Bronco Canyon Lost Pick Gold Mine

Back to Arizona Treasure Stories

In the early 1870s, a Yavapai Indian would periodically ride into the old Phoenix town to trade and buy food and supplies with gold nuggets at the local pub that also served as a store.  He never seemed to be lacking gold, and one late Fall day two miners who frequented the tavern named Brown and Davies decided to follow him to try to locate the source of his gold.

They kept a distance behind the Indian, traversing north by northwest out of town, noting red-brown mountains on their right.  They climbed steadily out of the valley and into higher country where they camped on the grassy heights the first night.  

On the second day of their trek they entered rougher country with larger, darker, more forbidding mountains, dark black in spots with malpais from an ancient lava flow.  The saguaro and sandy slopes soon gave way to broken rock and low-growing mesquite on the gulch floors, and they crossed Skunk Creek, New River, and finally Agua Fria as they entered the vastness of Black Canyon.

There were high mountains to their west and the towering and steep cliff-like Black Mesa on their right.  The Indian headed into one of several deep arroyos that cut east through the Black Mesa into Bronco Canyon and disappeared.  Brown and Davies followed.  

They entered Bronco Canyon east of the ghost town Bumble Bee, Arizona (originally Snider's Station), which canyon carried a tributary to the Agua Fria, and searched the canyon thoroughly and the draws that fed it, locating a very rich 18" quartz vein of gold in one of the rough-cut washes on the west side of the canyon.   (See Map of Black Mesa and Bronco Canyon East of Bumble Bee)

They constructed a crude rocker and arrastre for crushing gold out of ore at a nearby spring, and worked from sun up til after dark for days.  During the first few days, in preparation for winter storms coming, they were able to haul about 200 pounds of the gold in sacks out of the canyon, which they stashed safely 8 miles away at the confluence of the old Squaw Creek and Slate Creek on the southwest side of what is now Black Canyon City (formerly known as Goddard and Canon) likely not far from where the Kay Mine was.  (See Map of Black Canyon City Area)  

After working for almost a week, and having filled about 25 sacks altogether with high-grade ore, they were ambushed by a band of Apaches on horses who also were known to roam the region with the Yavapai.  Davies was killed instantly in the first burst of gunfire, but Brown dropped to the ground feigning his death and rolling under a thicket.  

The unpredictable Apache warriors rode away, and Brown buried the remaining gold sacks in a shallow hole under a pile of rocks between a large boulder and a stratum of white volcanic ash that outcropped along the foot of the mountains on the east side of the arroyo, left his unfortunate partner's pick in the face of the quartz vein to mark the location, and escaped out of the canyon after nightfall only taking as much gold with him as he could carry, heading for California, and intending to return after the Indians vacated the region.   

Many years later at age 80 about the time the Great Depression fell upon the country, Brown returned to Phoenix and made preparations for a jaunt into Bronco Canyon to recover his treasure, but fell ill and revealed the above story of the hidden gold on his death bed.  He said that the balls of amalgam contained about $80,000 worth of gold at the time.

A few years after Brown's death, a Mexican sheepherder in Phoenix said he had passed a campsite in Bronco Canyon, noting a nearby rusty pick stuck in a quartz outcropping, but he didn't know of the mine or treasure at the time, and didn't stop to investigate.  

Other visitors to the area have also reported seeing an arrastre in the same region, but the lost gold mine, the cache of buried gold in Bronco Canyon, and the gold hidden where the Squaw and Slate creeks met have never been found.