The Lost Adams Diggings is one of the most enduring gold legends in New Mexico. Since 1864, it has captivated the adventurer and treasure seeker in many of us.
Growing up near Pie Town, my mom had a bumper sticker that said, “Where is Pie Town, NM? Somewhere between Gut Ache Mesa and Adam’s Diggings!” The hilarity of this sticker is that no one really knows where Adam’s Diggings is. It’s a place of legends and gold nuggets the size of your fist, and only a few people in the nineteenth century have repeated vague tales about finding it and then never being able to find it again. Popular consensus is that it is somewhere in the vicinity of Datil, NM, which is about 22 miles east of Pie Town. Some believe it might be closer to the Black Range mountains in the Gila Wilderness or the Zuni Mountains near Ramah.
This legend has fascinated me for years, as it has many other people. Some people are obsessed with finding this old legend and the gold that can supposedly be found in surplus at this site. I don’t care about the gold so much. I just want to find out if this legend is even somewhat true, or if it’s a bunch of baloney. There are a few people, such as authors Marshall Bulle and Lazzy Dilltzer, who claim they have successfully found it, but they can’t really prove it for some reason. To date, there is no solid evidence that the Lost Adam’s Diggings is anything more than another legend from the Gold Rush days. Nevertheless, it is fascinating and exciting, a free time travel expedition back to 1864.
The Legend
Edward Adams was a wagoneer who ran freight across the harsh desert landscape of New Mexico, Arizona, and California. Anyone who has driven through this area now knows how dry and treacherous it is, even with modern comforts and conveniences of cars, interstates, travel stops, and state-maintained rest areas. Imagine attempting this journey in a horse-drawn wagon!
At one point in 1864, Adams’ expedition was attacked and raided by Apaches. Thus, he escaped to a Pima Indian village with just twelve horses and a few men. The men decided to stop at a tavern for a drink to recover from their harrowing experience. When one of the men named Brewer paid for his drink with a gold piece, someone in the tavern of Mexican and Native American descent called “Gotch Ear” declared, “I can take you to a place where the gold is bottomless.” Well that offer was too good to pass up for Adams and his crew.
On August 20, 1864, twenty-two men set out with Gotch Ear as their guide toward what would become the Lost Adam’s Diggings. Most of the men were unfamiliar with the area and relied entirely on Gotch Ear for direction. The known individuals in this story are John Snively, Edward (or John) Adams, John Brewer, Jack Davidson. The names of the other men in the expedition have been lost to history.
According to the legend, Gotch Ear led the crew along the Gila River to the White Mountains, around Springerville, AZ. This is a little town very close to the New Mexico State Line, along what is now Highway 60. They camped between two peaks, which are now believed to be Mt. Ord and Mt. Baldy. I think this could be accurate because these peaks are in the Tonto National Forest, 90 miles north of the Gila River and 33 miles west from the Round Valley, where the party camped the next day. It is feasible for them to cover 33 miles in a day on horseback, especially with a motivated guide. From there, the men could see a peak to the northeast that Gotch Ear claimed was the site of the gold, over 100 miles away.
Historians Richard and Lois French took on finding the diggings and they initially thought that this peak might be Veteado Peak. Many others have also identified this area as a good candidate for the site. But when the authors visited the location, they noticed that Veteado is not clearly visible from between Mt. Ord and Mt. Baldy. Instead, the prominent peaks they could see were Escondido Mountain and the Gallo Mountains south of Quemado.
The next day, the party set off toward the peak in an unclear direction. They camped in the Round Valley (currently the home of Springerville and Eagar, AZ) with the hulking Escudilla Mountain to their south. Then they carried on for four days and crossed the Continental Divide. Knowing which direction they followed would be helpful here, as the Continental Divide can be reached an infinite number of ways from the Round Valley. However, it cuts very close to Pie Town, NM, which is a 211-mile journey from the Round Valley.
On August 30, the party reached a wagon road that Gotch Ear claimed led to the Malpais (the Malpais are near Grants and north of Quemado) and a fort there. They camped in a “pumpkin patch” which to me suggests nearby Native American dwellings. Many theorize that this wagon road was actually the Fort Craig-to-Fort Wingate road. This would place the party south of Grants, east of the Continental Divide, and between Pie Town and the Malpais.
