The Family

The Comanche was succeeded by the Savannah Copper Company and there was another spurt of activity. Many of the mines were leased to individuals and the company worked only the Pacific and Hearst groups. Corrigan, McKinney Company of Cleveland with mining interests in Mexico wanted sulphides as a flux for the ores there. They leased the Hearst and employed many men. Jimmy Corrigan was technically in charge but he was too much of a playboy to take his work seriously. He delighted the boys by buying baseball equipment and playing ball with them, often in the street, and if a ball went through a window Jimmy would send a boy with a five or ten dollar bill to pay for the damage. Mothers with marriageable daughters tried to attract his interest for it wasn’t everyday that a personable young man with $40,000,000.00 was a member of the community. Jimmy gave big parties with guests from the surrounding area as well as the town. He was having fun while keeping one eye on the mining game. That was going in a satisfactory manner until the revolution in Mexico resulted in the Terrazas property being confiscated and a fire in the mine here caused the company to cease operations.

The greatest mining excitement of the past fifty years occurred in 1911-1914 when Ira Wright and James Bell leased the Pacific Mines and struck high grade. For 1800 pounds of the ore they received $43,000.00. This was said to be the richest shipment per pound received at the mint in San Francisco up to that time. The values, gold, silver and copper, in the ore extracted and shipped to the smelter more than paid expenses. There is irony in the story of the rich strike. The miners were aware of it first and quietly and expertly did some high grading. No work was done on Sundays but everything was locked up. However, as William Swiekert said, “A lock keeps honest people out.” Mr. Wright was told that gold was getting away from him. One Sunday afternoon, he, Jim Bell and a party slipped up to the mine. They found that some miners had apparently worked all night and perhaps up to the time when a look-out had warned them of the party leaving town. More ore had been shot down than could be carried away. Some large pieces were left outside the shaft. For years, at night one could sometimes hear the grinding of hand mortars. Presumably some Bell-Wright ore had been brought out of hiding when money was needed. It was estimated that the miners got as much gold as the operators. Mr. Wright wanted to build an electro-static mill, and as Jim Bell was not interested in that venture, he withdrew and I. J. Stauber took his place. No more large pockets were found and the lease was not renewed.

Other men, believing that rich ores were still in the mines, worked them for a short time, in a small way with varying degrees of success. J. T. Janes believed that the Hardscrabble could be a big producer and over a period of years convinced others to the extent that they would put money into the property. Mr. Janes’ stories were far richer and more colorful than anything that came out of the mine. Perhaps the rich ore is there, as it is said to be in the Gopher, the Hearst and the Mountain Key. Mr. W. C. Porterfield had a gigantic scheme for locating ore bodies. Through his efforts money was raised to finance a company to tunnel Pinos Altos Mountainas an exploratory measure, cutting across the many veins which would reveal the most advantageous places to sink a shaft. Work was started but World War I interfered with that project. The Calumet Co. built a mill south of town but never ran more than 700 tons of ore through it. The Hazard and the Keptwoman attracted operators; the first proved that it was well named and the second showed that its name was a misnomer. During the depression men flocked to Bear Creek until the scene must have resembled early days. There were seventy or more crude rockers being used by men trying to eke out an existence by placering. Tom Crowe used more modern and efficient methods on his claims at the mouth of Little Cherry and on Cottonwood Flat. Douglas White also operated a dredge and sluices down the creek.

The largest nugget ever found, so far as is known, was picked up by Fernando Cuebas in Santo Domingo. It was as large as a hen’s egg and contained very little quartz. It was sold to Mr. J. L. Rollins, then of St. Louis, as a specimen for the sum of $200.00.

