The Mohr Brothers and Camp Angelus

Angelus Oaks has a far more fascinating history than previously thought if we take into account the lives and experiences of the people who gave it a place on a map.

As I have written at other times, the area was significant for the Indigenous people as a place to camp on their way higher into the mountains. It was called Tekamun by the Yuhaaviatam people for centuries before Europeans and Americans arrived. Ethnographer J.P. Harrington went into our mountains with Santos Manuel in 1918 and he wrote the following. “At Tekamun I interviewed the middle-aged man who is in charge of the place there. He said that his name was Sam Perry and that the name of the flat there is Glen Martin. Charlie Martin of San Bernardino is the owner. Charlie Martin owns a whole section here. There are several cabins and they had quite a large field of corn. The cabins are for rent and the place has evidently at times been quite a resort. Until recently the name was not Glen Martin but was Forest Home.”

Santos Manuel, age 90.

Courtesy San Diego History Center.

Harrington goes on to tell the story about travelers who mistook the Forest Home owned by Richard Jackson and Thomas Akers further down in Mill Creek Canyon for the one up there and had a good deal of trouble sorting it out. After that happened, a short time before Harrington arrived there, the name was changed to Glen Martin. Charlie Martin homesteaded 160 acres in township 1 north, range 1 west, San Bernardino Meridian in the northeast quarter of section 28, and James Cadd the southeast quarter, both in April of 1898. Over time, Martin acquired the entire section. When he died in 1927, the land passed to his son-in-law, Clifford Shay, but before that, they had already started selling off parcels and sold 320 acres to Arthur M. Gilman of Los Angeles. In 1924, Gilman intended to build a swanky $75,000 Normandy-style hotel with cottages. In the end, however, he never built the hotel and sub-divided lots for cottage homes.

Above: Ethnographer John Peabody Harrington, circa 1920.

Courtesy, California State University, Chico, Meriam Library Special Collections, Northeastern California Historical Photograph Collection.

Northeast of Glen Martin, the Mohr brothers, Edward and Adam, known as Bard, founded Camp Angelus. Over the years, many assumptions have been made about the naming of this place. For a time, some people believed that the name was taken from famous evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson’s Angelus Temple. Others thought that the Roman Catholic angelus, or prayer of devotion, inspired the Mohr brothers spiritually and that was why it was given that name. The truth may actually be much more interesting.

Ed and Bard Mohr were born in Berks County, Pennsylvania near Reading. Their father, Henry C. Mohr was a prominent physician and their mother, Lydia, had nursing skills frequently put to use in the care of patients. Henry Mohr died in 1892. As a result, Ed and Bard inherited a fair sum of money, both from their father and their paternal grandmother. In 1902, It was announced in the Pottsville, Pennsylvania newspaper that 22-year-old Bard

Mohr was on a mission. Under the headline, “Pretzels for Far West,” they reported that, “For months past preparations have been made by Mr. Mohr for the crusade at the Golden Gate for the twisted dough product. He had been out in California for a year or more for the benefit of his health and then became possessed with the idea that Californians had but to taste the Berks [County] staple bakers’ product and they would capitulate to its seductive charms for the palate at once.” Bard left on November 24, 1902, with his mother Lydia in tow to become the pretzel man of California. Edward, who was then a tailor and newly married stayed. For reasons that aren’t apparent, Bard and his mother decided on Los Angeles after a brief period in San Francisco. He bought land and built a building for his pretzel factory at 504 Molino Street in downtown Los Angeles, opening his business in 1903. Ads for his “Steam Pretzels” in local directories demonstrate that he gave it a good go, at least until 1906. However, other events would swiftly overwhelm Bard, and his mother Lydia, who lived at a rooming house on Hill Street. At 5:12 in the morning on April 18, 1906, a 7.9 magnitude earthquake shattered San Francisco and was felt in Los Angeles. By the 25th, trainloads of refugees from the northern city were arriving in L.A. and the city was mobilized to help. Just blocks from where Bard and Lydia lived, the Agricultural Park [now Exposition Park] was turned into a refugee camp. The camp for the women was called – Camp Angelus. Lydia Mohr volunteered, nursing refugees injured in the quake and cooked while Bard supplied baked goods to the camp. Camp Angelus, during its time in service sheltered, fed and cared for more than 20,000 refugees. It also became the focus of some outrage when predatory madams tried to lure young women who had lost their families in the quake into the flesh trade. In any case, despite the scandals, the name Camp Angelus loomed large in the consciousness of Southern Californians and became synonymous with hospitality and refuge.

