Old Bookaroo
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Old Tyopa
An Account of the Accidental Discovery of an Ancient Gold-Mining Camp in Northern Chihuahua—
The True Tyopa, Famous for Its Bells, Situated in Sonora
By Donald F. McCarthyAn Account of the Accidental Discovery of an Ancient Gold-Mining Camp in Northern Chihuahua—
The True Tyopa, Famous for Its Bells, Situated in Sonora
Written for Engineering and Mining Journal
THE STORY OF OLD TYOPA, with its wealth of hidden gold stored away in the workings of an old mine, will bear further repetition, as well as the tale of the famous Tyopa bells, which are said to have been cast from an ore that contained the elements essential to their making, and of which I had heard much, years ago in southern Sonora.
That there were many rich mines in that section of the Sierra Madre in the early days, there is little doubt, but the difficulties of successful development were too great to be overcome by the men who were in the country and knew of them at the time, and no success could have attended any mining venture there, owing to the hostile Apaches, who then overran the country.
Nor are the conditions any less formidable today than they were then, and though the Apache menace has long since disappeared, one equally as bad, if not worse, took its place, in that it then became a safe retreat for Mexican outlaws ; and such it still remains. It was about the time the Bisbee mines were found, and when the excitement of their discovery was at its height, that a man named John Carey found the ruins of an old mining camp near the main divide of the Sierra Madre, and a few miles from the Casa Blanca, an old landmark dating back to early Spanish occupation, and from which the ruins of Old Tyopa are but a few miles distant.
Carey had heard the old story of a fabulously rich gold mine in that section of country, that had been worked by the early Spaniards, who were afterward overcome by the Indians, their camp being destroyed and all of them killed, and that the gold so mined was stored away in the underground workings, and was still there if it could be found. He had gone in there alone with a saddle and pack outfit by way of the Janos trail, from Silver City, N. M., to the old town of Janos, in Chihuahua, and there took the Casa Blanca trail, which intersects the Janos trail at that point and bears west across the divide into Sonora.
The third day out from Janos, Carey reached the Casa Blanca, and beyond there a few miles, in the direction the trail was going, he sighted the ruins of Old Tyopa and camped there that night. But the loneliness and desolation of everything, as he beheld it the next morning, and the dread of being discovered by the Indians, the possibility of which dawned on him only then, caused him to become so uneasy and fearful for his safety that he stayed only the first day, left there after dark, and traveled all that night on his way back to Janos. That the old mine he sought was in the heart of an Apache stronghold everybody knew, and just how he got in there and back as he did, was something on which he never cared to speculate. He said he never realized the desperate chances he had taken until he reached the old ruins, and how hopeless his plans had then become.
Carey described the place as being on the side of a basin on the main divide, and said that the bed of the creek which runs through the basin had been terraced with a series of cement dams, stretching up the creek farther than he cared to go, to hold back the water, which evidently came only when it rained, and on the bank of the creek he found a place where he thought the ore had been ground in arrastres, but he said that the arrastres themselves were buried under wash caused by cloudbursts. He did some panning below the old workings, which bore evidence of having once been worked as placers, and found considerable gold, but as to the mine itself he knew nothing, except what the float told him, and that disclosed but little in the way of gold. The main workings, as he outlined them, might cover three or four acres, he thought, or more, though there were other places in line with them that showed signs of having been worked to a considerable extent also; but everything had caved in and was covered up with wash and overgrown with brush. He discovered nothing on the surface that would indicate the size or character of the vein or orebody, except that the float showed it to be a free gold ore.
Everything was in such ruin and so overgrown with vegetation that he could tell little about it; but that it had been extensively worked at one time could be readily seen, and from the size of the trees that had grown there since its destruction, it was apparent that it was very old. The Casa Blanca, according to Carey, stands on high ground and commands a wide view of the surrounding country, and might have been a lookout post and possibly a fortification for the main camp, which is a few miles to the west and in plain sight.
It derived its name, which means the White House, from the color of the rock of which it is built, and though it has long ago fallen into ruins, it remains the best-known mountain landmark on the trails crossing from Chihuahua to Sonora.
Old Tyopa met its fate at the time of the Indian insurrection of 1680, when the Pueblo tribes throughout the Southwest, beginning in and about Santa Fe, rose against the Spaniards, who had enslaved them for generations in the mines. The comparatively few who escaped massacre at the hands of the Indians were driven out of New Mexico and Arizona and far into Mexico. It was this retribution, so to speak, that overtook not only Old Tyopa, and brought about the destruction of that old camp and the annihilation of its inhabitants, but of all the others that are known to have been in existence throughout that section of the Sierra Madre up to that time, and which later disappeared.
The country I refer to covers the northern half of Chihuahua and Sonora, and is confined as a whole to the high slopes of the main divide of the Sierra Madre, and has long been known to the Mexicans as the terraino incognito, from its unknown character.
The Casa Blanca trail, which one time led across from the eastern to the western foothills of the Sierra Madre, was one of many such trails that crossed that divide, and these trails were old and well-traveled Indian highways when the Spaniards first came. It was due to those trails and the guidance of the friendly Indians who inhabited the valleys and high plateaus of the Sierra Madre that the Spaniards were so successful in their mining discoveries.
Old Tyopa, so called, is about sixty-five miles in an air line west of the old town of Janos, in northern Chihuahua, and is the beginning of the Casa Blanca trail going west.
Tyopa Famous for Its Bells in Sonora
The true Tyopa, whose history is one of the cherished traditions of the people of southern Sonora for the sweet-toned mission bells that were once cast from its ores, is on the headwaters of the Rio Mayo, in Sonora, about a hundred miles north of the town of Alamos, and well within the terraino, so called. It did not produce the character of ore generally believed to lie in the mine at Casa Blanca, its ore being a chalcocite or copper glance containing about one-fourth gold and silver and three-fourths copper after being smelted. The Tyopa bells, whose fame traveled far and wide, were distributed in chimes to many of the West Coast missions and were hauled with ox teams across the desert to the more remote missions of Arizona and New Mexico, and were even carried to Sitka, Alaska, where the Franciscans once maintained a mission settlement. But a later generation dismantled them, melted them down, and recovered the gold and silver they contained.
~ Engineering and Mining Journal (19 November 1921) Vol. 112, No. 21
Good luck to all,
The Old Bookaroo