The Cleveland Group was owned and operated by George H. Utter for a number of years. Although they are in the Pinos Altos district they were not regarded as “belonging” since most of the laborers and supplies came from Silver City and the ore was taken there over a mule-powered railroad. Many families lived at the Cleveland and at one time the camp had its own school. Of late years the scarcity of water has led to the use of dry washers which supply a topic of conversation, if little more. Water and gold may give out but hope never does. Men and women still prospect. Mr. Richard Allen, who wrote a history of Pinos Altos, published by The Silver City Enterprise in 1889, estimated that $3,000,000.00 in gold had been produced, and he predicted that that much a year beginning with 1890 would come from the mines. The Bureau of Mines’ Bulletin No. 5, states that: “Over $8,000,000.00 worth of gold, silver, zinc, lead and copper has been produced in the Pinos Altos mining district.” Much of the gold produced probably never reached the government’s great safe-deposit box at Fort Knox, Ky., but what did is but an infinitesimal fraction of the $19,000,000,000 worth, about one-half the world’s gold, hoarded there. If there is gold permeating the rocky Pinos Altos hills, and, of course, there is, it is as safely buried as that at Fort Knox.

During the years 1947-1949 the U.S.S.R. Co. conducted an explorative project, the object of which was to investigate the possibility of lead and zinc ores at a greater depth than earlier work had revealed. At that time the company drilled 28 diamond drill holes in the Pinos Altos district aggregating 21,000 feet. The holes range in depth from less than 100 feet to nearly 2,000 feet. Since 1949 the company has done a limited amount of work, mostly as assessment work to hold the claims on the eastern edge near the Atlantic and on another group in the vicinity of Pinos Altos Mountain. Many of these claims have since been patented. The exploratory work revealed ore at the depth of 500 feet which can be mined when the need arises. This may mean that Pinos Altos will again be an active mining community, producing lead and zinc, with gold and silver recovered as a bonus.

There was a time when asking a person in the West where he was from was a shooting matter. Visitors today have no hesitancy about asking that or about how long one has lived here or what brought one here in the first place. Is it more eccentric to spend one’s life here than in a small hamlet in Vermont or elsewhere? Lack of initiative or drive may be partly responsible and surely sentiment is. Some of us just love the home place.

My father, W. E. Watson, came west for his health at the age of nineteen. Friends in Wisconsin had recommended Silver City and had given him letters to Mr. Pat Rose and Mrs. Lettie B. Morrill. Among the first people he met was Mr. A. J. Spaulding, and for several years they were closely associated. They made Claremont, near the later town of Mogollon, their headquarters for many prospecting expeditions. This was during the days of Indian raids but they never encountered an unfriendly Indian. Once when Mr. Spaulding had gone into Silver City for supplies and was expected back that evening, Dad hiked over the mountains to Whitewater and caught a mess of trout. He had returned to the cabin when a rider came up calling out that the Indians were on the warpath and were in the mountains and that all the people were to go to Meaders on the Frisco River for safety’s sake. Dad said he was expecting Spaulding so would not leave. He took his binoculars and scanned the hillsides. A movement far up on the canyon wall caught his eye. He watched the brush intently and presently made out the figure of a man, the queerest he had ever seen, more startling than an Indian even. Surmounting the pack on the man’s back was a large rectangular contrivance, attached to his belt were many packets, in one hand he carried a gun and in the other a butterfly net. Dad went to meet him. This was the beginning of an interesting friendship with H. H. Rusby, a botanist who was looking for medicinal herbs for Parke Davis Co. of Detroit and also collecting specimens of flora and fauna. Mr. Rusby had seen no Indian sign, nor had Mr. Spaulding, who returned later that evening. They were not molested but the next day they learned that Capt. Cooley had been killed not many miles from their cabin.

My father’s parents were English. His father was born at Littleport, Cambridgeshire. He worked with his father, who was a bridge builder, from age 14 until he came to America in 1848. He lived in Chicago for one year, then joined in the Gold Rush the following year and traveled overland to California and tried his luck at Placerville. After two years of varying success he returned to New York and crossed the ocean to his old home. In 1853 he was married to Miss Sarah Wilson of Spaulding, in the Ely Cathedral. They came to Chicago, later moving to Janesville, Wisconsin, where as contractor and builder, especially of bridges for the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad, he was quite prominent.