The site of Camp Angelus refugee center was the California State Agricultural Park in Los Angeles. It is now Exposition Park.

In 1910, a man named W.B. Dewey opened a resort camp on Forest Service lease land at the very summit of Mount Baldy and as an homage to the refugee camp named it Camp Angelus, though its name changed after 1913 when it burned down. During that same period, Bard Mohr tried mining in the mountains and became an assayer. Ed Mohr and his wife Rosa had joined Bard and mother in California shortly after the quake. . In 1917, the brothers acquired the lease for the Yorkshire Hotel at 710 South Broadway in downtown Los Angeles, which remarkably is still there. Then, in 1919, like Dewey, the Mohrs acquired a lease on Forest Service land and founded Camp Angelus In the San Bernardino Mountains, opening the Angelus Lodge in 1921. By 1930, the entire Mohr family lived in Camp Angelus and were very involved in their new community. For the rest of their lives, the Mohr brothers remained in the hospitality business in Los Angeles, Bard eventually running the Melrose Hotel on Grand Avenue and Ed running the Yorkshire Hotel. Ed Mohr died in 1945 and Bard in 1951.

In 1962, the U.S. Postal Service decided to amalgamate the post offices in Seven Oaks and Camp Angelus. The new post office was named Angelus Oaks and became the official name of the small town perched on the mountainside along California State Highway 38.

Octavius Gass and his Mill Creek Mine

As a historian, some of my favorite fascinations are disappearing places like drowned towns beneath reservoirs, lost mines, and the almost or never was of sites on maps that dissolve with time. Also, giggle-worthy names. Therefore; the saga of Octavius Gass is one that I particularly like.

History remembers Octavius Decatur Gass as a man who was always just a little too short of something. As one wit put it, he was, “Almost at the right place at the right time, but never exactly. Opportunity knocked at his door regularly, but he was always in the bathtub.” He may not have made his fortune, but he did make history in his travels. Gass had already had a long and very adventurous life by the time he came to live in Mill Creek Canyon in the late 1890s. Born near Mansfield, Ohio, Octavius attended Ohio Wesleyan College in 1847. He left in 1849 without obtaining a degree to sail from Baltimore around Cape Horn to San Francisco. The gold rush of ’49 saw a severe housing shortage and an enterprising gentleman on board the ship was taking a cargo of portable 2-room houses to the goldfields. Gass hired on to unload the shelters for $10 a day and made his grubstake. He went to El Dorado County in the Sierra foothills to try his hand at gold mining but quickly became frustrated. By 1853, he’d drifted to Los Angeles where he spent a year as a zanjero tasked with the city’s water distribution. His first intersection with Mill Creek history came in 1858 when he partnered in the Temescal tin mines with Daniel Sexton, the Louisiana pioneer who had operated the canyon’s first sawmill. The tin mines, the only ones then known in the entire U.S., didn’t go well for either Sexton or Gass as they were snarled interminably in disputed ownership claims. Gass lost too much capital in the Temescal deal to take advantage of the Holcomb Valley gold strike in 1860. Instead, he went to prospect on the Colorado River, staking several claims in 1863.

Octavius Gass at his Las Vegas Rancho home.

The following year, the U.S. Government created the Arizona territory out of New Mexico. With partners, Gass acquired 160 acres and an abandoned Mormon fort in a large meadowland in the northwest corner of the new territory. He also invested heavily in Callville, a Colorado River port town, believing that steamship traffic on the river between Utah and California was going to be the next big thing. As postmaster of Callville and an important landowner, he was elected to the new territorial legislature. There, he lobbied for the creation of Pah Ute County, Arizona with Callville as the county seat, and won. But two years later, Nevada legislators won the annexation of Pah Ute County to Lincoln County in their state. Not only had Gass lost his bid for power, but he was also suddenly living in the state of Nevada and could no longer serve in the Arizona legislature. Moreover, the transcontinental railroad with its fast, convenient routes put paid to his dreams for steamship routes to Callville, a town that would eventually sink beneath the waters of Lake Mead.

