Prospectors
and Miners

NeverMine

GeoCache GC1HFPP


A mine that died early
 


Another "wannabe" mine
 


Newspaper headline from
the Courtland Arizonan
 


Grave marker of Eugene Yoakem
who is buried in the Gleeson cemetery
 
  During its heyday, Courtland was pretty much a copper town. Little pockets of gold were found on several occasions, and a touch of silver here and there, but copper was really the cause of the town's boom. The gold was not widespread enough to bring many to the area, and silver is hard to find and harder to refine. Copper, on the other hand, was found in quite a few places. But copper is not really a mineral that prospectors dealt with. To mine and refine copper takes a lot of machinery and infrastructure. As such, copper was a "big company" project, and not something that an individual miner could deal with.

  That doesn't mean that there were no prospectors in Courtland, however. They just didn't stick around long. Here's how the process worked. In a place like the Rocky Mountains, where many streams ran pretty much year-round, prospectors would begin by "panning" for gold. This means they would find a bend or a dip in a stream, and would scoop up water and silt from the stream bed into a wide flat pan. Swishing it around, the less dense rock and dirt would slosh over the edge and back into the stream. If there was any gold in the silt (gold being more dense), it would tend to stay in the pan and become visible. When this happened, the prospector would mark the spot and move upstream, to another bend or dip, and try it again. If he found gold again, he would continue upstream until he found nothing. At that point, he knew that the area just between the "nothing" spot and the previous "gold" spot was where the gold lode could be found...somewhere in that stretch is where the gold entered the stream. Then he would hunt around until he found it, and stake a claim. Once that was done, he had two choices. If the gold were plentiful enough and near the surface, he'd probably turn into a miner and work the claim himself, at least until it became too difficult for a small operation. Or, he could sell his claim to some larger operation, take his money and run off to the next canyon, mountain, stream, or gold rush location.

  In a place like Courtland, however, it was harder to find year-round streams. That means the prospector had to be part miner right off the bat. He would wander and search around, often with donkey or mule trailing behind, looking for surface areas that seemed promising. When something looked good on the surface, he would usually start a little digging himself, and see what was there. If the ore had potential, he'd bring samples to prospective buyers and see what kind of a deal he could get. Some prospectors turned into miners and dug some fairly deep and complicated shaft works. Most just sold off their claims and moved elsewhere.

  The Courtland area is speckled with hundreds of these "beginnings", which never turned out to be worthwhile. Walking around the area, you will find 10 or 20 divots or dead-end adits (like this one) for every actual producing mine shaft. Every visiting or wandering optimist would see something on the surface that caught his eye, and would start digging, in the (usually failed) hope that this was the big strike and that wild riches were just below the surface. When the empty hole turned out to be just an empty hole, it was abandoned, and a new location was sought.

  A good example of this kind of prospector/miner was George Cummings. For you Tombstone history buffs, you might remember the girlfriend/lover/maybe-wife of Doc Holliday, known as "Big Nose Kate." If you go to the Arizona Pioneer Home Cemetery in Prescott, Arizona, you will find her grave, marked with the name Mary K. Cummings. After Doc Holliday died in Colorado in 1887, Big Nose Kate married George Cummings, who worked variously as a blacksmith, a prospector, and a miner. They were married in 1890 in Aspen, Colorado, and moved to Bisbee, where Mary (Kate) ran a bakery. They later moved to Willcox, where George's drinking finally caused them to separate (although they never divorced and neither re-married). Mary Kate moved to Cochise (25 miles north of here) and worked for years in the Cochise Hotel (which is still in operation...you can still stay there), while George moved here to Courtland. Working part time in the blacksmith shop, he spent most of his time prospecting and mining, looking to strike it rich in the hills between Courtland and Gleeson. He never made it. He committed suicide on July 8, 1915. George's obituary (in the typical "no holds barred" style which was common at the time) bluntly states: "George M Cummings, prospector and miner, committed suicide by blowing off the top of his head with a shotgun, at his house, about two miles west of Courtland, Thursday afternoon at about 2:30.  [...]  For about a year, he has been suffering from the inroads of a cancer, that starting on his nose, had eaten into his head to such an extent that he as well as others, were unable to understand how he continued to live."

  George had "struck gold" several times, but never hit a very large lode, and died a poor and solitary man. He was buried alongside his horse and pets near his cabin on the Gleeson side of the mountains. The very last of the Courtland prospectors was Eugene Yoakem, who lived continuously in Courtland from about 1908 until his death in 1974 at the age of 98. Eugene was the last resident of Courtland, and was about as perfect an example of a grizzled, persistent, long-suffering prospector as you are ever likely to find.

  This GeoCache is dedicated to all the hopeful optimists, wild-eyed newcomers, and grizzly prospectors who dotted the landscape and created the trails in these mountains