On Mother’s side of the family one of the earliest ancestors in this country was Pieter, son of Claes, who came from Holland to New Amsterdam in 1636. Very few of the Dutch emigrants hadsurnames—they were merely “sons of”. Pieter was later identified in the records as Peiter Claesen, who in 1655, superintended the bowery and cattle of Peter Stuyvestant. The entry in colonial records dated July 10, 1655, reads: “Pieter Clausen agreed to fodder and winter, according to custom, all the cattle which Petrus Steuyvestant has at present in his bowery at Amersfoot (Flatlands), also to sow all the land that is suitable for sowing, provided that he deduct from the rent the grain sown thereon. For said service the sum of 325 gr(?) be paid; to leave the manure of his own and the general’s in the bowery.” He was magistrate of Flatlands from 1655 to 1664. When Peter Stuyvestant surrendered New Netherland to the British, Pieter Claesen was required to take another name or to adopt a surname and he chose “Wykhof” which meant “Household Courtier” or “Clerk of the Court,” but the family soon changed to the English spelling of Wyckoff.

Little is known of the Robbins line except that great grandfather Wyckoff Robbins was born in Ohio, married and moved to Missouri. One son, my grandfather, Edwin Augustus, married Betsy Hartwell in Bowen, Illinois, in 1869. The Hartwells had come from England to Massachusetts in 1636. Later one of the family had married a French Huguenot named Dee in New Jersey, whose family had settled first in North Carolina. Betsy’s mother was that Dee. Her father, John N. Hartwell, married three times and had fourteen children, an economic necessity in those days. One of them lost his life in the War Between the States. John N. was a close friend of young Abraham Lincoln in Illinois, and always supported and admired him. One of Grandmother’s stories recalled the day she was sent into the field where her father was plowing to tell him of Lincoln’s death. They returned to the house and her father prepared for his journey to Springfield where he went to “pay his list respects to a great man and his good friend.” Grandfather Robbins had spent nearly two years in Andersonville Prison during the war. Ill and discouraged, he did not want to settle down with his family. Then he met Betsy, fell in love, married her, worked as a carpenter and made a home in Quincy, Illinois. He was restless so they decided to take advantage of the Homestead Act of 1862 and find land for themselves in the West as other discharged soldiers were doing. They went to Missouri, Colorado, and finally to New Mexico. Farming did not appeal to Grandfather but the lure and adventure of mining did. However, he found that his trade of carpentry furnished a better living than the mining game. After several years in Silver City he came to Pinos Altos as chief carpenter at the Deep Down where a St. Louis syndicate was building a mill. It was here that Mother rejoined her family and met Will E. Watson whom she married in 1889.

Like most American families we are a hodge podge of nationalities. Members have been farmers and traveling salesmen, doctors and ministers, missionaries and teachers. Dad tried many things but settled for the mercantile business. He was “store-keeper” and Postmaster in Pinos Altos for many years where he worked early and late to accommodate customers, but he was never so busy that he could not take time off for fishing and hunting and enjoying the great out-of-doors.

Messrs. Birch, Snively and Hicks would not recognize the valley if they could come back one hundred years later. Gone are the tall pines that gave the place its name; gone for the greater part of the year are the streams where they placered for gold; gone are burros that carried their tools and supplies; gone is the excitement of a rich find and gone, too, are the hundreds of placer miners who followed them seeking “El Dorado”.