Still, he prospered, supplying miners and travelers with equipment, food, and a place to rest on their way to California. He also began courting Mary Simpson, a niece of then-President Ulysses S. Grant, and won her hand in marriage in 1871. His business was successful enough to buy out his partners and acquire the entire 640-acre section of land that he'd developed, which would one day contain the present city of Las Vegas, Nevada. But he lost it to debt in 1879. He and Mary with their six children and 1,500 head of cattle went to California in 1881. Both parents wanted education for their children and Octavius felt that his financial success would finally come in the Golden State. Although he tried planting vineyards in Pomona, Yucaipa, and Whitewater, agriculture wasn’t kind to him. Meanwhile, he never gave up on his dreams of riches. In 1884, he patented a mineral claim where Crafton Hills College is in Yucaipa and worked a quartz vein hoping to find gold.

From the days of the Mormon settlement, people had been prospecting in Mill Creek Canyon hoping to find gold or silver, but it was a disappointing exercise. Then in October 1897, a report in the Redlands Facts said that three men had struck gold not far from Akers’ Forest Home. It was the height of the Klondyke gold rush and people were fizzing for riches. The Redlands Citrograph reported, “A landslide on the mountain on the south side of Mill Creek and about one mile south of George Jackson’s place uncovered the lode, which was first found by E. L. Allen, in August. About the middle of September, Mr. Allen, E. P. Whitney, and Mr. Porter went to the ledge. It is about fifty feet wide, but much of it is covered by dirt coming from above in the same slide which uncovered it at the point of discovery.” After pulling out ten pounds of quartz and having it crushed, the three men netted $2.65 in gold and 4.15 ounces of silver.

Octavius Gass also turned his gaze toward Mill Creek Canyon, obtaining a permit from the U.S. government for the Mountain Home Prospect gold mine. Gass, who was 71 in 1900, lived near Kate and Lue Harvey in Mountain Home Canyon and worked a quartz vein just above present-day Mountain Home Village. Notably, his wife Mary and their remaining minor children lived in Perris, California quite apart. Documentation shows that only a minuscule amount of gold was taken from the mine. Within two years he had given up. By 1907, he had set up on a ranch in Reche Canyon where he discovered a promising vein of coal. But a wildfire burned the ranch to cinders. Eventually, he moved to Barton Road in Bryn Mawr with his son Fenton and lived to the ripe old age of 96, growing oranges. He passed away on December 9, 1924.

Octavius Gass told many people during his lifetime that he aspired to be a wealthy man living in a mansion and perhaps dabbling in politics. He didn’t achieve the first part of that dream, but he was an Arizona territorial legislator whose county disappeared into another state, the postmaster of a drowned town in Nevada, the possessor of a fortune that dissolved under debt, the founder and loser of Las Vegas, an owner of gold mines that never were, who retired to Bryn Mawr; a town that has vanished beneath the wheels of progress. I like that story.

STRANGE TREASURE

Shannon Wray

Author

Pioneers of Mill Creek Canyon

The History Press

Uriah U. Tyler Rachel Moore Tyler

The best of the treasure stories I have collected has to do with the Tylers, a 19th century San Bernardino pioneer family that purchased one of the two first homesteads in Mill Creek Canyon. Uriah Tyler was a very early pioneer in San Bernardino who came to the valley in 1847 from New York State. He purchased a portion of the old Lugo Rancho in San Bernardino in the 1850s. He was a member of Henry Washington’s survey team on the peak of Mount San Bernardino, which established the San Bernardino Meridian. Uriah drove the mail between San Bernardino and Los Angeles and operated the only butcher shop in the valley. He became Justice of the Peace and the County Assessor after the departure of the Mormon Colony. In 1892, Uriah’s widow, Rachel Moore Tyler, and her son George W. Tyler purchased their ranch and orchards in Mill Creek Canyon from the Peter A. Forsee estate. Thereafter, the prime spot in the lower canyon that is now Mountain Home Village was known as the Tyler Ranch.

Rachel Tyler operated the large, beautiful property along the creek as a resort for eleven years. Her son, George, was one of the principals in the Mill Creek Sandstone Company at the time. This week’s strange true tale belongs to him.

In June of 1913, George Tyler cut down a hillside on the family ranch in San Bernardino and moved earth to fill in lower ground when he made some bizarre discoveries. The first thing he unearthed was a giant skeleton. Then, upon further digging, he found a vault made of slate stone. Inside the vault were Native American artifacts and clay jars filled with an immense quantity of gold. According to the account in the San Bernardino newspapers, “The location of the strange find is at the corner of Second and Arrowhead, along the bank of Warm Creek and at a low depression, which, at one time, was on a

George W. Tyler

sloping hillside.” The measurement of the skeleton estimated that the man would have been more than eight feet tall. The bones of his body were intact and facing south, but his head was missing. Several of the old pioneers from the pioneer society came to view the find and conjecture on it, as did the oldest Mexican citizens in the community. Their ideas about what it all might have meant are fascinating.

