Somewhere, in a deep box-shaped canyon, a small stream flows. Therein lies the Lost Adams excavations, as rich as any of the lost treasures of the west, and perhaps the most legitimate in terms of factual evidence. It is a story corroborated by more than one individual.
The man named Adams was a truck driver heading to Los Angeles with 12 horses. Adams (his first name was variously given as William, Edward, Henry, and John) was an overland freighter that transported goods for a fee between Los Angeles and Tucson, Arizona. He was married with a wife and three children in Los Angeles.
After his last trip, Adams camped in nearby Florence, Arizona. The Apaches, fleeing with their horses, woke him up. Adams chased after them and retrieved the animals.
When he returned to his camp, he found his wagon on fire and all his other assets, including the $2,000 received from his cargo delivery, were gone. The Apaches had simply used the horse-stealing ploy to enable them to plunder the camp of its true valuables.
Without his valuables except for the 12 horses, Adams, penniless, left for a friendly Pima Indian village in what is now Gila Bend, Arizona. There he listened to the miners exchange prospecting stories. A mestizo Mexican Apache nicknamed “Gotch Ear” listened as the miners expressed their desire to find gold. The boy was named Gotch Ear because of a misshapen and wrinkled earlobe.
The Apaches captured Gotch Ear and his brother when they were young children living in Mexico. Gotch Ear was now on the run from the tribe because he killed the Apache that killed his brother in a fight.
Gotch Ear finally approached the group of miners. If you’re interested in gold, he told them, he knew of a canyon ten days’ ride away, where a stream literally flowed with gold nuggets. All he asked for in return was a horse that would take him back to Mexico.
It was in 1864 that Gotch Ear led the group of 22 men to the site. Gotch Ear led the group searching for gold up the Gila River in a northeasterly direction for several days. On or about August 25, the party camped in the low-lying area between two lofty peaks, believed to be Mount Ord and Mount Baldy.
However, this has led to confusion for treasure hunters, as Mount Ord lies north of Phoenix and is not suitable for the journey Gotch Ear and his followers undertake.
Since Adams had all the horses, the gold-hungry miners chose him as their leader.
After four days of traveling through heavy timber, the young Mexican led the miners around a high mountain that Adams and John Brewer, another of the miners, say was the White Mountains of eastern Arizona.
The group finally reached what appeared to be a box canyon. Here they camped for the night. In the morning, they rode through the canyon toward a cliff that was reddish in color, but was actually a wall of solid rock twenty or twenty meters high.
Gotch Ear led the men around a huge boulder at the base of the wall. There, through a hidden portal, they entered a switchback canyon, so tight, Adams later said, that a bicyclist stretching out his arms could touch both sides.
Along the floor of the canyon was a stream, which they followed to a meadow the size of an acre. Here they camped for the night.
Hardly had the miners settled down and begun to collect the yellow metal when a group of Apaches, led by Chief Nana, appeared in the meadow near a waterfall.
Nana told the miners to take what they wanted from the creek, but to make no effort to locate the gold deposits further up the canyon above the waterfall. He also ordered them to leave soon and never come back.
While the gold held no appeal to the Indians, the canyon in which it was found did. The canyon, named “Sno-Tah-Hay” by Nana, was a very special religious site for the Indians.
The Apaches also believed that gold was the “tears of the sun.” No one touched the tears of the sun because it was the source of all life.
The gold diggers remained in the canyon against Nana’s orders. They not only stayed, but soon began construction of a cabin. In three weeks they had accumulated about sixty thousand dollars in gold, which they placed in a container and hid in the fireplace of the unfinished cabin.
The intention was later to distribute the gold evenly among the men in the prospecting party, with the exception of a German named Snively. Snively took his share each day and kept his gold apart from the others.
Supplies soon ran out. A party of five miners, led by John Brewer, was assigned to go to Fort Wingate to resupply the camp. The miners brought nuggets, some as big as turkey eggs, to use as payment.
In the fort, when the miners paid for their supplies with the huge gold nuggets, the shopkeeper carefully noted this fact.
Meanwhile, Apache Chief Nana, unseen, continued to watch the activity in the creek and also noted the surreptitious night trips through the canyon to search for the source of the gold.
He was not pleased. He ordered his Apache warriors to kill the five-man supply party as he returned from Fort Wingate. This was done with the exception of one man, Brewer, who escaped.
The Apaches then killed all the miners in the canyon except for two men who were some distance from the Anglo camp. Snively, the German, who had already taken his gold and returned to Germany. Years later, Snively verified in detail the existence of gold.
One of the two men who escaped the Apache massacre was Adams, and the other was Jack Davidson. The only reason the two men escaped the wrath of the Apache is that they had gone in search of the Fort Wingate supply crew that had been long overdue.
Adams and Davidson decided for safety that it was best to head to Los Angeles to avoid further contact with the Apaches. Traveling at night, they got lost.
They were seen by US soldiers and taken to Fort Apache, according to one story. However, this casts some doubt on this version, as Fort Apache was not established until 1872.
Jack Davidson later claimed that they were taken to Fort Whipple, just east of Prescott.
Adams and Davidson were unaware that John Brewer, who was leading the supply party, had also escaped the Apache massacre. Brewer scaled the canyon wall and reached the friendly Pueblo Indians. Brewer eventually went to Colorado, married an Indian woman, and started a family.
Adams returned to his family in California and remained there for ten years. He was afraid to go back to New Mexico to search for the excavations.
Adams returned in 1874. He searched and searched for the lost “Adams Digs” until his death in 1876, but was never able to relocate the gold mine.
There are many stories of attempts to retrace the path taken by Gotch Ear and his Anglo-Saxon followers.
A man named Edward Doheny, who was traveling through New Mexico toward Phoenix in search of work, reported that he had traveled down a box canyon before realizing he could not cross it. He noted the ruins of a burned-out cabin before returning, but, at the time, he knew nothing of Adams’s history.
When he later crawled away, Doheny was unable to find the location again.
A cowboy named Jack Townsend claimed to have found the Lost Adams Diggings site in New Mexico in 1894, while working in Magdalena, New Mexico. This was never confirmed.
Once, during the period when he was trying to relocate the “golden river”, Adams put Bob Lewis in a room. Lewis had also been looking for the “Excavations”.
“Go and find the bones of those men who were loading supplies into the canyon. Show me the bones and I’ll show you the gold.”
According to an account by Lee Paul, on a website called “The Outlaws”, Lewis found the bones. He found them thirty years later. Piled in a crevice were the skeletons of several men covered with pieces of packsaddles and stones.
Lewis was in the Datil Mountains of New Mexico. Although he found the bones, he was unable to find the secret door. An earthquake, which struck southern Arizona and New Mexico in 1887, is believed to have rearranged the landscape of the Datil Mountains.
Many, many efforts have been made to follow the path laid out by Gotch Ear. None have been successful. It looks like The Lost Adams Diggings will remain just that: lost.