ODDS’N’SODS — A man, a burro and a vulture

Henry Wickenburg followed the lure of gold from his native Austria to the wild west of the U.S. For 10 years, he searched for the elusive vein that would make him rich. Somehow it was always just beyond his reach.

Wickenburg missed the chance of a lifetime when he learned that the celebrated Peeples-Weaver party had just embarked for Arizona. Wickenburg raced after them and did indeed catch up — just after they hit their great strikes at Weaver’s Gulch and Rich Hill.

Discouraged, the prospector, together with an unnamed companion, took to the road. The companion became ill and was forced to return to camp . . . his burro was growing balky. Wickenburg had a desert to cross, but the animal was moving more and more slowly . . . until finally it refused to budge another step. A circling vulture landed nearby, eying the stubborn burro. Frustrated beyond endurance, Wickenburg picked up a rock and hurled it at the predator in disgust.

The rock split open. Wickenburg had discovered gold.

The first gleaming nugget was traced to a rich lode nearly 15 ft. wide. Wickenburg’s partner put no faith in the prospector’s story, so Wickenburg returned to develop the claim himself.

The mine, naturally named the “Vulture,” became one of the richest producers in the area. The only drawback was the absence of a nearby source of water, so the ore had to be washed in the Hassayampa River 12 miles away. With grinding devices constructed, Wickenburg went into the business of selling ore on a cash-and-carry basis. For $15 a ton, a man could mine his own, transport it to the river and mill it for whatever he could get. The ensuing rush continued until all the easily accessible, high-grade ore was taken. At this point, Wickenburg sold a four-fifths share of the mine for US$75,000 to a Philadelphian, who built a 40-stamp mill nearby. Vulture Mining Co. operated steadily form 1866 until 1872. During this time, it produced US$2.5 million in gold from 118,000 tons of ore, not including the gold smuggled out by “high-grader” miners.

Epilogue: Old mines die hard, if ever. Higher gold prices and modern technology breathed new life into the Vulture mine in the late 1980s. Tailings from previous extraction plants were agglomerated and then heap-leached to recover the gold. Exploration has identified a near-surface resource which may be mined in the future.

— From a story in the updated 1993 edition of “From the Ground Up,” by Jack Williams, a former governor of Arizona.