August 31 saw the party riding through a very long and narrow canyon. At some point, they were able to see two “sugarcone-shaped” or haystack-shaped peaks. Gotch Ear told them the site lay between these peaks. After reaching a rocky cliff that they could not scale, Gotch Ear showed them a passageway behind a boulder that led into a zigzag canyon, which I think may be a slot canyon. Adams described how you could hold your arms out both sides and touch the walls of the canyon. The going was treacherous but at the end the party spilled into a small valley with a running stream, where they were able to rest and water their horses.
Paydirt lined this little stream. The weary travelers started panning right away and apparently found an unbelievable amount of gold. They were intensely excited to have finally found this famed place. Gotch Ear told them the real canyon of gold lay in the next canyon over, beyond the falls. But the men were so enticed by all this paydirt that they did not move.
Adams’ party paid Gotch Ear and he left. They never saw him again. The next morning, as they were panning for gold, thirty Apaches approached, led by a man named Nana. Nana told the men they could keep their scalps as long as they didn’t cross the falls at the end of the canyon. Nana told them the canyon they were panning in was called “Sno-Ta-Hay.” The canyon beyond the falls had better gold but was also a sacred site for the Apaches, and all the gold there was believed to be “tears of the sun,” so the men were not to touch it if they wanted to avoid the wrath of the Apaches.
The 22 gold hunters agreed and panned for gold in their current area and built a cabin. They supposedly hid the gold they collected under the hearth and planned to split it once they were done in Sno-Ta-Hay. Snively, the smart German member of the party, insisted on taking his gold at the end of the day and stayed away from everyone else in a little cave. This move ultimately saved his life.
Eventually, the goldlust got to some of the men and they did exactly what they had told Nana they would not do. On the other end of the falls, they found a much richer valley and Adams unearthed a “hen’s egg” gold nugget. They returned to Sno-Ta-Hay to sleep in the cabin, not aware that Apaches were watching them, determined to punish them for violating their agreement. Adams hid the gold nugget at the base of a tree, thinking he was so slick.
On September 10, Brewer led a crew out of the canyon to get supplies from Fort Wingate. The provisions party never returned. Adams and Davidson searched for them and found them dead and scalped not far from the canyon, buzzards circling tightly over their reeking bodies. Only Brewer was missing from the slaughtered party.
Just then, they heard Apaches attacking Sno-Ta-Hay. They hid and watched the Apaches slaughter all of the other men left in the valley and burn down the cabin. The Apaches danced around the carnage until sunrise. When they left, Adams and Davidson checked the canyon and found all the men dead and no way to get to the gold buried in the hearth due to the fire and smoldering logs. Adams did, however, manage to pocket his hen’s egg nugget that he had hidden at the roots of the tree.
The two men barely escaped with their lives. They wandered through the desert for days and were finally picked up by military patrolmen and taken to an unnamed fort. Some think that they were taken to Fort Apache, but this fort was not built until 1872. Others think they may have been taken to Fort Whipple in Arizona. Knowing the exact fort would provide another important clue to nailing down the general area they were in. Apparently Adams was nursed back to health by a Dr. Sturgeon, who was confirmed to be a real person by this guy.
Adams went back to California after that, but he returned to New Mexico in the 1870s and spent nearly 18 years trying to find his gold again. He was never successful. He eventually gave up and died in his nineties, but he told many people about his treasure canyon. This spread the goldlust around like a viral fever.
Davidson went back to Ohio and died there. His daughter published his journal which included a map of the Zuni Mountains, triggering a large group of people to search that area for the Lost Adams Diggings. Many people still believe that the Zuni Mountains are the most likely location for the Lost Adam’s Diggings. However, I’m not sure if that makes sense, given the clues above. That mountain range seems out of the way and would have required the men to pass through or around the western edge of the Malpais. The clues never said they crossed or skirted the Malpais; it states that they stayed south of it, on the Ft Craig-Ft Wingate road, between the Malpais and Pie Town. That is, unless they were following a different wagon road that has become lost to time, headed in a different direction.
I think it is more likely that the Diggings are somewhere in the Galinas mountains, and this is because of a different story told later on by James McKenna and clues left behind by John Snively.
