Mohave County miner and our mineral wealth., 1922-05-26

Oatman, Ariz., May 2S.-"Gold" Watching the tourists, the flivver prospectors, the scouts of big Eastern financial interests, the veterans of other gold rushes, the taciturn mining egineers, the lad in search of for tunes, yes, and the women soldiers of fortune come dropping into the Oat- man district by every stage, one mar vels at the tremendous appeal which gold and rumors of gold have had and still have for the human race.
 The search for gold in Arizona has continued almost uninterruptedly since 1530, nearly 400 years ago, when several hundred Spaniards and 14,- 900 Indians left Mexico City to find the golden treasures of the Seven Cities of Cibola, in the present state of Arizona. From 1530 to 1539 Cor tez sent four expeditions up from Mexico to Arizona, one of which he headed himself. All failed.
 Followed, the explorations of Friar Marco de Niza who evidently had a vivid imagination for of the inhabi- tants of the adobe villages of Cibola he says: 'They use vessels of gold and silver, for they have no other metal, whereof there is greater use and more abundance than in Peru, and they buy the same for turquoise in the province of Pintados, where there are said to be mines of great abund- ance."
 inc good friar was right about the turouoise. Near the goldfields of Oatman, Cat Mineral Park, Tiffany of New York owns some of the big gest turquoise mines in America. But the gold of Arizona lay farther north than any of the Spanish expeditions dreamed.
 Friends of the friar declare that he was misquoted, that he submitted his story to his sovereign qualifying 1t by stating that he had merely heard of the gold and precious stones and the house doors whose lintels were studded with turquoise.
 But it was sufficient to induce Cor ,onado in golden armor, with three hundred horsemen in armor and coats of mail, hundreds of footmen and ar ouebuses and swords and shields, to- gether with horde of Indian burden bearers to start their search north ward.
 In 1541 the Oatman gold fields na-- .rowly missed being discovered by Don Pedro de Tovar's expedition which came to the Grand Canyon and follow ed the Moqui trail then used by the -Mohaves now living in the Oatman district, the Navajos, Hopis and other Northern Arizona Indians.
 In August, 1540, Hernando de Alar- con, started up the Colorado River in two boats dragged by Cocopahs, Yumas and Mohaves, who conveyed the Spaniards past the present city of Needles, Cal, to the beginning of the Grand Canyon. At one time this party was only 20 miles from the Oat- man gold fields in their search for the riches of Cibola.
 At last in 1748, the Spaniards did find gold-on the eastern side of the San Pedro valley where rich returns rewarded them for their search of two hundred years. Later, on the Sopori ranch, south of the Canoa, an other immensely rich mine was found and for fifty years its riches went back to Madrid.
 The first discoveries of lode mines were made by Americans in the pres ent Oatman district as early as 1857 near the Colorado river. Attention was distracted from the Oatman dis trict in September, 1858, when placer gold discoveries "A miles above Fort Yuma on the Colorado resulted in a rush to that district. In 1862 rich placers were found at La Paz, seven miles east of the Colorado near La guna and Yuma. La Paz to-day is a dead ,crumbling town with not a single inhabitant. Fortunes were talk en in nuggets from the La Paz and Gila City districts.
 In 1863 placer gold was found in the gulches below and around Pres colt. The richest finds were made not far from the present town of Stanton. Nuggets valued as high as $90O were taken out of the gravel with butcher knives.
 The worst enemies of the prospec- tors who came to the Oatman dis
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