The
Story of the American West.
The story of the Greaterville Mining District in Pima County, Arizona,
is a tale of the American West. The entire history of the American West can
be gleaned from the stories of this small mining town, its families, the people
who lived there, mined there and those who coveted its riches.
Setting
the Stage - The Characters
The Greaterville stage is full of characters that made history of the myth
of the American West. The main characters of the Greaterville saga are from
iconic American families who pursued wealth and adventure in the California
gold rush. Losers, winners, liars, thieves, outcasts, schemers, dreamers and
perhaps murderers.
These are
stories of western pioneers. These families began the businesses that made
the west. Mining, Lumber, Hardware, Military, Railroads. They were the engineers,
investors, lawyers, politicians and civic leaders of the time.
The Cast of Characters
The Apache Hunting Politician - Fred G Hughes
The Mining Engineer - James B Stetson
The Money Man - George B McAneny
The Black Widow - Mabel Mastick Sisson McAneny Corning
The Lawyer - Louis G Hummel
The Heir - Mannierre E Young
The tales of these few people and their families and lives tell a wicked good story. Everything culminating in the quest to own the gold of the Greaterville placers.
Setting
the Stage - The Place
Greaterville is located in Pima County Arizona, on the eastern flank of the
Santa Rita Mountains, southeast of Tucson. Until the mid-1880's this was the
heart of Apache Territory in Arizona.
The placers that were discovered here in 1874 were the largest found in Southern
Arizona. In 1875 the Greaterville mining district was created. By 1876 there
were an estimated 500 people in Greaterville. The Territorial Census of 1870
reported a mere 8007 residents in the city of Tucson.
Because the gulches were without water, the placers were mainly worked by
individual miners with rocker boxes. Early records indicate that it was not
difficult for a man to take an ounce of gold a day by this method. Enterprising
men made a difficult living by hauling water via burro from Gardner Canyon
which sits four miles south to sell to the miners.
Like most mining towns of the west, the gold rush lasted but a few years.
By 1881 P.J. Coyne, one of the founders of the district reported that all
of the richer stream gravels had been worked out and men had begun to leave
the camp. By the time the Apaches had been subdued in 1886, the gravels had
been greatly depleted using available methods and the camp was virtually dead
until 1900. Mr. Coyne and others estimated that the total production of the
camp most likely amounted to about $7 million dollars.
In 1900, the Stetson Company, later known as the Santa Rita Water & Mining
Company, full of ambition, installed an eight-mile pipeline to bring water
to the placer gulches for hydraulic mining. Completed and run for a few short
months in 1904, the company abandoned the operation in 1905. Other than this,
there were a few limited dredge operations but no large-scale mining has ever
been very successful with the Greaterville placers.
The town of Greaterville itself today remains in private hands. A few building
remains and the cemetery are all that is visible. The rest of the land, originally
patented, has been reacquired by the US and is part of the Coronado National
Forest. The Forest Service's Kentucky Camp Historical Site was the headquarters
for the Santa Rita Water & Mining Company.
The story of Greaterville actually begins with the California Gold Rush in the 1850's. When the gold was getting thin in California, miners headed east into the newly discovered gold territory of Arizona.
The mining engineer at the Santa Rita Water & Mining Company was a man named James Burgess Stetson. James was born in 1865 in Oakland California. His father, Charles R Stetson, headed west for the Califonia gold fields at the young age of seventeen in 1853.
This is where we begin our story.....with the Stetsons.