b'THE GREAT SALOME GOLD RUSH OF 1909By Bill Roberts Reprinted from The TravelerT HERE WAS A TIME IN 1909 when Salome had its days of glory, glory from a glory hole that put it, for a couple of weeks, in the limelight. Friday, March 12, three prospectors working some seven miles northwest of Salome found surface gold in a gulch some two miles off the Griffin Copper Company property.Henry Barker, Hiram Griffin, and Shorty Algersand that front page hit Whiskey Row. If you know didnt fit the Old West image of prospectors whoanything about Hassayampers who hung out on roamed around with their burro for a companionWhiskey Row, none of them was about to wait until and never talked much about what they found orMonday for some damn train to start running when where they found it. This trio couldnt conceal theirthere was gold to be had only a two-day ride south glee. They packed a chunk of hematite into Salomeof Prescott.and showed it to Dick Wick Hall, the local scribe of national fame. Hall figured there was about $50 inThings were going to hell fast in Prescott anyway gold in that small chunk of hematite. Hall slappedthat year, so far as the Hassayampers wereAs the Miner said in a later edition, They are taking the sample into his safe. The boys headed back out toconcerned. Those fools in the legislature down inthe richest ore ever seen by anyone in this section. the gulch with Hall joining them.Phoenix were working on a bill to ban drinkingIt has set everyone in Salome crazy. Some said the and gambling in the territory. Every day the Minerlegendary and long-lost Six Shooter strike had Together they picked up and dug out two sacks ofcarried this depressing news and every day, the boysbeen found. Hell no, others argued, its gotta be ore Hall said averaged at least $20,000 to the ton. Thegathered in the saloons and gambling halls alongthe Frenchman. Still others said, simply, whatever two sacks were filled with coarse gold and nuggets.Whiskey Row for little support groups in an effortit is, its gold and great globs of it! For good measure, they packed seven more sacksto end the depression. What better remedy than free out of ore that was less rich, estimated by Hall togold float that, according to the Miner story, someThere wasnt much around Salome in those days, if be only two to three thousand per ton. None ofestimated to be worth one of two thousand dollarsDick Wick Halls tales are to be believed. But there that gold had yet been assayed, but Hall had a lota ton. The story told of chunks being carried intowas a belt of limestone and schist that circled the of credibility in Salome. He wrote for the SaturdaySalome as large as a mans fist that were one-thirdtown, a belt that soon was to become one of the most Evening Post of such things as desert frogs who nevergold. Big coarse nuggets and wire gold ran allpopulated limestone and schist belts in the territory. had a chance to swim and had been in the desert sothrough these chunks, according to the Miner.In this belt, and near the now-famous gulch, there long they couldnt. He wrote of a belly dancer whowere big iron blowouts. A big iron blowout could danced in Salome at the old adobe hotel. Never mindThe saloon business was dismal on Whiskey Rowblow the mind of an Arizona miner faster than a that Dick might have had a bit of an interest in thiswhen that story hit the street. The patrons literallyquart of whiskey.strike since he held claims just a few hundred yardsran out of the bars, gambling halls, and houses of ill below the spot where the boys hit pay dirt. repute. It was not a quiet Sunday, March 14. Seemed like half the territory was there, and the other half Word spread fast in the Arizona Territory,was on the way. There just wasnt anywhere to put particularly of a new gold strike. By daybreak thatthem in Dick Wick Halls famed and sleepy little Saturday, Salome had been invaded with gold seekersdesert town. and the strike hadnt even hit the papers yet. There wasnt a burro, horse, mule, or wagon team that had not been rented, loaned, or in some cases, stolen by those early birds heading for the glory hole.Fortunately for Salome, the train to Parker didnt run on weekends or the small desert whistle would have been totally overrun. While Salome was trying to handle the first influx of gold seekers Saturday morning, the front page of the then 45-year-old Journal Miner was being made up in Prescott.Right down the center of the front page, set in type two columns wide, was the first printed news of the strike under the headline Big Discovery Starts Wild Stampede to Harcuvar Range. Wild Stampede wasDICK WICK HALL, OF NATIONAL a bit of an overstatement at the time the type wasFAME, HELPED SPREAD THE NEWS being set. That wouldnt start until the presses rolledOF THE NEW GOLD STRIKE.44 August 2022'