The weather here has been pretty crappy lately, threatening rain and snow everyday. I'm just itching to go out there again and get closer to look for confirmations! Alas, the mountains are not the place to be caught in a snow storm. In the meantime, I'm doing research of the area, and have confirmed spanish were in this area along with the Apaches. One book I'm reading tells of the different battles with the Apaches of the area (complete with locations, just have to match them up with current geography) The mining references are indirect, as the book is focused on biography of the Apaches and the Apache wars, but it will say things like, "the Apaches attacked this place killing several citizens and wounding a few others, with the miners desperate for supplies, another train with a 70 man escort was dispatched from this place on May 6th. It was the last supply train to the mines; sometime in late June the diggings were deserted and the public property was transferred to this place" (this battle was later than some of the others I read about, the book starts out saying the Apaches and Spanish were at war for most of the 18th century, until the 1780's when the Royal Crown issued an order called the
"Instruccion")
Since the Apaches were all over this range and the Chiricauhas, it's all a matter of deciphering whether a certain battle and it's subsequent spoils took place here or there.
There are many tales of lost treasure here such as the more recent one where a bank robber hid out in an abandoned mine in these mountains. The story goes that he got about 100,000 from the robbery and only a little of it was found on him when he was captured. I do know where his hideout was (anyone know how to find paper money?). My family thinks he mailed it to his family, or buried it and told them where to find it, in other words they don't think its there. By the way, it is a fairly large mine that he was hiding in, but I'm not sure of the age or what they were mining (more research needed).
Anyway, I've got a lot to research on and am hoping the weather holds out to go out there and get closer to the formations next Monday.
The other pictures I posted with the cross however, are a lot closer to home, not in the mountains, and accessible even in bad weather. I plan to metal detect in the area in the evenings. So far, all I've found is an old, unidentifiable bullet (and some black sand we'll have to pan out) but I've barely scraped the surface of this area.
I agree with Rangler in that this may have been a sacred place to the indians as I have never seen a place where almost every single rock has a pictograph on it. There used to be a year round spring here a long time ago (pretty much dried up now), which would give the indians (or Spaniards

) life sustaining water. I will post some closer pics of the writing in the next post. The rocks look pretty dangerous to mess around in, and I'd like to make sure I know what I'm doing before I try to move any