While this road is not challenging, high clearance can be required, and 2WD may be a risky venture. Please take caution while out here. I wanted to get this cache closer to the cabins up the road, but unfortunately the weekend I decided to head out was a big hunting weekend, and there were people crawling all over the area. I stopped at this spot to make lunch for myself and decided it was as good of a place as any. Enjoy the journey!
The Sierra Ancha of Gila County is a wide, wild country of high bluffs and ridges. The Salt River Valley that skirts it on the south is open grassland. It is good cattle range: in the '70s and '80s it was richer in grass than it is now.
Cattlemen were drawn to the grasslands during the great days of silver mining at Globe and Tombstone, for the booming camps were a ready market for beef. So were the growing settlements to the west, at Lehi, Mesa City, Phoenix and Hayden's Ferry.
The Tonto Apaches of Gila County were not as troublesome as the Chiricahuas and Mimbrenos farther south, in Cochise and Pima counties. But they were troublesome enough, and the army patrolled the Salt and its tributaries from Fort Apache west to Fort McDowell.
Among the patrolling soldiers was a private remembered only as Sanders, who was detached from his company on the Salt and sent into the Sierra after a band of Indian cattle thieves. (You may think it strange that the army would send one lone soldier after a half-dozen hostiles. But the Indian-fighting army did many strange things, such as sending over-dressed infantry in pursuit of mounted Indians.)
The trail of the Indians and their stolen stock dimmed out in the rocky highlands of the Sierra and Sanders, giving up the search, turned back. He followed Coon Creek down the mountain, for he knew the stream would lead him back to the Salt and his company. After eight miles of slow riding Sanders came upon a stretch of the creek that was so narrow and precipitous that he had to climb out of the streambed and make his way over a long, low ridge nearby.
There was an outcropping of quartz along the ridge, Sanders noted, and he stopped for a closer look. He couldn't believe what he saw- scattered specimens heavily weighted with gold. His heart pounded: envisioning great wealth and an end to his life of "40 miles a day on beans and hay," he scramb led along the ledge until he came upon an incredibly rich outcropping. It was three yards long, eight inches wide and half decomposed granite and half gold. Everything was perfect for a working mine - nearby were water, grass and timber.
No soldier in history ever awaited his discharge more eagerly than Sanders. The days not only moved very slowly, but were filled with apprehension. Prospectors in growing numbers were appearing in the Gila hills: the ill-fated Miner expedition came close to it. But the Miner party (a large, ragtag group of gold hunters led by a half-dreamer, half con man named Miner who claimed to know the location of a rich placer) unaccountably turned aside before it reached Coon Creek. It marched westward to Walnut Spring and then straggled off to Picket Post, where it disbanded.
When Sanders was discharged from the army at Fort Apache he rode to Phoenix to organize a small group to work his claim. En route, he stopped at Picket Post and showed his ore specimens to W.A. (Hunkydory) Holmes, an early-day rancher.
In Phoenix, Sanders recruited three men he felt he could trust and set out, at long last, for his El Dorado in the Sierra. The party encountered a patrol from Camp Reno that warned them that the Apaches had become unusually hostile and told them they should turn back. Two of them did. Sanders and one companion rode on, into the Sierra. They were never seen again.
At the turn of the century two cowboys were bringing a few cows out of the Sierra Ancha, down Coon Creek. As the riders stopped for a short rest in a small grassy valley one of them saw what he thought was a round white stone. He looked again. It was a time-whitened human skull.
The cowboys dismounted and searched further. There were two skeletons, about four feet apart and almost hidden by the grass. A short distance away was the stone foundation of a sma ll cabin and traces of charred logs. One of the riders picked up a large piece of goldflecked quartz. He knocked the mud away by tapping the stone against his bootheel and held it up to the light. It had been ground smooth and flat on one side and shone with gold, 3/4 of an inch wide and almost 2 inches long. On the gold was inscribed, by some sharp tool, the name "Sanders."
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