Shakespeare Ghost Town and Grant County Chronicles

Leitendorf’s Or Ralston?

Still another illustration  [of camps with a large number of synonyms] is the Lordsburg District of Hidalgo County, which embraces two camps: Pyramid at the south end, and Shakespeare or Virginia at the north end. In some reports these are regarded as separate districts. In Pyramid camp, a pan amalgamation* mill was named the Leidendorf (also spelled Leitendorf). A camp earlier named Ralston changed its name to Shakespeare ( also spelled Shakespere). With variants and misspelled names, the roster of synonyms now includes: Grant, Leidendorf, Leitendorf, Pyramid, Pyramid Mountain, Ralston, Shaakespeare, Shakespere, Valedon, and Virginia.

From: File, L. & Northrop, S. (1966) – Circular 84: County, Township, and Range Locations of New Mexico’s Mining Districts.  New Mexico Bureau of Mines & Mineral Resources. UNM Printing. Page 4

*Pan amalgamation – a method of extracting silver from ore involving the use of salt and copper (II) sulfate as well as the usual mercury. This method was in common use in the 19th. century.

The 1870 silver frenzy in the Virginia Mining District centered on the (alleged) vast amounts of almost pure silver ore – “a mountain of quartz, the base of which covers an area of somewhat more than 400,000 square yards, and the height of which is not less than 1,000 feet”²¹ – in the ledges overlooking Ralston town-site, but early reports all refer to the first discoveries as having been made near Leitendorf’s Well. The organization of the Virginia Mining District took place “in the Leidensderf Mountains”, and the ratification meeting of March 25^th was “held at Leidensderf Wells.”

Although the very earliest reports in the Tucson press are somewhat vague about the exact location of the find, the first reports in the New Mexico press are more specific. On April 11, 1870, the Santa Fe Daily New Mexican broke the news of “rich silver mines … discovered in the vicinity of Leitzendorf’s [sic] wells, in Grant County of this Territory.” The Santa Fe Weekly New Mexican of May 24^th also declaring that the new find was “near what are known as ‘Leitzendorffer’s  wells’.”

Leitendorf’s Well lay approximately five and a half miles to the south of Ralston; the well was a long established landmark in that part of the country. Reportedly, it was dug out by Eugene Leitzendorffer in the early 1850s when he was driving a herd of cattle from Illinois to the gold fields of California.²² The well is referred to numerous times in the Official Records of the War of the Rebellion.

It is of course  very possible that, being one of the very few recorded and widely known topographical features in the area, the finds were referred to Leitendorf’s Well for that very reason; that is, to provide some known geographic point of reference. There being of course no “Grant” or “Mexican Spring” or stage stop at what would become Ralston to use as such a point of reference. The only other well-known place in that vast and empty area of southwestern New Mexico was the old Barney Station. This too is mentioned as a point of reference in some newspaper items.

If the early reports are accurate, and the first discoveries were indeed made close to Leitendorf’s Well, how then, and why, did the silver fever become transferred to and focused on those ledges visible in the hills immediately south of Ralston?

The Scientific Press report of July 1870 says that on their return trip in January of 1870, the Brown/Arnold party had, at Leitendorf’s Well:

…found the float rock described by Mr. Brown but no leads in that immediate vicinity. Far up on the crest of the mountains they could see long high walls running in an easterly and westerly direction. Following the rich float rock, it led them about three miles up a gentle declivity to these walls, which proved to be the sides of monster ledges, the source of the prodigal display of float rock which was scattered over an area of several miles below.²³

There is just one problem with this. If Brown had indeed found any silver-rich specimens at Leitendorf’s Well, they most certainly could not have originated at the Ralston ledges. Not only are those ledges over five miles away from Leitendorf’s Well, but there is not now, nor was there ever, any appreciable amount of high grade silver ore to be found in the dikes and ledges visible at Ralston. There is only one area in the Virginia Mining District where high grade silver ore could have been found in any quantity, and that is in the immediate vicinity of Leitendorf’s Well. The ledges adjacent to Ralston contain only trace amounts of silver and gold, with the most commonly occurring minerals there being low grade copper ore, galena (lead ore) and pyrites, an iron ore.

