The classic protagonist of a lost mine story is a wanderer who has once seen- or heard of- a rich lode or a glittering placer. But like a desert mirage, shimmering in the distance, it forever eludes him.
Sometimes he would be the sole survivor of a party of miners, surprised and attacked by Indians while they washed their gold ore, and he would explain that "the Apaches made me forget." Sometimes he would become lost in the vastness of 19th Century Arizona, with its great sweeps of desert and forest and mountains. And sometimes he would be a migrant hermit, pursuing a way of life in the wilderness, far from the day-to-day humdrummery of store or office.
Ben McLendon of the lost Nigger Ben Mine was not one of those. He knew where his bonanza was all the time. He was the only non-Indian who did. When he died, the secret died with him.
McLendon was a refugee slave from Georgia and a member of the Weaver party that came to the Yavapai hills in 1863.
His story is one of the most solidly-documented of all the lost mine stories, and there are a number of serious historians who have followed the McLendon trail through the archives and the files of old newspapers.
The party, which was led by the legendary Pauline Weaver, and which included A.H. Peeples, Matt Weber, Joe Green, Henry Wickenburg, Charles B. Genung, and two Mexicans whose names are not remembered, assembled at Yuma, at that time the crossroads of the Far Southwest.
There was gold in the mountains to the east; they were certain of that, for Weaver had first come to Arizona in 1832 and he has seen the rich streambeds. And maybe McLendon had prospected the Yavapai arroyos and creeks in '59 and '61- his son believed that he had.
The goldhunters followed the Colorado River north from Yuma to its confluence with the Bill Williams River. They turned east along that stream to Date Creek, and then southeasterly to Martinez Creek south of the Weaver mountains.
They found gold in Antelope Creek and a few days later the two Mexicans made the great strike on a flat-topped mountain they called Rich Hill. The first day's work at Rich Hill brought each of the miners almost $3,000.
The party later scattered- Wickenburg to found a town on the Hassayampa and to discover the great Vulture Mine, the two Mexicans to oblivion, Weaver into immortality and McLendon into folklore.
Somewhere Ben found a bonanza all his own and made his headquarters in Wickenburg, in the days when the Vulture and Rich Hill mines were in bonanza. He disappeared into the desert at regular intervals and, after an absence of days or weeks, returned with his pack burro loaded with gold ore. Greed was not one of Ben's faults, and he brought in only enough ore to keep him comfortable- and to finance an occasional three-day toot. He was a friendly man and an affable conversationalist- unless he was asked about the source of his gold. Then he became as uncomprehending and uncommunicative as a Digger Indian.
Ben's gold trips always took him west by southwest of Wickenburg, toward the Harquahala Mountains. Some sidewalk speculators believed his placer diggings were there. Others believed that, after leaving town, Ben turned north to Rich Hill and Antelope Peak. Still others believed he traveled deep into southern Mohave County.
Ben's biographer, in a limited way, was A.H. Peeples, who operated a cattle ranch southwest of Prescott in the late '60s (Peeples Valley is named for him) and in 1870 was running a saloon in Wickenburg.
"Ben was the only one of us who dared to prospect alone in the Southern Yavapai hills," Peeples told The Phoenix Republican in 1890. "The Indians would not harm him, evidently on account of his color. He struck up a friendship with several Yavapai chiefs, even when they were hostile to the other miners, and then told him of a place where there was much gold, far more than where we were working.
"Ben took from our stock a nugget that was about the size of a man's thumb and showed it to a chief who was especially friendly to him. The Indian said he had seen much larger pieces of the substance and offered to exhibit the treasure to him.
"Ben was taken to some water holes about 65 miles northwest of Antelope Peak- toward McCracken, in southern Mohave County. When there, however, the chief would show him no farther, seemingly struck by some religious compunction he hadn't thought of before. All he could be induced to do was toss his arms about and say 'plenty gold here; you go hunt.' Ben did hunt for years and I outfitted him several times.
"Numbers of others have tried to find Ben's diggings, but they have not been discovered yet. Ed Schieffelin, who discovered the Tombstone mines, once wrote me asking about them. I gave him all the information I had on the subject... I am confident the gold is there and told Ed so."
Mystery surrounds McLendon's death as it surrounded his mine. The Phoenix Herald wrote that he died of smallpox in Tucson. The Republican reported that he died in 1865 in Prescott. The Tombstone Prospector and a Prescott weekly said that he was killed by Apaches (and his burro butchered) four miles from Wickenburg. Milton F. Rose of Salome, a tireless, scholarly, and long-time researcher and analyst of lost mine stories, says that McLendon's bones were found at the Santa Maria Placers. Ben was a tall man, Rose explains, and the skeleton was that of a tall man.
In 1896 Amos Gresham, Ben's son, wrote to Gov. L.C. Huges from California, asking for help in locating the mine. He said that his father had been prospecting in Arizona from 1859 to 1862 and that he had found his placer gold then.
Gresham never looked for the gold himself, but scores of others did- and still are.
Somewhere Out There Cache Series
GC6ZVBF- The Hassayampa Strongbox
GC6ZVBB- The Organ Grinder's Ledge
GC6ZVB7- The Wickenburg Payroll
GC6ZVB9- The Black Prospector's Secret
GC6AV5B- The Lost Frenchman
GC6BDGK- The Jabonero Waybill
GC7EGMW- Four Peaks Gold
GC7EGKH- The Tonto Quartz
GC7EVJX- Lost Gold of Sanders
Congratulations to geost4fun on discovering the Black Prospector's Secret Stash!