Remember that John Snively did not stay with the other men in the cabin and did not leave his gold buried beneath the hearth. He was smart for doing so. He survived the Apache attack in his little cave with all of his gold. His story provides a few more clues about the location of the Lost Adam’s Diggings because after he escaped Sno-Ta-Hay, he ended up in Pinos Altos, which he said was 125 miles south of where he had found the gold. One hundred and twenty-five miles north of Pinos Alta would be around Pie Town, NM. Evidently the gold he possessed was real and he cashed it out for $13,000 (worth $58,205.50 now). He returned to Arizona, where he was eventually killed by Apaches near Prescott.
Now we get to John Brewer. Remember how he was missing from the mutilated provision party. Well, he survived. He traveled only by moonlight to escape detection by the Apaches. The high desert took its toll on him and he ended up nearly dead in a Native village. The villagers nursed him back to health and then guided him to the Rio Grande. There, he crossed the river and walked seven miles north to a little village. From there, he was able to get a wagon ride to Santa Fe. That is where his involvement in this saga ends. But according to Paul Harden with the El Defensor, his journey offers the most lucid clues about the location of the Lost Adam’s Diggings.
Harden theorizes that the village Brewer ended up at was likely the village of Alamo, a home for misplaced Navajo and Pueblo people who were generally not as aggressive toward white settlers as the Apaches. This would fit perfectly with his journey from the Pie Town area if he had followed the north edge of the Gallinas mountains along the Rio Salado. He would likely have stayed near the Rio Salado to maintain access to water. The distances check out. Alamo is about thirty miles from the Rio Grande if you continue to follow the Rio Salado, so this is likely the route the Native villagers walked him on. Then, walking from that crossing point seven miles, he would have reached the town of La Joya, where he could have certainly caught a wagon going to Santa Fe. La Joya is one of the few settlements east of the Rio Grande in this area. I think Harden has a very wonderful theory here.
Later Expeditions
John Snively apparently told soldiers where to find Sno-Ta-Hay after cashing out his gold. They passed these instructions onto a rancher named Jason Baxter. With his friend John Adair at his side, Baxter found the location and panned lots of gold from the region, even noting the bones of a burned-down cabin there. But Apache attacks and a thunderstorm forced them to retreat from the area. This was roughly in 1877 or 1878.
After that, he returned seven years later, in roughly March 1885, taking with him James McKenna. The year is determined by the fact McKenna said Geronimo had just escaped from San Carlos and Grover Cleveland was the new president. McKenna is the author of the Black Range Tales, one of the most fascinating accounts of life in the New Mexico wilderness and gold panning near the Gila in the late 19th Century. McKenna details his journey with Baxter and while they successfully located the spot, it had already been destroyed, likely by a flood. They found no gold; even the clear stream rushing through the little canyon was gone. In the fragile desert, something like a flash flood could easily lead to mudslides that could completely alter an area geographically in a short period of time. I think it is possible they found the right location and now it will never be found because it has been altered in such a way that it will never match the details Adams’ crew described.
Both of Baxter’s expeditions involved following the Gila River for a time and crossing the Elk Mountains into the San Augustine Plains. These are the vast plains that now house the VLA. The first night, they camped in the south end of the plains. The next night, they found a watering hole in the plains to camp at. On the third night, they reached the mountains that form the northern edge of the plains, which are the Datil and Gallinas mountains. They found a copper-stained canyon that they followed back into the mountains. From there, they were able to locate the zigzag canyon. In Baxter’s first expedition, his donkey apparently smelled water and led him through this canyon to the valley with the stream. In the second expedition with McKenna, the animals did not seem to pick up on water and the entrance to the canyon was full of boulders and rocks that hadn’t been there previously, pointing to a natural disaster having taken place.
Exiting the canyon, Baxter showed McKenna “Island Mountain.” This place is not named that anymore. But Baxter described the mountain as resembling an Egyptian pyramid. That gives a good geographical clue. Look for a pyramid-shaped mountain in the Gallinas or Datil mountains and you might have your Island Mountain. I wonder if it’s East Sugarloaf Mountain in the Datil Mountains.
When the men camped that evening, they could see the Magdalena Mountain and the face of Mary Magdalene, which is visible on the east side of the Magdalenas in certain lights. I am assuming they must have been to the west or northwest of the mountain so they could see its eastern face. Northwest/west puts them in the Datil mountains and directly northwest puts them in the Galinas at the foot of what is the Cibola National Forest.
