barbara.
 In the Santa Cruz valley, below
 the Santa Barbara mission, Fra Kino | built four other missions, the first at
 San Felipe Guevavi, about nine miles northeast of Nogales; another at San
 Cayetano del Tumagacori, about l9
 miles northwest from the same town;
 third at Santiago, the site of which
 point is not known accurately now;
 and the fourth at San Xavier del Bac,
 nine miles south of Tucson. SaE
 Xavier has been restored by the Fed
 eral government. and it is one of the
 show places of Arizona.
 In the vicinity of each mission was
 presidio, or military post, with a
 garrison sufficiently strong for pro
 lection of the surrounding region from the marauding Apaches, who oc-
 cupied regions beyond the San Pedro
 and the Gila, whence they were wont
 to make excursions of rapine and ravage into the country of the Pimas and the Papagoes, peaceable Indians occupying these regions, who readily embraced Christianity, coming easily under the domination of the gentle priests. Those Indians were tillers of the soil and laborers. From among them were drawn the workers in the mines and on the ranches that the friars and laymen among the Span -iards discovered and exploited Tu- bac, on the Santa Cruz, 2 miles from Nogales. was the presidio near Yum acacori, and recently there have been uncarthed there a lot of old, rusty, l2-pound cannon balls that were no doubt for use in some of the artillery of the garrison. Tucson, which had been the site of an Indian village, was the presidio for protection of the country surrounding.
 According to the history of that time, and the records of the mission . now preserved in Spain, the friars at | Tumacacori discovered and wrought l rich silver mines in the Santa Rita 1 mountains to the northeast, and in the Atacosa mountains on the south west. The Salero mines and other properties in the Santa Ritas arc known to have been operated by the friars, and in places vcstiges of their are found today. In recent years party from California, having a plat or map with a written descrip- ton of the location, said to have come from the archives of the old has been searching in the Atascosa mountains for an abandoned mine that the record which they have tells of having been exploited by the iriars. Those operations are estab- ished to have been inaugurated very shortly after completion of the mis- sion church and cloister at Tumac- lcori in l6SS. So there is presented , he record of the first mining done on he Pacific slope of the United States. |.
 The whole story of mining in Sam I a Cruz county Is told in Bulletin % i; )f the Arizona State Bureau of Mines, , entitled The Resources of Santa |, Cruz County" by Allen T. Bird. ', Copies may be obtained by writing 1 Charles F. Willis, Director. Arizona 6 State Bureau of Mines, Tucson, Ari- ona. |,
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