Several of the pioneers said that they believed it was an Indian burial ground, and three of them, “Brothers” Thomas, Miller, and Brown, (no identifying first names), “stated that they were present and attended Indian funerals along this bluff.” The presence of the vault mystified some. “Brother Thomas thought it was a contrivance of Mr. U.U. Tyler, pioneer butcher, for making lard and melting tallow. Brother Cox thought it was an old sweat house used by the Indians, which they would spring from into the brook close by for curative purposes.” The rest of the pioneers who came to gawk and squawk believed it to be a vault built by the Lugos or other rich Mexican period dons to keep valuables in as there were no banks to secure them at the time.

The oldest of the Mexican residents in the city at the time concurred with the idea that it must have been beneath one of the Lugo homes located there. They also reported the discovery several years before of a giant head a short distance away from the site where the skeleton was found. They assigned the headless state of the skeleton to warring tribes taking trophies from enemies. Ghost stories and old legends revived and spread rampantly through the city.

The Lugo homes on the rancho were owned by Jose del Carmen Lugo, Jose Maria Lugo, Vicente Lugo, and Diego Sepulveda. The Lugos were the sons of Antonio Maria Lugo, one of the wealthiest of the land grant owners. It was said that he could ride from San Diego to Sonoma and never leave his own land. His sons sold the 35,000-acre rancho to Charles Rich and Amasa Lyman for the San Bernardino Mormon colony. $16,000 of the price was paid in $50.00 gold pieces.

Diego Sepulveda

In response to the assertion that the vault belonged to the Lugos, “Mr. Tyler says that one of these old ranch houses of the Lugos stood exactly over that spot as nearly as he can remember, as he plainly recalls the remains of such a house when he was a boy. The Tylers have owned the property where the find was made for 58 years, Mr. Tyler looking up the record yesterday. His [step]father purchased it from Lyman & Rich, they having purchased it direct from the Lugos, the latter getting it as a grant.”

From an anthropological and archaeological point of view, the find was a bit of a bust. After measuring the skeleton, Tyler put the bones in a box. As hundreds of people showed up to see the astonishing discovery, they took souvenirs from the box until nothing was left of the giant skeleton. Little was reported about the “Indian artifacts” found at the site. The reports did include some interesting geological information. “The vault where the pots were found is an object of much curiosity. It is built of stone slabs, the stone itself indicating that it came from Little Mountain north of the city, there being no other stone around here like it.

Ultimately, George Tyler spirited away the jars of gold so quickly that no one could guess at the gold value. Eyewitnesses said it was substantial. Though he lived a long life, passing away 30 years later in 1943, George never disclosed the treasure trove's extent. Today, the location of Tyler’s astonishing find is in the vicinity of the Superior Court of California of San Bernardino and Meadowbrook Park.

Copyright 2020, Shannon E. Wray. All Rights Reserved. No reprints in whole or part without permission.

www.shannonwray.com

A WELL TOLD TALE

Shannon Wray

Author

Pioneers of Mill Creek Canyon

Kate Powell Harvey and her brother Robert Powell

One of the most legendary people in Mill Creek Canyon, or the San Bernardino mountains for that matter, was Kate Harvey. Known to the locals as Cactus Kate, she was larger than life. Kate could swear a blue streak when she was riled, wore holstered six-guns on her ample hips, and made many headlines. She was also known as the genial lady offering hospitality at Skinner’s Mountain Home Resort, which became Harvey’s Resort under her management. But this time, Kate doesn’t get to take the spotlight. Instead, this is a story about her younger brother, Robert Powell.

Robert Powell and Kate Harvey

In many historical stories, a person hides in the shadows of someone’s notoriety but makes startling appearances. Although he was a man who blended into the scenery, Bob Powell took center stage in his sister’s story twice – in 1910 when he shot and killed Kate’s brother-in-law, John Harvey, and again in 1919 when he shot Kate’s second husband William Howard and wounded her. Powell became a familiar figure in the headlines because of these two cases, but he remains a bit of a mystery. His sister, Kate, was so devoted to him that she stood by him against both of her husbands and Bob lived on the ranch with her for much of his adult life. The stories they told about Kate’s life with her husbands were so shocking and riveting that they won an acquittal for Powell twice. They also won public sympathy by essentially telling the same tragic tale about two different crime scenes, involving two different people eight years apart. Now, that’s a good story.

