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❦ Juanito's Silver ❦
Now here's the part nobody had to invent.
Cerro Colorado has a real buried-treasure story of its own, with named people and a documented crime. Poston's foreman at the mine, remembered in the record only as Juanito, was caught heading toward Sonora with a load of stolen silver bullion. Poston had him executed as a warning to the rest of the workers. Juanito had buried the stolen silver somewhere near the mine before he was caught, and it was never recovered.
The execution did not end the trouble. A band of outlaws, believing the silver was still there to be found, came looking for it not long afterward. They persuaded some of the mine's Mexican workers to help them, tore the workings apart, found nothing and in their anger tortured and killed Poston's brother John, who had been left in charge of the mine, along with two German miners. Then they fled to Mexico. According to the most recent published accounts, Juanito's silver has never been found.
They say a blind hog finds an acorn every now and then. Those outlaws tore that whole mine apart, killed three men over it, and couldn't even manage that.
❦ Where to Look ❦
Every fixed point below comes from a source independent of the Molina Document and of Mitchell's accounts.
Tumacácori Mission, the point every version of the legend measures from: 31.562638° N, 111.050008° W, per the National Park Service
Cerro Colorado ghost town and mine site, about ten miles north of Arivaca: approximately 31.6589° N, 111.2720° W
Cerro Colorado Mountains summit, from an independent USGS source, confirming the same area: 31.7029° N, 111.2551° W
One online ghost-town directory gives a Cerro Colorado coordinate about twenty miles from the figure above. Since the closer figure agrees with an independent summit coordinate five miles away, the distant figure is an error and should not be used.
The other mining areas named in the 1859 account, Sopori, Santa Rita, and Arivaca, lie within twenty miles of Tubac, whose presidio site sits a short way north of Tumacácori along the Santa Cruz River. No source located for this story gives a coordinate for Poston's individual claims. None exists for the Guadalupe Mine, since its only description comes from the circa-1900 manuscript, and none exists for Juanito's buried silver.
❦ Before You Go ❦
Tumacácori Mission is now Tumacácori National Historical Park, run by the National Park Service. Digging anywhere on federal park land is prohibited under the Archaeological Resources Protection Act, whatever any legend says lies underneath. The Cerro Colorado site and the Sopori, Santa Rita, and Arivaca mining areas lie on a mix of private ranchland, state trust land, and Coronado National Forest land, each with its own rules. Written landowner permission is required before searching or digging on private land, and Forest Service permits apply on public land. Many of the old workings are unstable and unsafe to enter.
The country around those old mines isn't empty, either. A TreasureNet discussion of this area describes active mining claims held by private individuals near a spot locals call Camp Loco, one dating to 1985 and another on the far side of the same ridge. Posters familiar with the area describe the claim holders as unfriendly to visitors carrying digging or detecting equipment, and one warns that a claim holder who spots someone heading in with gear is likely to report it to the Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management. Whatever the accuracy of any single forum post, check current mining-claim status with the BLM before any visit, just as you would check land ownership.
From the author. I can add a firsthand warning of my own. During a visit to Tumacácori, I followed a trail south beside the river and soon began hearing whistled signals passing back and forth through the brush on both sides of me. After a few minutes I turned around and headed back. A park ranger later told me the sounds were most likely from people using the river corridor as an illegal border-crossing route. Anyone exploring south of the mission today should remember that this is still an active crossing corridor, not merely a historic one. Go with a companion, stay alert, and take a ranger's warning about the area as seriously as I did.
❦ The People in the Story ❦
Padre Eusebio Francisco Kino founded Tumacácori in 1691, the first mission within the boundaries of present-day Arizona
Charles D. Poston, later called the Father of Arizona, founded the Sonora Exploring and Mining Company in 1856 and invested in the claims that became Cerro Colorado
Samuel P. Heintzelman co-founded the company and served as its first president
Samuel Colt, the Hartford firearms maker, became company president in 1859
John Poston, Charles's brother, ran the Cerro Colorado operation and was killed there by outlaws hunting Juanito's silver
Juanito, Poston's foreman at Cerro Colorado, stole and buried a load of silver bullion and was executed before he could recover it
Donald Garate, park historian at Tumacácori National Historical Park, dated the Molina Document to around 1900 from its handwriting, spelling, and wording
John D. Mitchell, an Arivaca prospector and author, popularized the Carreta Canyon version of the legend beginning in 1933
❦ What It Might Be Worth ❦
The Molina Document's figures, 2,650 units of stamped silver and 905 of gold and silver, come from a manuscript with no colonial-era standing and never define what a "unit" is, so no honest modern value can be built on them.
The Cerro Colorado theft rests on firmer ground. Period accounts put the silver smuggled out of the mine during its working years at about $900,000 in 1850s and 1860s dollars. Using the silver price of the day, the reported $900,000 in missing ore represents roughly 700,000 ounces of silver. At a modern benchmark of $100 per troy ounce used throughout this series, that metal would represent approximately $70 million. How much of it, if any, was buried by Juanito remains unknown. No source says how much of that Juanito buried himself and how much other miners smuggled across the border by other routes, so his cache is some unknown share of that figure.
❦ What Grandpa Would Say ❦
So there you have it. One half of this story is a paper somebody wrote around the time your great-grandparents were young, made up to look three hundred years old.
The other half is a man named Juanito who knew right where he put that silver and never got the chance to go back for it. That is the half I would think about if I were you.
A forged map can only send you where its maker wanted you to go. A genuine crime leaves tracks behind.
A mine, a foreman, a murdered brother, men who wrote it all down. If nobody has found it yet, that silver is still somewhere near the Cerro Colorado workings, and the land around it belongs to somebody, so you ask first and you dig second.
And if you ever walk that river trail south of the mission and hear whistling in the brush, you do what the fellow who wrote this book did. You turn around.
Now don't sit there looking like a calf at a new gate. That's the whole story, and it's past your bedtime.
❦ The Record ❦
The Molina Document, the Guadalupe Mine treasure figures, and the Carreta Canyon story all trace back to a manuscript dated to around 1900 by Donald Garate, former park historian at Tumacácori National Historical Park. Researchers on TreasureNet reached the same conclusion independently from the same handwriting and spelling evidence, though at least two published treasure books discuss the document without treating its forgery as settled. The Guadalupe Mine and Carreta Canyon stories also trace to John D. Mitchell's books from 1933 on, which the manuscript appears to have been made to support after the fact. Whether Mitchell knew it was fabricated or was fooled by it remains disputed.
The history of the Sonora Exploring and Mining Company, the Santa Rita Mining Company, the Cerro Colorado and Heintzelman Mine, and the Juanito theft is confirmed across Wikipedia's sourced entries, Arizona Geological Survey mining-district records, a Tucson.com historical column, and a published 1859 firsthand account. Coordinates for Tumacácori Mission and the Cerro Colorado area were checked against National Park Service and USGS sources. A conflicting Cerro Colorado coordinate in one ghost-town directory was rejected after checking it against an independent nearby landmark. No coordinate is given for the Guadalupe Mine or for Juanito's silver because none exists in the record.
Status: Colonial-era mission-treasure legend identified as a circa-1900 forgery by independent researchers, though not universally accepted as settled. The 1850s mining history is well documented. The Cerro Colorado theft remains unsolved. Forged documents often survive because they are wrapped around a kernel of truth. Southern Arizona was full of old mines, abandoned workings, and stories of missing bullion. Someone looking to dress a rumor in respectable clothes could hardly have picked a better setting.
