After searching for sixty years for a long-lost gold mine known as the Adams Diggings, Ralph Reynolds tells all he's learned. This is a rousing tale of Apache cunning and Yankee gullibility. And it's a story of lost lives, emptied souls, and misguided senses in a land of magnificent mountains, mesas, and canyons. His book delivers evidence that three or more prospecting parties were massacred after they located the diggings and the startling implications of these events. And most rewardingly, it tells how, and most likely from where, the gold nuggets were clandestinely removed late in the nineteenth century and why and where the mother lode may soon be found.

DIE RICH HERE

The Lost Adams DiggingsBy RALPH REYNOLDS

Trafford Publishing

Copyright © 2012 Ralph Reynolds
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4669-5225-6

Contents

Introduction..............................................................xviiChapter 1 From One Nugget, a River of History.............................1Chapter 2 The Lore of Adams Diggings......................................5Chapter 3 Gold Just Lying There...........................................11Chapter 4 Won't You Come Into My Canyon?..................................23Chapter 5 The Mysterious Saga Of John W. Brewer...........................31Chapter 6 Again & Again, Death Visited Sno-Ta-Hay.........................37Chapter 7 Tales Of Gold That Nana Told....................................45Chapter 8 These Cowboys Got Rich Awful Quick..............................52Chapter 9 Cause Of Death: The Adams Diggings..............................57Chapter 10 Outlaw Guns, Gold, Magic Wands & Violins.......................68Chapter 11 Lost Causes: From Maps To Malpais..............................79Chapter 12 Exploring The Land Of Adams Diggings...........................89Chapter 13 Prospecting 101: (Rocks +Hope = Adventure).....................96Chapter 14 Where To Look For The Mother Lode..............................110Epilogue..................................................................115Appendix..................................................................117Acknowledgements..........................................................123Bibliography..............................................................125

Chapter One

From One Nugget, a River of History

It is just past lunchtime at the Reserve, New Mexico home of Bela Birmingham. Two aging men are comfortably seated and conversing in a front room filled with rare and beautiful antiques. Both men, as they say these days, 'have been around.' The author of this book is a seasoned writer/ editor who, in his younger days, traveled the world observing and writing about agriculture. Bela Birmingham, bright-eyed, sprightly, quick-witted, is the sort of guy that old-timers might have called a 'good scout'. He's actually a retired rancher, an entrepreneur of the range, one who lived the life and lore that people only read and dream about today. Our discussion, however, has nothing to do with agriculture or cattle or his experiences or mine. Instead, our talk is about a shiny little rock weighing no more than an ounce or so. The subject item is a gold nugget said to have been given away by a prospector named John Adams, who at one time had perhaps thousands of them in his possession.

The lineage of Mr. Birmingham spans the Anglo history of this part of New Mexico. His great, great grandfather, R.C. Patterson, came here as a cavalryman during the 19th century to fight renegade Apaches. He established a ranch on the fabled 'Sea of Grass' plains of Socorro County. One autumn day an exhausted stranger visited the ranch, said his name was Adams, and told R.C. he was a prospector who, with some other men, once made a rich gold strike in nearby mountains. The party was attacked and overwhelmed by Apaches. Only two escaped. He gave R.C. a nugget from the mine. R.C., in turn, gave the nugget to his daughter, Mary, who later married an H.J. Maybury. A daughter, Ellen, was born of this union. It is believed she inherited the nugget from her Mother. Ellen, in turn, married Bela Birmingham, Sr., who was, of course, the father of the man with whom the author is conversing. Bela tells that the nugget disappeared before his time, but it was well remembered by the family because of the notoriety achieved by its first owner, John Adams. (This story is at variance with parts of the traditional description of Adams' escape from the canyon that you'll read in chapter 2. It's not necessarily a contradiction, merely an 'amendment' to an old oft-revised story.)

The author is putting the story of 'Mary's nugget' (as it came to be called) into this opening chapter, not because it adds support to the story Adams told, but because of an ironic twist of history: One little nugget, now as lost as the mine from whence it came, is the only lineage eye-witness gold we have to go on from what has become the greatest, most vexing, and persistent lost-mine tradition of North American History.

Most stories die young. A few go on and on. Some seem to live forever. Why? Many old stories have intriguing and mysterious untold parts that keep them going from one generation to another. The Story of Adams Diggings has so many dangling mysteries attached that it has stayed alive and well for some 150 years. And that's what this book is all about.

Every story needs a starting place. Mr. Adams told only a small part of the epic but his name got hitched to it, so we will begin with him.

John R. Adams was born into a large Pennsylvania family in August of 1819. His father moved the family to Rock Island County, Illinois, arriving in 1842. John married and became a freighter. He fathered seven children. Early in the 1860's, he left home, driving his wagons west toward California. His family never saw or heard from him again. What happened to John R. Adams? It appears that for some reason he delayed his return to Illinois. Nobody knows just why. But considering evidence more than a century old, we have a pretty good handle on why he never came home at all: What John Adams found in the West was more alluring than the arms of loved ones, more compelling than any earthly responsibility. In a cliff-bound canyon, stark with beams and shadows, John Adams and his companions came upon the most pristine and glamorous glitter that sun and sky and raw earth can offer—nuggets of gold. It was enough to stop the heart of the most jaded pilgrim, for the placers were so numerous that a rippling stream winked bright bursts of yellow with each step along it.

Adams found in the west a treasure rich enough to bear his name into history. Then in a wrenching moment he lost it again.

In the eyes of his family, John Adams had simply disappeared. Years passed. His memory faded. His wife, Eliza, died in 1886, perhaps wasted by anxiety and loneliness. Her remains lie in the graveyard of Hampton, Illinois. It is believed that John Adams died in California in the 1890's. His gravesite is unknown, but of Adams himself we know much. He left behind a legend that even today helps define the history of the deepest corner of the great Southwest. In an indirect way it's a story that relates to a vast region from the Rio Grande west to the Colorado and south to the Sierra Madre of Mexico. John Adams never reached into the recesses of all these lands, but his legend did. Like strands of a cobweb, it connected to the Apache wars, the shaping of the reservation system, the relentless march of Mormon settlement, the discovery of mineral riches, the establishment, rise and fall, and rise again of mining and farming communities. It linked up with the cowboys, the outlaws, the ranchers, the great land holdings of the region. Even international tension and conflict along the border between the U.S. and Mexico connected in a way to the fabulous tale of what came to be known as the Lost Adams Diggings.

I have neither the training nor instincts of an historian. This book is not a volume of history, rather it might be called a litany of conjecture. But as the story reaches into nooks and crannies of long ago, perhaps you will sense, as I did, that the Adams Diggings is something more than an epic of hopeful and daring men, bedeviled by adversaries, fate, and...