Two Guns: An Arizona Ghost Town

 

Two Guns, Arizona is a ghost town located on the Canyon Diablo gorge near Flagstaff, Arizona.  The town was originally known as Canyon Lodge and started out as a modest trading post at the beginning of the 19th century.

The area has a colorful history. During the winter of 1879-1880, Billy the Kid and his gang hid out on the west rim of Canyon Diablo across from what is now Two Guns.  In 1880, long before Two Guns was established as a settlement, the Santa Fe Railway was being built across northern Arizona.  At the point where the railroad was set to cross Canyon Diablo, some three miles north of Two Guns, construction halted while a trestle was being built.  The railroad workers established a settlement called Canyon Diablo which quickly became a lawless den of drifters, grifters, gamblers and outlaws. In 1889 outlaws robbed the train at Canyon Diablo making off with $100,000 in currency, 2,500 silver dollars, and $40,000 in gold coins.  A posse caught up with the outlaws, but not before they buried their loot, which is thought to be buried in the canyon rim near Two Guns.

More pioneers staked claims to the area over the years, and by the early 1920s, a road through town, known as the National Trail Highway, became the preferred route across Diablo Canyon.

When Earle and Louise Cundiff arrived in the area they bought 320 acres of land, making the settlement known as Canyon Lodge a busy stop for travelers. By the mid-1920s, what was once the National Trail Highway was transforming into Route 66, and the once-isolated trading post was becoming a busy stopping place for drivers looking for food and gas.

The business potential was not lost on one Harry Miller a flamboyant veteran of the Spanish-American War.  The eccentric Miller was a master of publicity and self-promotion. In 1925, Harry “Two Guns” Miller made a deal with the Cundiffs to lease a site for his business.

Miller renamed the Canyon Lodge trading post, Two Guns, and set about putting the place on the map. Miller grew his hair long and braided it.  Claiming to be a full-blooded Apache, Miller assumed the name of Chief Crazy Thunder. Miller constructed a rag-tag zoo with chicken-wire cages for animals native to Arizona, including mountain lions.  He also started tours down into a canyon cave now called the Apache Death Cave.

In 1878, a group of Apache warriors raided a Navajo camp killing everyone with the exception of three girls they took hostage.  The enraged Navajos from surrounding villages set out after the marauders. The Navajo finally tracked down the wily Apache warriors who had been hiding their camp in an underground cavern.  The Navajo lit a fire at the mouth of the cave.  All forty-two Apache warriors died in the cave.

Although an interesting part of Arizona history, the showman Henry Miller thought the story needed even more sizzle.  Miller built fake ruins and started selling the bones and skulls of the long dead Apache warriors as souvenirs.  He put in electric lights and a soda stand and renamed the death cave the “Mystery Cave.”

It was around this time that the legends of “The Curse of Two Guns” began. The broad wording of Miller’s lease had always been a source of tension between him and Earl Cundiff, and that tension finally came to a head on March 3, 1926, when Miller shot and killed Cundiff (he was later acquitted of murder).  Shortly after his trial Miller was mauled by a mountain lion.  Soon after he was bitten by a Gila monster.

The town was sold in the 1950s and throughout the decade it would be leased and abandoned multiple times, until a man named Dreher revitalized the area. Things were looking good for the town. The I-40 was finally coming through the area and even had a dedicated exit. However, a fire destroyed the town in 1971, sealing its fate.  Today, Two Guns stands as a ghost town, with the remnants of its past still visible. Some structures have collapsed, while others are in a state of disrepair. Efforts have been made to preserve the site's history and prevent further deterioration, but Two Guns remains a poignant reminder of the changing fortunes of towns along historic Route 66. The site has become a destination for those interested in ghost towns and abandoned places.

Gold, Murder and Monsters in the Superstition Mountains

Arizona’s Superstition Mountains are mysterious, forbidding, and dangerous.  The Superstitions are said to have claimed over five hundred lives.  What were these people looking for?  Is it possible that these mountains hide a vast treasure?  Is it possible that UFOs land here?  Is it possible that in these mountains there is a door leading to the great underground city of the Lizard Men?  Join us as we recount a fictional story of the Superstitions and then look at the real history of the legends that haunt these mountains in our new book:  Gold, Murder and Monsters in the Superstition Mountains.