Giving up, they ended up in Reserve a few days later. Reserve would be to the southeast of the plains, a few days’ journey by horseback. Baxter was killed by Apaches a little later. McKenna went on to write Black Range Tales and share his many exciting stories of the rough, wild life he led in the Gila region.
In the 1890s, another account appears of Sno-Ta-Hay. A Socorro merchant named James Chase claimed he met Nana, the Apache chief. This chief told him about Sno-Ta-Hay. Nana said this canyon was northwest of Ojo Caliente, where Chase worked in a trading post, and would take two days for a white man and one day for an Indian to reach. At a rate of the average 35 miles a day horseback, two days or seventy miles from Ojo Caliente would put the location of the canyon at the northwest Galinas mountains. Chase apparently never visited this place but he wrote down what Nana told him.
Four Days from Fort Wingate is a book that believes the clues from these men point toward the Datil or Gallinas mountains. Paul Harden also theorizes that this is the site of the Lost Adam’s Diggings. And reading their evidence, I’m inclined to agree. None of the evidence points to the Zuni Mountains, the Black Range, or places in Arizona where others have frantically searched for this lost gold site.
John Townsend is a cowboy who supposedly found the Lost Adams Diggings in 1894. There is no proof that he actually did, however. I don’t have many details on his expedition.
Now, remember Dr. Sturgeon? He nursed the near-dead Adams back to health after Adams was found near dead in the desert, supposedly the survivor of a brutal Apache attack. Dr. Sturgeon heard Adams’ story of gold and dismissed it. When people began to fervently search for this gold, however, he remembered his patient seventeen years ago and decided to look for it. Though his original crew fell apart, not liking the desert area, he found a man named John Dowling who was also looking for the Lost Diggings. He had Dowling lead his expedition. Though he had to return to his home state of Ohio, one of his men and two of Dowling’s set out in the Datil Mountains, east of the Sawtooth, and supposedly found the canyon described by Adams. But there was no gold in it.
Another man, Bob Lewis, met Adams in 1889. They tried to find the gold with no luck because Adams just couldn’t remember the directions to the place Gotch Ear had taken him over twenty years before. In 1890, Lewis bumped into Adams again at a tavern in Magdalena and interviewed him over a few drinks. A fight broke out between Adams and another man who insisted Adams was a liar, which Lewis broke up. Lewis then hid Adams safely away for the night.
By this time, Adams had retired from searching for gold and had given up on ever finding his lost diggings. But he felt ingratiated to Bob Lewis, apparently, so he instructed Lewis to find the bones of his men stuffed in a crevice at the entrance to the zigzag canyon and covered in pack blankets. “That is where you will find the gold,” he swore.
Lewis apparently did find a narrow crevice 35 miles northwest of Magdalena, NM, with many skeletons, stacked and covered in pack blankets. He also found the burned ruins of a cabin. He based his search based off of three pyramid-shaped mountains called the Tres Montosas that were visible from the canyon. He did not find any gold, however. Lewis also could not find the secret door into the zigzag canyon that led to Sno-Ta-Hay and he attributed this to an earthquake that had ravaged Arizona and New Mexico in 1887. This is interesting because McKenna claims the area was already rearranged in 1885, before this earthquake, so it could be that another natural disaster altered the area beyond recognition and buried the secret passageway through the escarpment into the zigzag canyon. I think a flash flood is a good possibility.
Later, Lewis claimed he found out a shepherd from Magdalena had already found the gold buried in sacks under the cabin’s hearth. This shepherd cashed it out for twenty grand and bought a ranch near Albuquerque with it. This seems difficult, if not impossible, to verify. But if someone did indeed find the gold and make his life better with it, then I’m happy for him. I seriously doubt that the gold is still there under the heart of the burned-out cabin today. Someone must have found it, if it even existed in the first place.
Modern Attempts to Find the Lost Adam’s Diggings
Since this legend began in 1864, it has circulated and excited many people. So many people have searched for the Lost Adams Diggings – often fruitlessly. A few claim to have found it, but their claims are dubious at best. These claims often can’t be verified because the explorers like to keep the location private to protect their own interests in the gold.
Due to Davidson’s journal which mentions the Zuni Mountains as the site of the diggings, many people searched there. The 1890s-1930s saw much logging activity and railway construction in these mountains, with small towns flourishing all over the area. Between logging and drinking, many of the men here tried to pan for gold as well, with little luck. The area is not geologically right for gold. The US government really wanted to see if there was gold in the Zunis in the early twentieth century, so they had many geologists inspect the area. The geologists claimed nothing was there. By the 1950s, most gold activity ceased in the area and it cooled as a popular search site for the Lost Adams Diggings.