The question is, were Kate Harvey and Bob Powell reliable narrators? Through the long lens of time, patterns in information, and stories sometimes shed new light. Kate Harvey often told her friends and neighbors that Powell Street in San Francisco was named after her father. She described him as an important physician. It was a great story and perhaps one that afforded Kate and her brother a sheen of importance, but a fiction nonetheless. Their father, John Goodson Powell, was an interesting character, to be sure. Born in Tennessee, he became a dentist and abandoned a family to go to the goldfields in California where he did some mining, harness-making, and itinerant dentistry. Moreover, Powell Street was definitely not named after him. It was named for Dr. William J. Powell, a ship’s surgeon on the U.S.S. Warren, who played a key role in the Mexican-American War. Now, Kate was only three years old and Bob only a year old when their father died on July 23, 1881. To be fair, it’s possible that this was a story that they were told about their father, not one that they invented. Bob Powell, however, went a little further with his own fictions. In September of 1918, Powell’s World War I draft card (pictured below) gave his name as “Robert Wheeler Webber Powell.” Later, in April 1942 on his World War II draft card (also pictured below), he gave his name as “Robert William Windsor Powell.” Maybe he forgot what his name was? Doubtful. It was shortly after the abdication of King Edward VIII of England when the former monarch became the Duke of Windsor. Maybe Powell had delusions of grandeur. We’ll never know. Does this make Kate Harvey and Robert Powell unreliable narrators? Maybe. Even so, it demonstrates the power of a well-told tale and how legends are born.

Copyright 2020, Shannon E. Wray. All Rights Reserved. No reprints in whole or part without permission.

www.shannonwray.com

BURRO TRAINS TO BIG BEAR

Shannon Wray

Author

Pioneers of Mill Creek Canyon

The 1880s were the period when real mountain tourism became the rage. Travelers journaled some exciting – and often amusing – descriptions of what it was like to be a tourist on a trip from Los Angeles to Bear Valley. Victorian gents and ladies boarded the California Central line train in Los Angeles early in the morning on a Monday or Thursday. They made the pleasant trip to the Santa Fe station in Redlands for a fare of $2.55 for the round trip ticket. Redlands, California founded in 1881, was still young but featured several livery stables. In 1889, a gentleman wrote that a liveryman named Reeves met passengers with a comfortable coach at the Redlands train station and took them to one of three destinations in Mill Creek Canyon. “Roberts' place, where the parties sometimes stop and take burros, is just at the opening of Mill Creek cañon. If one prefers to stick to the coach three miles further into the cañon, he will find the ride enjoyable, although the road is rather rough, frequently crossing a deep, roaring stream. At Thurman's place, the travelers eat dinner and take to the burros, or mules, or horses, whichever of the three are provided. Three men make a regular business of taking parties over the mountains - Roberts, Thurman, and Jackson.” The cost of the stage to Thurman's was $1.50. William Roberts was the son of Berry Roberts, who came to the area in 1857 and established a large cattle ranch in San Timoteo Canyon.

Sylvanus Thurman came to Mill Creek Canyon in 1877 to help farm his father-in-law Peter Forsee’s land. Later, he homesteaded on his own acreage just down the canyon from his in-laws. George Jackson came to the canyon with his mother, stepfather, and brothers in 1875. His stepfather, William Petty, was the first squatting homesteader with Forsee, claiming all of the lands from present-day Mountain Home Village to the east end of Mill Creek Canyon. George Jackson had his own homestead in the canyon as an adult.

Mr. and Mrs. Sylvanus Thurman George Jackson

All three of these ad hoc tour guides had strings of pack burros. The fare to travel by burro train to Bear Valley from Thurman's was $3.00. “As to the outfit, it must be such as anyone who has ever made a mountain trip will readily devise. It should, of course, be as limited as possible, and bags and bundles are more readily packed on burro-back than valises. Climbing about among rocks and brambles means boots or leggins for footwear and strong, rough clothing. One effect of the high altitudes during the first day or two is chapped lips or nostrils, and a box of cold cream is indispensable.”

