Wickenburg in 1870

Henry Wickenburg

In 1870, Wickenburg was a young, booming town. Founded in 1863, it wasn’t officially incorporated until 1909. The boom was largely due to Henry Wickenburg's discovery of the Vulture Mine—“The biggest and richest gold mine yet discovered on this continent [the Vulture] is yielding plenty of ore,” the Weekly Arizona Miner stated. Two mills were running at this time, one of which had a whopping 40 stamps to crush the ore.

The Forgotten Pioneer & His Lost Gold

Nathaniel S “Boston” Graves died January 12, 1911, at the age of 88. He was “one of the earliest arrivals in this section of the Territory and also one of the most popularly known miners,” the Weekly Journal Miner explained. “He was more familiarly known as Boston.” He took ill with the flu (or grippe as it was called back then) late in 1910, having spent that year searching for “a ‘pothole’ that contained a vast amount of free gold.”

A Killing in Copper Basin (1895)

It was the morning of February 1, 1895. A Mexican boy who was out hunting was traveling along the Copper Basin road when he came upon a ghastly scene. The night before, a man was brutally murdered.

“His appearance was a frightful one, the right side of his head being smashed so that the bones protruded, while all over his body and on his hands were many knife wounds to be seen,” the Arizona Weekly Journal-Miner described. “The ground too, gave evidence of a struggle, and though losing his life, made a desperate fight to the last.”