Dick French found an area in the Datils and the Galinas which he posits is the location in his book Four Days from Fort Wingate. This is now referred to as Dick French’s area. People who have actually panned in the area were disappointed. There was other abandoned mining activity in the area before Dick French published his book, dating back to the 1950s or even earlier. This activity did not appear to be very lucrative, hence why the mines were abandoned.
Paul Hale and Richard Schade apparently “rediscovered” the Lost Adams Diggings in Dick French’s area. Dick French interviewed them and did heavy research and referenced topographical maps to write Returned to the Lost Adams Diggings: The Paul Hale Story. This book is very comprehensive and convincing – until you consider the fact that there has still been no discovery of rich gold paydirt in this area. Even if people in the past managed to mine all of the gold, there would still be some evidence that gold existed in that area. But there is no such evidence.
Two people who swear they found the Lost Diggings in the Black Range are childhood buddies Marshall Bulle and Larry Ditzer. They wrote a book about their adventure uncovering the lost gold mine in Hidden Treasures of the Black Range. In this book, they rely on quotes from people who really knew Adams and topographical maps to pinpoint a place they think is the mine location. They claim the area is so treacherous that they had trouble navigating it on foot and instead relied on satellite imagery and drones for much of their work.
In their search for the Diggings, Bulle and Dilltizer somehow learned about and started searching for an old Spanish cannon that was supposedly guarding the mine. How they learned about this cannon, or who put it there, is a mystery to me. They found the cannon in aerial photographs and published these in their book as proof. They eventually located the cannon on foot…but it had already been removed. It had to have been airlifted away due to the extremeness of the surroundings. So who did this and why and when? Who put the cannon there in the first place? That right there is a whole different mystery that I want to solve. Whether or not it has anything to do with Adams and his diggings does not matter to me. It seems bizarre that someone went through the trouble of putting the cannon in a place that is nearly impossible to reach by foot…then someone else airlifted it out.
Ron Jensen claims he and a partner named Gerry S. found the Diggings with “forensic archeological research”. His claims are quite vague, of course to keep other people from visiting the site. He is positive that Adams was telling the truth because he found the site, exactly matching the descriptions in old documents, but he didn’t actually climb into the canyon and find any placer dirt or ore for an analysis. This makes his findings rather dubious in my opinion.
Jensen based his finds on old military records and descriptions from Adams, placed over topographical maps, and then he used good old-fashioned hiking and camping to find the location out there in the wilderness. He claims that the area he found exactly matches what Adams describes. This seems like a solid approach, but an old military survey record that he often references said that the spot he found was already surveyed and did not appear to be very lucrative for gold.
Jensen says that “they” now call him Dr. Ron Jensen, though it’s not clear who “they” are, and he claims he has founded forensic archeological research. He also claims that he has managed to find seventeen years of lost Apache history. So that’s all pretty cool, if it’s true, and I wonder what the Apache people have to say about that, as well as the University of Arizona that he supposedly submitted his findings to. I’m not even sure which state he was in when he made this discovery about seventeen lost years of Apache history, but I’ll take his word for it.
Other Theories
Given the evidence listed above, the area around the northern edge of the San Augustine plains, known as the Gallinas mountains, is the most likely location of the gold. I just don’t think the Zuni Mountains or Black Range or even Arizona make sense given the geographical clues provided.
Another idea I have is that the Sawtooth Mountains should be looked at more closely. They are near Pie Town and at the edge of the Datil Mountains. They are very strange mountains, with interesting and intense shapes, and zigzag canyons cutting through their sheer cliffs and lumpy peaks. When I grew up in Pie Town, people often told me about gold in those mountains, though they may have just been telling tall tales. The Lost Adams Diggings could very well be in these strange mountains, though.