A female journalist with a group of ladies making the journey kept a different pace. They took the train to Redlands’s Santa Fe station from Los Angeles, then the Redlands Loop train to Mentone’s train station. From there, they took a private stage to the Crafton Retreat, where they enjoyed lunch and dinner and stayed the night. Leaving early the next morning, they rode in a carriage to Thurman's, where they found several small buildings and a refreshing mountain spring. "Standing by this spring, under the shade of the alder trees, one of the party, a young and happy maiden, was seen to be in tears, when in answer to our inquiries she replied that she wept because her capacity for drink was no greater." The mountain spring water was an elixir of such purity that it made them marvel. The next morning, the ladies were all a-froth over the "fiery and romantic" burros. Their attire, described in detail in Pioneers of Mill Creek Canyon, was elaborate, including layers of denim, large hats, and swaths of veiling. Their enormous canvas bags carried a comical array of wardrobe. The next morning when they set off, the ladies’ romance with the burros was sorely tested, and they were sure that they were risking injury on these sturdy, (frequently flatulent), little steeds. At the summit of Mountain Home Canyon, four and a half miles from Thurman's, they dismounted and had a picnic beneath the giant old-growth pines, then rested from their “weary” journey.

Scenes along the way included Peter Forsee’s ranch and apple orchard, where "the finest apples in Southern California" grew, and two other small farms. These were the Jackson ranch and Skinners in Mountain Home Canyon.

From the heights of Mountain Home Canyon to the terrifying descent, travelers described half a dozen ranches and camps along the Santa Ana River. Regardless of who told the tale, everyone's next stop was Matthew Lewis's hostelry in Seven Oaks. Tired and awe-struck tourists often opted to stay for several days, or even weeks, at Seven Oaks, where there were eight or nine cabins and six large, comfortable tents to rent. More hearty travelers pushed their horses, mules, or donkeys to make the trip all the way to Bear Valley in one day, which was regarded as a very rough adventure. In Bear Valley, a young Gus Knight and his partner, Metcalf, provided “crude but comfortable” accommodations and “plain but appetizing” fare only a mile from the lake. Both Lewis in Seven Oaks and Knight in Bear Valley charged $10.00 per week per person to stay at their rough and tumble “hotels.”

Horses for touring around the valley could be rented at a rate of fifty cents or a dollar per day. Ultimately, Thurman cornered the tourism market when he anchored both ends of the journey by hosting guests on his Mill Creek Canyon ranch and at his 120 acres at Bluff Lake, which he received a state land patent for in 1899.

Whomever they traveled with, or wherever they stayed, guests considered the arduous trip to Bear Valley and the rustic comforts along the way worth it for the “pure mountain air, the cool, invigorating climate and the smell of the pine woods.”

Copyright 2020, Shannon E. Wray. All Rights Reserved. No reprints in whole or part without permission.

www.shannonwray.com

SECRETS OF THE DESERT QUEEN MINE

Shannon Wray

Author

Pioneers of Mill Creek Canyon

James McHaney and four of his siblings arrived in Mill Creek Canyon from Missouri in February 1878. Their mother, Martha McHaney, had just married Peter Forsee, one of the canyon’s first homesteaders. Jim was eighteen at the time. Although he did try some legitimate work as a mountain guide and a laborer on the Bear Valley Dam, Jim and his older brother, Bill, 21, became better known as the leaders of the McHaney Gang, a rough and tumble group of murdering, thieving, cattle rustling, claim jumping outlaws who had their headquarters for a time out at the Heart Bar Ranch. A complete story about the McHaney Gang is in Pioneers of Mill Creek Canyon (www.shannonwray.com). However, one of the lesser-known aspects of Jim McHaney’s life is that strange things seemed to follow him around, and he was at the center of some very bizarre stories.

In January of 1895, an old prospector walked into Tingman’s grocery store in Indio. He asked Mr. Tingman, “What’ll ye give me fur that ere outfit?” The prospector was stooped by the obvious weight of haversacks filled with something heavy, his pockets all bulging, too. Mr. Tingman scratched his chin, considering. The old miner had two burros. Tingman’s corral was full up with burros. His storeroom was packed full of prospectors’ outfits that needed only grub to complete them. He was hesitant to buy this man’s gear.

Albert G. Tingman

“What do you want to sell for?” Tingman asked. “You going to quit prospecting?” e He

“Yes, sir,” the old prospector answered. I’m done prospecting now or hereafter. Want to buy that outfit? I’ll sell the whole business for $20.”