Today there are approximately fifty families and a few lone individuals living in the camp, many of whom are descendants of “old timers”. They refuse to admit that they live in a “ghost town.” They think they are very up-to-date because they use and enjoy modern conveniences. Instead of smoke rising into the sky there are TV antennas bristling over the homes. No longer do they buy wood by the burro load and hire Jose Maria Romero, invariably with a gunny sack over his shoulder, to cut it into stove lengths. Now they heat and cook with butane or electricity which comes from Silver City. No longer do they fill lamps and polish chimneys but light their homes with the flick of a switch. No longer do they draw water with an old oaken bucket, now just a museum piece, from a well, but thanks to electric pumps, they have only to turn a tap. If children but knew what they had missed, how thankful they would be, with no wood box to keep filled, no bringing in of chips and water for household needs. No longer do the women bend over a wash tub, scrubbing out grime and grease on a wash board. It is only a fifteen minute drive to a laundromat. Cars, trucks, and “jeeps” have taken the places of horses, mules and burros for transportation needs and pleasures. No more do they send first-of-the-month orders to the company store and have them delivered. Now, finding themselves short of margarine, or bread, or wanting a frozen vegetable, they take the Ford or Chevrolet and drive to a supermarket. Who plays baseball now or spend an evening around the old piano singing old familiar songs when one can watch sports events on TV, or listen to the radio? No longer do the men gather around the pot-bellied stove in the store or sit on the long benches outside, settling the affairs of the world. A favorite commentator or the pictures in Life keep them informed, and with so many smart men in Santa Fe and Washington, why should they worry? No longer do the workmen trudge up and over the hills to the mines and return from their shifts in single file, whistling and singing down the trail to their homes. If they worried about the meager wages of former days, it was not apparent. Now they ride in cars and trucks to their work in Silver City, Hurley and Santa Rita, often “cussing” their employers or the union, depending on their status in the industrial field. Housewives say the only convenience they lack is an electric dishwasher—and “who wouldn’t rather buy than be one?” The most common complaint is insufficient water for lawns, gardens and those dishwashers. If and when there is town water Pinos Altos will be truly a suburban Utopia.

To: Dr. Nanette Ashby of New Mexico Western College and her students of Southwestern Literature who have shown interest and pleasure as we gathered on the Continental Divide and talked of the “good old days”, whose questions and comments spurred me to write “The Story of Pinos Altos”;

To: The sons and daughters of the men and women who made those times what they were, and who have shared the tales their parents told:

To: The few “Old-Timers” who are left who remember so much and delight to recall their experiences, and especially,

To: Mrs. Alpha Hickman Stephens who first came to Pinos Altos in 1888. Her father operated a saw mill in Big Cherry for a Mr. Comer. It was Comer who constructed much of the Cherry Creek Road as we know it today. At that time the road, from Little Cherry to town, ran along the bed of the canyon. Hickman Springs was the site of the family home. In 1890 she married Charley Stephens, oldest son of Mr. and Mrs. Trolius Stephens. Her keen mind is a treasure house of recollections—from which she has generously supplied me with facts and figures—and pictures.

I say “Thank You”.

Dorothy Watson

MAIN STREET, 1900. Dr. Robinson, the Robinson and Nolan boys pause to be in picture.

The road leading into town, 1895. Picture taken from crest of Continental Divide. Corn grows on the Potosi Placer Claim.

The Pacific House. In the group from left to right are Pat Mullins, John Head, Spaulding’s adopted daughter, the dog, “Wad”, Spaulding and Frank Bell, the first seated figure. Others not recognized.

F. J. Davidson bought the Neff Store and operated it until it burned in 1902. It stood in the northeast corner of what was later the Henry Young Orchard. Russell Davidson stands on the porch near door. Later the Davidsons bought the “Old Store.”

The “Old Store.” The adobe part was in constant use from 1868 to 1957.

In the group are Dick Lee, Mr. Welsh, Antonio Montoya (sitting), John Fletcher, Homogon Cuebas. Sitting are two boys who wandered by and Victor Davidson and Allan Box.

The bar of the Cave Saloon about 1900. Mr. R. E. Lee, proprietor.

The flag was raised for the first time on the new pole in front of the second school building, Feb. 22, 1889.

A ball team about 1890. Back row, Bill Christman, ——, George Husband, Herb Robinson, Jack Nolan, Dan Nolan, Dr. Robinson, Ed Kayler, Jackie Minear. Front row, ——, ——, Joe LeRoy, Joe Adair.

Girls’ Basketball Team, 1902-1903. Claire Scott, Dorothy Watson, Mary Lee, Clara Upchurch (Trevarrow), Alice Scofield, May Marks, Alice Legros, Jennie Fox.