Harden writes in a fascinating article for El Defensor how he believes he found the Lost Adams Diggings sprawling across two remote ranches. There is no gold in this area – and in fact the rancher who gave him a tour of the area possesses a 1952 geological survey report that this area does not have the right geological history for gold. However, the landmarks exactly match Adams’ description, and Harden even found the valley at the end of a zigzag canyon with pools of water in it, remnants from what may have been an active running stream at one time. He also found an area before the canyon where wild gourds grow in the summer, which may be the pumpkin patch that Adams and his men camped at before entering Sno-Ta-Hay. There is a rock house there now and no one knows who built it, though theories abound it was built by someone looking for the Diggings. The rancher Harden spoke to has a theory that there was never gold in the Diggings. Rather, he thinks that Adams and his party ambushed a wagon carrying gold and stole it all, slaughtering the wagoneers. This would explain why they all scattered apart to distant states and then spread legends of finding a rich gold claim to explain their possession of gold – but they never were able to lead people back to the location because they worried they might have bounties on their heads. The skeletons that Bob Lewis claims to have found near here may have been people driving the wagon. I think this theory may have merit. The nineteenth century was a rough time, with men out for themselves, and the idea that Adams and his men were robbers makes a lot more sense than some amazing gold strike in an area that positively is not conducive to the formation of the precious mineral.
Don Fingado also claims he found the diggings between Duncan, AZ and Cliff, NM. The area he claims is the Lost Adams Diggings looks a lot the area described by Adams. Plus there is silver and gold placer dirt in the area. But this area makes no sense given the directions given by Adams, Snively, and Davidson, and later Baxter, Adair, and McKenna. It is too far away from the White Mountains, Fort Wingate, the Rio Grande, the Malpais, and other pertinent geographical markers.
This leads to the question of whether Fingado is just completely off…or if Adams was completely off when he claimed that the party crossed the White Mountains and Round Valley, entered New Mexico and crossed the Continental Divide (which falls near Pie Town), and even crossed a part of the Malpais. And this area is south of Reserve, so that also does not fit in with the tale.
It is possible that Adams had no clue where he was and his debacle in the desert may have skewed his memory. After all, Adams first met Gotch Ear and his other prospectors in Gila Bend, AZ, a very long way from the Round Valley and White Mountains. He also claims to have stayed by Mt. Ord, which is near Phoenix and you cannot see the White Mountains from that area. Maybe Findago is onto something and Adams, who clearly didn’t have much of a sense of direction, had no idea where he was as Gotch Ear led him to Sno-Ta-Hay Canyon. Arizona could be a possible site. I just can’t believe that a freight wagoneer would be that much of an idiot when it comes to geography.
The Lost Adams Diggings on the Map
View older highway maps of the area near Pie Town, and you might exclaim, “I found it! The Lost Adams Diggings! They’re right here!” The truth is that the small town you see on the maps is not the same gold site, though it may be very near the actual site Adams and his men found so many years ago.
It all started when Guy and Daisy Magee settled near Pie Town in 1916. Keep in mind there were no highways then and life was pretty rough. Joan Meyers wrote a book The Pie Town Woman about the tough life of Doris Cauldell, one of the Pie Town homesteaders.
In the 20s, Guy and Daisy decided to open a general store to serve local ranchers who otherwise had to spend over a day journeying to Magdalena or even farther to Socorro. This store was a boon for many people trying to make it in the arid and isolated mountain region near the Continental Divide.
After the stock market crashed in 1929, desperate people began to pour into the area to find the Lost Adams Diggings, hoping it may provide them a way out of their bone-aching poverty. They had their mail forwarded to Guy and Daisy Magee’s ranch. The mail became overwhelming, so Guy Magee applied for a post office. In the 1930s, this was approved and Guy decided to name his “town” Adams Diggings, since it was a focal point for so many searches by treasure hunters. It was really more of a hub for mail and supplies and an encampment than an actual town.
Of course, none of these treasure hunters were lucky, at least that we know of. So interest in the area dried up. The post office closed in 1946. However, Adams Diggings is still on many maps, providing a glimpse into a time long past in New Mexico’s history.
Visit the site now, and it is pretty barren and desolate. You can’t even reach it by road anymore.
Legend or Reality?
The Lost Adam’s Diggings does have the classic makings of a typical treasure tale. It’s a site of supposedly incredible, infinite gold. The discoverers were impeded and forced to leave the area. Later they could not retrace their steps and find the lucrative spot. When future generations set out to find it, they always failed and various misfortunes made the missions run afoul in one way or another.
