The Great Soul Trial

Excerpt: The Great Soul Trial 
 Posted: Saturday, Feb 2, 2008
One of the longest and most sensational trials in Arizona history revolved around a Miami man, James Kidd who lived in the area and worked for the Miami Copper Company for nearly 30 years in the early 1900’s. While his life in the area, as well as his disappearance in 1946 was barely noteworthy, his final will & testament launched him into the history books and initiated what became known as, The Great Soul Trial. 

Kidd disappeared from his little cottage in Miami in November of 1946. When the police investigated they found nothing missing in his apartment, and very little information on the man: he had no driver’s license, or police record. He had no family. He had few friends. He left behind little for the police to go on. Was he murdered in the Superstition Mountains looking for gold, or killed and thrown into one of his own mine shafts? … Continue Reading

Once they Moved like the Wind

Once they moved like the wind… 
 a recommended read

“To the living Apache of Arizona, New Mexico and Oklahoma- 
In sorrow at what they lost, and awe at what they saved.” 

So begins the account by David Roberts of the Apaches of the Southwestern Deserts. It is one of the best accounts of the resiliency and strategic brilliance of the Apache leaders including: Cochise, Geronimo, Victorio, Mangus and others. … Continue Reading

Black History Month: Again,& Again…

by V.Yanez

There is not enough darkness in the world to put out the light of even one small candle. ~ Robert Alden

The fight for equality began in North Carolina, in 1961, at a Woolworth. That day, four young black men demanded to be served lunch at a whites-only counter. The battle for civil rights also began in Montgomery, when a young woman refused to move to the back of the bus. It also started with the resulting bus boycott, led by a young man named Martin, who later marched into our nation’s capital and told the American people about his ‘Dream’. … Continue Reading

The Keystone

By: John Michael

A reprint from an article submitted to GMT Fall ‘07. It reflects the memories of growing up in Miami, and a close encounter with a famous “destination” known simply as “The Keystone.”

At a time when there were few jobs in town, especially for a 15 year old boy, Ryan-Evans Drug Store was hiring a stock boy that year. I had been told in no uncertain terms by my parents that they would not provide me with money, nor would they allow my grandmother to do so, and so I jumped at the opportunity to apply. Much to my surprise, I was selected for the job which paid 50 cents an hour and thus began my working career. I worked every night after school until 9 O’clock, all day Saturdays and 3 hours on Sundays.After several months on the job, Alan Robertson, store manager, decided I had enough intellectual ability to work both the floor and the fountain and he promoted me. Of course, this reduced the number of hours he had to pay the higher paid help. … Continue Reading

A Town named Christmas

By Historian Jim Turner

You can see the holiday spirit coming all the way from here to Christmas – Christmas, Arizona, that is. But you can’t go to Christmas any more, nor can you mail your holiday cards from the U.S. Post Office there, because it closed in 1935. For a state with such unusual locations as Big Bug, Bagdad, Gripe, and Snowflake (named after Erastus Snow and William Flake), it should come as no surprise that there once was a town called Christmas, Arizona. It all began when prospectors filed copper mining claims in the southern tip of the Dripping Springs Mountains about six miles northeast of Winkelman between 1878 and 1882. … Continue Reading

A miner’s Christmas tale

By Arizona Historian Jim Turner and Pioneer Newsman George H. Smalley

Several years ago I had the good fortune to interview Mrs. Yndia Smalley Moore, born in Tucson in 1902, and former Director of the Arizona Historical Society. She told me many stories about her father, George H. Smalley, who was District Clerk in Globe from 1905 through 1912.

A typical prospector is shown here in "camp." Circa late 1800's about the same time period as George Smalley's article. Photo courtesy of Gila County Historical Museum

Lung problems forced Smalley to move to Arizona in 1896. Like many other authors exiled to the Southwest for their health, Smalley got a job as a reporter. He covered the mining beat for the Phoenix Republican, but wrote stories for St. Louis, Los Angeles, and San Francisco newspapers. Mark Twain and Bret Harte made Wild West stories popular, and Smalley kept up the tradition with down-to-earth stories of cowboys, prospectors, and even outlaws he met in his travels across Arizona and Mexico.

Interstate 17 from Phoenix to Flagstaff is full of interesting signs denoting our Old West prospecting past, with colorful names such as Bumblebee, Bloody Basin, and Big Bug Creek. Smalley’s holiday tale takes place in a silver mining camp about 20 miles southwest of Prescott in the Bradshaw Mountains. No need to change a word of it, this is how he wrote it more than a century ago, typed verbatim from yellowed newspaper columns pasted on faded construction paper at the Arizona Historical Society in Tucson. … Continue Reading

Hanging Memory of Globe

Arizona Historian Jim Turner

“You have to ask me questions, or I can’t remember things.” That’s what Yndia Roca Smalley Moore told me after one of our first taping sessions. She was born in Tucson in 1902, but lived in Globe in its heyday, from 1905 until 1912. We began our Thursday afternoon oral history chats when she was 93, and for an Arizona historian like me it was a dream come true, like taking a Sunday drive into the past with your favorite grandmother, listening to Yndia’s eyewitness accounts of Arizona history in the making. … Continue Reading

Globe-Miami’s Place in History

By Jim Turner, Arizona Historian

Whatever happened to Globe? From prehistoric times to the 1960s, the mining towns of Globe, Miami, and Superior played an important part in Arizona’s history. In the months to come we will tap the history books, as well as diaries, memoirs, and even legends, to unearth these buried treasures from an area that used to be much more well known.

Getting down to basics, Arizona history is about water, minerals, and Apaches. In prehistoric times the most important of that trio was water. Anthropologists, like realtors, believe that there are three important items that make for a perfect home: location, location, location. Since much of Arizona is semi-desert, water supply is a key item in settlement patterns. The largest native populations in the state lived near water and it is no accident that the Hohokam and later the Salado cultures thrived in the Globe-Miami area. It would be hundreds of years before Europeans started to search the Southwest for something more valuable to them than water. … Continue Reading

A Dynamite Tale: Scouting on Two Continents

Excerpted by “Scouting on Two Continents” by Maj. Frederick Burnham @1927

This excerpt takes place during Burnham’s early years in Globe – sometime late 1800’s

…

Captain of Scouts

Globe had many ups and downs and colorful events in  those days and only needed a Mark Twain or a Kipling to make its happenings treasures of literature. Like the neighboring camp of Tombstone, it had in its history all the elements of comedy melodrama and too often the grimmest tragedy. Life was lived intensely, and the lure of silver, gold, and copper, drew the strong and adventurous youth of a lusty young nation. As I remember it, we were all perennially on the crest of some little mining boom or else all dead broke and waiting for capital and a railroad to come along and develop the vast copper mines we knew existed but where were of no profit to us so long as we had only oxen and mules for transportation and our pics and shovels as tools. Whenever the Indians became active, all the miners and prospectors for miles around were made society, such as it was. Globe was the only place where youth could find any social amusement, and when a few hundred miners arrived in camp after months of ceaseless toil, they felt it was up to the town dwellers to assist them in celebrating the holiday. … Continue Reading