No confirmed copy of Golden Empires has turned up in any library catalog, archive, or book dealer listing that can be found with today’s research tools. The pamphlet Milton Rose said he wrote and published before 1930 has not been found. It may be a genuine ghost publication — a real book that survives in no public collection.
In the September–October 1958 issue of True West magazine (Vol. 6, No. 1), Milton F. Rose published the first installment of a three-part article called “I Found a Lost Mine.” The piece was later reprinted in GOLD! magazine in 1970 (Vol. 2, No. 1). In that article, Rose stated that he had written and published a small paper-bound booklet — he called it a pamphlet — titled Golden Empires, covering the Lost Mine of the Padres, also known as the Lost Mine of the Jesuits and the Lost Mines of the Estrellas. He said he published it before 1930.
That is all he tells us about it. No publisher, no place of publication, no page count, no price. Just
The University of Arizona’s Special Collections has all three parts of Rose’s True West series in its holdings. The catalog record for the first installment describes the article’s subject as “lost mine of Tayopa, lost Tumacácori treasure,” which does not quite match the Sierra Estrellas story Rose tells in the article. That could be a cataloger’s error, or it could mean a different installment of the three-part series covers different ground. Worth checking before making a trip to Tucson.
The University of Arizona holds duplication rights to those issues. Anyone wanting photocopies can submit a request through their Special Collections office at speccoll.library.arizona.edu.
WorldCat is the largest library catalog in the world, connecting the holdings of tens of thousands of libraries. No entry for a work titled Golden Empires by Milton Rose, M.F. Rose, or any close variation appears in WorldCat. No copyright registration under that title turns up in available U.S. Copyright Office records for the pre-1930 period either.
That is not proof that the pamphlet never existed. Small self-published booklets printed before 1930 were almost never registered for copyright and were rarely deposited with the Library of Congress. They were printed locally, sold or given away by the author, and if they survive at all, it is usually as single copies held by private collectors or tucked into the uncatalogued corners of a local historical society’s files.
Rose started prospecting the Sierra Estrella Mountains in the summer of 1930, according to his own account in True West. That fits his claim that Golden Empires came out before or right around that time. He was based in Phoenix, knew the old-time prospectors there well, and moved in the same circle as John D. Mitchell, who later wrote about the same Sierra Estrella mines for Desert Magazine starting in 1939 and eventually collected those pieces into Lost Mines of the Great Southwest in 1954.
Mitchell knew Rose personally. If Golden Empires existed as a physical object, Mitchell almost certainly had a copy or at least knew about it. Mitchell’s papers, if they survive, are worth tracing. The Arizona Historical Society in Tucson and the Arizona State Library in Phoenix are the logical starting points.
Five places stand out as the most promising:
1. The Hayden Arizona Collection — Arizona State University, Tempe
Carl Hayden spent decades collecting Arizona ephemera, including small-press and self-published items that never made it into WorldCat. If Golden Empires survives anywhere in a public collection, this is the most likely place. The Hayden Library at ASU holds the collection. |
2. Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records — Phoenix
Located at 1901 W. Madison Street, Phoenix. They hold the Arizona Biography–Obituary Index and strong Arizona ephemera collections. Good for tracing Rose as a person as well as for locally printed pamphlets. |
3. Arizona Historical Society Research Library — Tucson
Their manuscript collections include material from the Arizona mining writer community of the 1920s through 1950s. Mitchell’s papers, if held anywhere, would likely be here. |
4. Desert Magazine Archive
Desert published many of the same writers and occasionally ran notices of self-published booklets by contributors. If Rose advertised or mentioned Golden Empires anywhere in print other than True West, Desert is a reasonable place it might have appeared. |
5. True West Magazine — Current Editorial Staff
True West has been running since 1953 and maintains historical files. Someone working with back issues for anniversary retrospectives may have come across Rose’s correspondence or a copy of the pamphlet. Their contact information is at truewestmagazine.com. |
One detail from the Cactus Files blog’s careful research into this mine is worth keeping in mind. The blog’s author concluded that Rose was probably the first of the three main writers — Rose, Mitchell, and Ray Howland — to find the old Spanish stone house and mine in the Estrellas, even though his account was published last. Rose most likely found the site in the early 1930s. If he wrote Golden Empires before 1930, then he was writing about the legend before he found the place itself, which would make the pamphlet a summary of the oral history and existing lore rather than a first-person discovery account.
That matters to understand what Golden Empires probably contained. It would have been a digest of what Phoenix prospectors and old-timers were saying about the mine in the late 1920s — the French miners who were killed, the Pima Reservation boundary issue, and the old Spanish workings in the mountains south and west of the city. Rose would have written it as a researcher, not yet as someone who had been to the spot.
Golden Empires may be sitting uncatalogued in the Hayden Collection at ASU, or in someone’s private collection, or it may not have survived at all. Pre-1930 self-published pamphlets on Southwest mining legends were printed in small quantities, distributed informally, and rarely kept. Most are gone.
If no one on the forum has a copy or has seen a reference to one in a bibliography or footnote, the Hayden Collection at ASU is the best next move. After that, the Arizona Historical Society. After that, a long shot: tracking down anyone descended from the Phoenix prospecting community Rose was part of in the 1920s and 1930s.
If a copy does turn up, it would be a significant find. Rose’s 1958 True West account is by most reckonings the most detailed and believable first-hand account of the Estrella mines ever published. An earlier pamphlet covering the same ground, written before he found the mine, would give researchers a before-and-after look at how the story developed.
All institutions listed above are publicly accessible. Call ahead before visiting — some Arizona historical collections require appointments. The University of Arizona Special Collections duplication request form is at speccoll.library.arizona.edu. The Hayden Arizona Collection is in Hayden Library at Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287.
TRL