A group of picnickers at Mill Creek in the fall of 1892. From the back row, reading from left to right are: Gertrude Trevarrow (Dimmick), Mrs. Trolius Stephens, ——, Mrs. Nat Bell, Mrs. Watson with Dorothy in lap, George Bell, Bert Stephens, Chan Derbyshire with Harry Watson, Joe Arnheim, Harry Williams, Mrs. Arnheim, Mrs. Williams, Henry Stanley, Frank Stephens, Frank Brito, Mr. McLean with Artie Williams, ——, W. E. Watson, Mrs. McLean, a Mr. Bell, Golden Bell.

An invitation issued in 1888.

Upper grades, Pinos Altos School, 1901-1902. Top row: Ernestine Marks, Bessie Harwell (Young), Eva Ratcliff, Mary Lee (Bloom), Alice Legros (Huff), W. H. Decker, Principal, Grace Head (Smith), Louis Marks, Zack Bellhouse. Second row: Dorothy Watson, Marie Pound, May Marks, Lillian Jackson (Forsyth). Third row: Henry Geitz, Gordon Davidson, Harry Watson, Mike Hughes, John Clark, Lyman Trevarrow, Alex Thomas. Fourth row: Fred Pound, Tom Phillips, Dan Nolan. Fifth row: ——, Herbert Herman. Sitting: Frank Mullins, Bob Ratcliff, Leslie Herman, ——.

Apple trees blossom where corn once grew.

The interior of the “Old Store” during the Hearst days. From left to right: Tommy Hall, Will Rivers, George Turner, Sidney Derbyshire.

The Davidson families and two guests from Nova Scotia on the porch of the F. J. Davidson home, 1902. Back row: Mr. F. J., his son, Gordon, Mrs. F. J., Mrs. Russell Davidson, Victor, Claire Scott. On steps: Mr. Russell Davidson, his three children, Robert, Dorothy and David, Mrs. Forbes.

In 1942 Rev. Henry Van Valkenburgh and his family visited the church he had served as pastor, 1898-1902.

At the Young home, 1942. Mrs. Van Valkenburgh, Mrs. Hunt, the Vans’ daughter, Oleta Young, “Brother Van,” Henry Young, Mrs. Young, Vans’ son-in-law, “Young Henry”, J. G. Hunt.

William E. Watson as he looked when he left Wisconsin to come to New Mexico in 1878.

This is the site of the first lode claim, the Pacific. Mining in this manner from these mines yielded nearly one million dollars in gold between 1881 and 1889.

Jake Long and Arrastra on the Oceola during the ’80’s.

The Skillicorn Mill, later called the Stanley Mill, 1889.

The Atlantic Mine in 1890 with the Deep Down Mill and bunk house in background. W. E. Watson, Willie Towatha and Walter Brandis standing near horse.

The Bell and Stephens’ Mill as it looked from 1882-1890 from the Bear Creek side. The stone part was the original Ancheta Arrastra Mill, 1868-1882.

Trolius Stephens, 1896

Nathaniel Bell, 1896

On the Sapello Ridge headed for the West Fork and trout. W. E. Watson, Jim Bell and Antonio Montoya bring up the rear.

W. E. Watson at Bear Moore’s ruined cabin on the West Fork.

A placer miners’ camp on Bear Creek.

Stragglers on the last big cattle drive through town.

Trolius Stephens brought his wife to this cabin in 1873. Before it was torn down in 1895 Mrs. Stephens insisted that Bert and Frank be photographed beside the house in which they had been born. Neither looks as if he aspired to be president.

Dr. Nesta Thompson and Mrs. Henrietta Vincent, of the college faculty, 1938, enjoy a trail in the vicinity of Black’s Peak.

Nell Hunt and Jo Ryan rest after climbing Signal and Black’s Peaks. The old tower in background.

A picnic in Big Cherry is a “must” when former residents return for a visit. Joe Janes, Margaret Bell Leasure, Henry Young, Jean Watson Eckard, Nell Robbins Miller with Josephine Bell Ryan with back to camera.

Same picnic with Mrs. Young, Mrs. Janes and Mrs. Harry Hickel in foreground.

First Excursion on the Silver City, Pinos Altos & Mogollon R.R., January 1, 1906.

THE SILVER CITY Enterprise

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