Jesuit Gold in the Superstition Mountains

                                                                                  Arizona Gold


Although the story of the Lost Dutchman’s Mine is the best known of the treasure legends in the Superstitions, there are others.  One of these legends involves the Society of Jesus (the Jesuits), a Roman Catholic order of priests founded by St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Francis Xavier, and others in 1534, to do missionary work (and to act as the “shock troops” of the Pope during the Counter-Reformation). 

When the Spanish arrived in Arizona they set about building missions.  Most of these missions were built near highly mineralized regions.  When gold and silver were discovered, the priests set converted Indians, both Pima and Papago, to working the rich deposits.  The precious metals were stored in the missions in the form of gold and silver ingots (so the legend says).  The great Pima Revolt of 1751 temporarily drove the Jesuits out of the area.  Missions were burned, and priests were killed.  Fleeing priests decided to hide their gold and silver in mines located deep in the surrounding mountains.  The mines were then carefully concealed.  Other treasures hoards were deposited in caves. It is said that Jesuit missionaries led two hundred and forty gold-laden mules across southern Arizona into the barren mountains, stashing their riches somewhere among the bluffs, caves and canyons of the Superstition Mountains.

A variation of this story says that the Jesuits did not hide their treasure because of Indian revolts but because of the expulsion of the Jesuits by the Spanish crown in 1767.  The Jesuits were a rich order, accumulating wealth not only by mining but by raising enormous herds of cattle, horses, mules, burros, sheep and by raising crops.  These commodities were sold to the miners and settlers.  The wealth of the Jesuits was used for display to overawe Indian converts.  Churches, so the thinking went, needed the allure and shining examples of gold and silver to give testament to the magnificence and power of God.

The Jesuits were often as concerned with power and politics as they were with piety, which lead to their expulsion in country after county in Europe. Due to Jesuit involvement in rebellions in Portugal, they were expelled from all of Portugal's lands around the world on July 6, 1758.  Due to their political intriguing, the Jesuits were expelled from France and its holding in November 1763.  The Jesuits had reason to think that they were likely to be expelled from Spain and the Spanish empire, so the legend says, and took steps to hide their wealth.  The Jesuit treasures were safely tucked away somewhere near Weaver’s Needle in the Superstitions just in the nick of time.  The Jesuits were expelled from Spain in 1767, and all of their property seized. Unfortunately, no one seems to know exactly where the Jesuit treasures were tucked away.  

   

Legends of the Superstition Mountains

Death and Delusion in the Superstition Mountains

Arizona’s Superstition Mountains are mysterious, forbidding, and dangerous.  The Superstitions are said to have claimed over five hundred lives.  What were these people looking for?  Is it possible that these mountains hide a vast treasure?  Is it possible that UFOs land here?  Is it possible that in these mountains there is a door leading to the great underground city of the Lizard Men?  Join Josh, a skeptical journalist, as he explores the mysteries of the Superstition Mountains in our new fiction book Death and Delusion in the Superstition Mountains.

Gold, Murder and Monsters in the Superstition Mountains

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The Peralta Stones: Key to the Lost Dutchman’s Mine?

The Superstition Mountains of Arizona, the Legend of the Lost Dutchman’s Mine, and the Peralta Stones are inextricably linked. The entire story supposedly began in 1748 when the Peralta family are said to have started mining silver and gold in the Superstition Mountains. With the Mexican War of 1848, law and order disintegrated in the area and the Apache Indians grew increasingly hostile, attacking the miners almost continuously. It is said, that disaster finally overtook the Peralta family in September 1848 with a general massacre by the Apaches. Following this massacre the Apaches controlled the Superstition Mountains until 1865.  Supposedly after the massacre of 1848 the Indians filled the mine shafts and disguised the remains.

Jacob Waltz, the “Dutchman” enters the picture in 1871 with his partner Jacob Weiser.  The two immigrants supposedly purchased a map drawn by the original Peralta family and located the mine “within an imaginary circle whose diameter is not more than five miles and whose center is marked by the Weaver’s Needle.”  Weiser soon vanished...the victim of either, Indians, desperados, or Waltz, depending on which story you want to believe. The Dutchman continued working the mine, carrying the secret of its location to the grave with him in 1891.