Tingman was a little shocked. From what he could see of it, the old man’s goods were easily worth $100, if not more. But the miner was very persistent, and they made the deal; then the prospector ordered something to eat and sat talking while he waited for the train to Arizona to arrive.

“I told you I had quit prospectin’ and mining, and I have. I’ll show you why and then tell you about it.” The old man dumped out his haversacks onto the counter, and there lay twenty bars of pure gold, obviously shaped into that form many years before. Tingman estimated that each bar had to be worth at least $1,000. When he looked more closely at them, he noticed that the bars had some sort of strange hieroglyphic stamped into them. Now, Tingman was a Spanish scholar and also well acquainted with the dialects of the Southern California Native tribes. But he could make nothing out that made any sense to him in the markings. The old man continued his story. “I got these bars less than sixty miles from where we stand in a canyon where there are ledges containing millions of dollars’ worth of gold, millions of dollars’ worth, I tell you, and it’s sticking up out of the ground. My burros took me to the place hunting for water. They went down on an old trail to a spring where water was plenty, and I camped there. It is a shut-in canyon, and I think I am the first white man who has set foot in the place for years, God knows how many. The Indians are afraid of the place and never go there. After I had grubbed, I started to look around, and I found the place full of caves, evidently made by hand, and I began exploring them. My first find was ghastly enough to suit anybody.” The old man shuddered. “I stumbled into a pile of bones, men dead long ago. Around there were arms, baskets, and other things apparently all right, but when you touched them, they crumbled into dust. I didn’t care to stay in the caves, but as I was going out, I saw the shine of something, and I went to it. It was one of these gold bricks. Before night I had gathered from the cave the gold bricks I’ve got in my haversack, and as it was growing dark, I thought I would wait until morning before making another search of the caves. It was plain to me that an old race of people had been mining in the canyon, and in the failing light, I began to look around for the ledges and old drifts. I found them and mister, as I hope someday to get to a better country than this by the memory of my good old mother, I swear to you the rocks were seamed with gold, seamed with gold! I went back and camped, intending to the next morning to stake out my claims, put up my monuments and sneak out of the canyon and go and record them providing I could make evidences of work, but I changed my mind before morning. If you was to fill that box with gold bricks like these,” the old man said, point to a packing crate, “I wouldn’t stay another night in that canyon. Why, sir, to think of the sights I saw there makes me shiver now. I’ve been prospecting many years. I’ve fought white men and red men and floods and forest fires. I’ve been rich and poor, but never, never since I’ve been born have I had a night like that!” The old man began to quake, and his voice shake as he told the next part of his story. “The dead men were all around me. I wasn’t asleep, and I hadn’t tasted a drop of liquor for weeks. I was wide awake, and the dead men came out of the caves wailing and a shrieking and drove me out of the canyon. That they did. I wouldn’t go back there for $20,000,000. The burros I got out in daylight. Where is the canyon? Well, pardner, you find it if you can. Mebbe I might change my mind about it and come back someday,” and with that, the old man walked over to the depot and ten minutes later took the train to Arizona.

Now, like most men in the 1890s hereabouts, Tingman wasn’t just a grocer. He and a partner named Holland had a claim called the Lost Horse mine in the Morongo Mountains, where they operated a three-stamp mill. Tingman went up to his mine the next day and told Holland the story the old prospector told him. But Holland wasn’t the only one there. Jim and Bill McHaney and their nephew Willie Ball were there, too, and listening intently. Scores of men went hunting for the mysterious canyon filled with dead men and gold bars but to no avail. However, that wasn’t the end of the story. “One day, Jim McHaney was riding through the hills about sundown hunting a spring where he could camp when his horse struck an old Indian trail and followed it. McHaney knew there was water near from the way his horse acted and gave the animal free rein. Bye, and bye, the horse turned through a mass of brush and down a deep declivity, at the bottom of which there was a spring. McHaney camped there and, in ten minutes, realized he had found the canyon that fifty men had been hunting for five long weeks. There were the caves, the skeletons and the ledges rich beyond comprehension with virgin gold.”

The Desert Queen Mine

Bill and Jim McHaney made haste and recorded the claim in both Riverside and San Bernardino Counties. They called their El Dorado the Desert Queen Mine. She paid out handsomely for a time but then proved to be Jim’s undoing. But that’s a story for another day.

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