Now if you find this amazing stash of gold, wouldn’t you make damn sure to remember landmarks so you can find it again? Wouldn’t you stash as much gold in your pockets as possible before fleeing the Apache attack in order to prove you had stumbled onto an incredible treasure trove? Apparently John Snively did do this, but there are no historical records of him cashing out that much gold that I could find. I’m not a professional researcher or historian, so maybe I just didn’t look in the right places, but it seems odd that such a huge amount of gold would not have been noted somewhere and noticed by many.
Adam’s Diggings were first discovered in 1862, during a time when Gold Fever was common. So of course these men desperately wanted to find gold. Adams then went to California and laid low until the wars with the Apache ended (read: the whites managed to kill or intimidate most of the Apaches and steal their land away) and then he returned to New Mexico to try to find the gold again. Only this time, he couldn’t find it. His tales of the gold nuggets at the site encouraged many other men with goldlust to start searching but no one was ever successful (that we know of).
Could this all be an elaborate scam? Like Doc Noss with his heady claims of gold bars buried in Victorio Peak, Adams never had any proof of gold. Though New Mexico is pretty vast and the landscape is pretty treacherous, it couldn’t be that hard to find an unusual place like this canyon with all of the geographical details and directions Adams had. Given all of the landscape markers and directions that Adams and others wrote down and transcribed on maps, such as the proximity to the Rio Grande, the Malpais, and the San Augustine Plains, there should have been plenty of landmarks to jog their memories on the location. I understand why it’s impossible to find now, a century and a half later, when the land has drastically changed and place names are totally different. But back then, with it fresh on his mind, it couldn’t have been that hard for Adams to locate this place, especially when the rancher Jason Baxter was apparently able to find it easily based on secondhand accounts from soldiers who had heard about the Lost Adam’s Diggings from Snively.
Thus, it seems possible that maybe he made it all up in an effort to get people excited about a gold strike. He would have even profited from getting people to invest in promises of a great strike. It could all have been an elaborate scam. Another distinct possibility is that Adams heard about Sno-Ta-Hay, as others like Chase did, but he never actually went there.
On top of that, the region this gold was supposed to have been found is not geologically conducive to gold. Most gold in New Mexico exists in the Southwestern quadrant, near Silver City. Silver City, Mimbres, Pinos Altos, Kingston, and Chloride were sites of much gold mining activity during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This does make the theory of the Lost Adams Diggings being in the Black Range at least geologically sound. But even in these areas, the strikes were usually not extremely rich, and certainly not rich enough to produce nuggets the size of hen’s eggs. The Zuni mountains were not found to have much gold, though they were lucrative for uranium. There has never been much gold mining activity in the Datils or Galinas Mountains, though there have been geological teams and Army excavations that have found some placer dirt but not much gold at all.
Look at this map and this map to see gold (and other gem and mineral) claims in New Mexico. Not many exist in the region that most people look for the Diggings. They tend to cluster in the San Andres Mountains in southern NM, the Silver City/Gila area, and Northern NM around Taos. There were quite a few in the Zuni mountains, which we already know were pretty disappointing. There are just a few in the Datil Mountains and the area of the San Augustin Plains, and most of them are now closed.
If the Lost Diggings do exist, then they have proved very elusive. Many people have taken a stab at this old legend. I have even perused old documents and viewed satellite imagery, trying to give my best guess at the location. Based on the book Black Range Tales and Four Days from Wingate and Paul Harden’s well-written extrapolation on the subject in the El Defensor, I really think the diggings are located somewhere near Datil or Pie Town, as do many other people.
However, I also think that the Lost Adams Diggings are exaggerated. I think these men may have found the place they described at the guidance of Gotch Ear and they may have even found some gold dirt there. They may have simply heard the legends, too, but got fended off by Apaches during their search for the gold. I highly doubt they found the endless egg-sized gold nuggets they claim. Goldlust and wandering in the desert probably tainted their perception and their hyperbole about the gold they did find only grew bigger with time.
Sources
https://truewestmagazine.com/article/the-lost-adams-diggings/
https://www.liquisearch.com/lost_adams_diggings/possible_locations
https://www.goldfeverprospecting.com/loaddipa1.html
http://socorro-history.org/HISTORY/PH_History/200410_adams_diggings2.pdf
https://edits.nationalmap.gov/apps/gaz-domestic/public/summary/885555
http://socorro-history.org/HISTORY/PH_History/200410_adams_diggings2.pdf