 For over fifty years after the death of the Waltz, treasure hunters followed the ambiguous clues that the Dutchman left behind as to the whereabouts of the mine, such as these helpful clues:

“No miner will find my mine. To find my mine you must pass a cow barn. From my mine you can see the military trail, but from the military trail you cannot see my mine. The rays of the setting sun shine into the entrance of my mine. There is a trick in the trail to my mine. My mine is located in a north-trending canyon. There is a rock face on the trail to my mine.”

Something significant changed in 1949 when the so called Peralta Stones were discovered in the desert. A Mexican bracero (a legal migrant laborer) was digging fence posts near Black Point, in Pinal County, when he came across a large flat stone.  He dug the stone out only to find that it was covered in strange writing.  He recognized a Spanish word, Indian petroglyphs, and some Spanish markings.  In all, the bracero dug up three stones carved with writing and a crude map. The bracero hauled the curious stones into Florence Junction, three miles away, where he washed them, and prepared to sell the curious stones to any willing tourist who might come along.  
Robert G. Tumlinson (or Travis E. Tumlinson depending on who is telling the story) of Portland, Oregon turned out to be that tourist.  The bracero pocketed the equivalent of a week’s wages, and Tumlinson drove off with the stones.  Tumlinson went on to Phoenix, to visit his brother.  The two brothers thoroughly washed the rocks and examined them, determining that what they were looking at was some kind of coded map.

There a number of variations on exactly how, where, and by whom the Stones were discovered, but many “Dutch Hunters” believe that the Stones refer to the location of the Lost Dutchman’s Mine and that they were carved by the Peralta family. The Stones consist of two red sandstone tablets and a heart-shaped rock made of red quartzite. Each red stone block is carved with lines and one long line. When the two blocks are placed side by side and the stone heart is inserted the long line has 18 dots pecked into it. This style of map is known as a Post Road Map and it is a style used in Mexico and Spain during the period of the Mexican-American War. Inscribed on one the stones is the date 1847, and one stone contains a sunken relief of a heart, into which the heart-shaped stone fits perfectly. The back of the stone that the heart-shaped stone fits into has the outline of a cross carved into it.

Apparently, Tumlinson spent a number of years in the Superstition Mountains trying to track down clues from the Stones.  The Stones emerged again in the early 1960s, after Tumlinson’s death.  One Clarence O. Mitchell persuaded Tumlinson’s widow that he could decipher the stone maps.  Mitchell organized the M.O.E.L. Corp. in Nevada and began a stock selling campaign among his friends and close associates to raise capital for the treasure expedition. Mitchell raised more than $70,000 over a two-year period. Eventually Mitchell ran into difficulties with the Securities and Exchange Commission for over selling the number of shares the corporation had issued.  The corporation was forced into bankruptcy.

In 1964, freelance writer Richard B. Stolley sold a story about the stone maps to Life magazine.  The article provided the first public photographs of the Peralta Stones (although certain markings on the maps were covered by black tape).  These photographs inflamed the nation’s imagination.

In 1967, Barry Storm, the “Dean of American Treasure Hunters”, wrote an article for Treasure Hunters in an attempt to decipher the Peralta Stone Maps. This article was followed by a variety of other writers, photographers, film makers, and con men who have since used the Peralta maps as a factual source for treasure hunting in the Superstition Mountains.

So the real question is, “Are the Peralta Stones real or fakes?”  Do they present genuine clues, or phony clues?  For more than seventy years the Peralta Stones have been the subject of heated controversy.  Over this time period those who’ve studied the maps have remained firmly and pretty evenly divided into two separate camps: (1) those who believe, and (2) those who do not believe. It does not appear that this will change anytime soon.

Legends of Lost Treasure

These are the stories of treasures great and small and of those who hunt for them. The book includes the world's most famous treasure cipher, sunken treasure ships, treasure caves, and tales of over fifty of the most famous lost treasures of the globe. For all who dare to go in search of golden opportunities and glittering prizes.

Treasure Legends of the Civil War

A lively history of the Civil War sprinkled with tales of over 60 buried treasure in sixteen states. History buffs and adventure seekers will enjoy this work.

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