Kobbé’s Report

In June of 1870, Major Kobbé, ²⁴whose report would be published in the Daily New Mexican the following month, made a visit to the mines at Ralston and made the following observations:

• It cannot be said that all the croppings are pure quartz, as the miner’s gauge²⁵ predominates in many portions of the leads; nor is it thought, that when the shafts are sunk to any great depth on these veins, that the leads will be of the same width as they now are on the top.
• The quartz is stained blue and green with more or less lead and some pyrites. A few specimens of horn silver have been found. Silver mixed with copper, lead and antimony have been found. A reddish granite, some gneiss, with a bluish green slate and limestone abound.
• For the mines to pay, provided silver is found in paying quantities, which capital alone can develop, a railroad must be constructed to transport the ore to the Gila River…
• No working tests have been made up to the time of my departure, the 17^thof June 1870, of any ore …²⁶

All of this presents a very different picture from the masses of almost pure silver yielding up to almost $2,500 to the ton reported in various press releases.

Records indicate that Arnold, Brown and those associated with them appear to have not staked one single claim in the immediate area of Leitendorf’s Well, all of their attentions were firmly focused on those ledges immediately neighboring Ralston. Why would they, supposedly experienced prospectors/miners, have passed up on the opportunity to establish claims on the much richer ore to be found near Leitendorf’s Well?

The answer is simple. They had very little interest in the far more mundane appearance of the leads there. The highly visible and much more impressive appearance of the ledges and dikes at Ralston was what really mattered to them. They would much better serve the purposes of what was in mind, and what was in mind was a stock float. In this case the phrase “stock float” was nothing more than a euphemism for another word – that word being “scam”; a scam which would come to involve a large entourage of secondary players. To what extent the majority of these were wittingly involved we are unsure. Later events would cast a shadow of doubt on the innocence of at least some of them, and suggest that greed or, at the very least, the prospect of significant financial gain was a motivational factor in their involvement. What the majority of these people had in common, however, was the fact that they held prominent positions in the business world; they had impressive résumés and were well connected. This was essential to lending an air of legitimacy and solidity to the venture. Many of them had been associated with the originator of the scam in the past, and would be again in the future.  But, prerequisite to the success of the scam was the selection of the right location. Milford describes two of the factors necessary to a mining stock float scam – “a remote site that investors will not visit and reasons the mines cannot produce results.”²⁷ The Virginia Mining District was the embodiment of the first, and was not only in a remote location but also a highly dangerous one. The second factor would very soon begin to manifest itself.

In the next chapter we will talk a little more about George D. Roberts and his history of involvement in various mining promotions. We have already written about his role in the State Line  affair ( Part IV, Preface; published 2/2/24), but in Chapter 20 we will focus more on showing the similarities between the methods that would be employed at the Sate Line and those employed at the VMD. We will also expand on the manipulation of Pierson Dooner, editor of the Tucson Weekly Arizonan, by Roberts et al,

©2007-2024 Jim & Erica Parson

REFERENCES FOR THIS INSTALLMENT

²¹Santa Fe Daily New Mexican. April 19, 1870

²²Julyan, Robert (1998, Second Edition) The Place Names Of New Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Page 279

²³Scientific Press. Volume XXI. Number 5. July 30, 1870.

²⁴William August Kobbé had a distinguished military career, rising to the rank of Brigadier General in the United States Army. He was born in New York in 1840, and as a young man was sent to Germany where he studied mining engineering at the prestigious Freiberg and Clausthal schools. In 1862, he enlisted in the 178^th New York Volunteers, serving until the end of the Civil War; he later served in both New Mexico and Kansas during Indian hostilities. [Leonard, John W. (Editor). Who’s Who In America, 1903-1905 (3^rd Edition). Chicago: A. N. Marquis & Company. Page 854.]

²⁵This is probably a misprint, the correct spelling being “gangue”. This is the term used to refer to the economically worthless or undesired materials found in close association with the ores that are being mined. The word derives from the German word “gang”  meaning a vein, lode or seam.

²⁶Santa Fe Daily New Mexican. July 13, 1870

²⁷Milford, H. (1999) Gore Canyon Environmental Assessment, Appendix F – Early History Of The Lordsburg Mining District. The Burro Mines. Pater Argenti Of The World. Page 8. Hereafter referred to as Milford (1999).