Buffalo Bill Cody! Like many I am fascinated by him, particularly as I increasingly realise just how much he had to do with creating the mythology of the Wild West and spreading it around the world. Many years ago, Manny and I traveled to Spain and ended up in the same Barcelona hotel where Buffalo Bill had once stayed — where he had ridden his horse up the marble stairs if my memory does not lie. There are traces of him in England too, and I always wondered what the many people who traveled with him as part of his show felt and thought as they experienced Europe and crossed the US. What an adventure — and yet to be on display, to create mythologies through recreating scenes as they almost certainly never happened — from cowboy life to white victories over Native American tribes.

I never knew that in looking towards his retirement Buffalo Bill partly settled in Oracle, filed mining claims there that he hoped would make him rich but that instead helped bankrupt him. He is not alone in that. A picture of him in Oracle.

William ‘Curly’ Neal, who Cody took under his wing as an aide and scout (and last blog is all about him and his amazing wife Annie and a small window into the lived experience of race in Southern Arizona), was doing very well for himself in Oracle and Buffalo Bill and some of his riders would often come stay with him at the Mountain View Hotel. The Mine With the Iron Door by Harold Bell Wright — both the novel and the 1924 silent film itself filmed in Oracle — helped inspire his desire to find the mine in the Catalina mountains that would make him rich.

When Curly told him the mine with the iron door was nowhere to be found, Buffalo Bill filed claims on High Jinks, Campo Bonito, Maudina, Southern Belle, and the Morning Star mines. They would drain him of all money – partly in legitimate development, which is always expensive and over-cost. But from Marriott’s description in Annie’s Guests, it certainly sounds as though he was soundly robbed by those he employed to manage the mines for him.

Buffalo Bill stayed up at the Hijinks claim, now a series of ranch buildings just alongside the Arizona trail, it’s now a National Historic Site:

A picture of Buffalo Bill can be found there near the entrance:

It is alongside an old cart, driven by Liz Taylor and Tom Skerrit in Poker Alice:

the view looking out across the valley towards the Gaiuros Mountains…not too bad at all:

Views of the Old Maudina Mine:

(and the view from inside this shallow working)

The more traditional mine entrances, fenced off, signs warning of danger riddled with bullet holes…

Some of the tailings spilling down the hill, all iron- and mineral-stained quartz:

Campo Bonito mine was much bigger, a shaft driven deep but mostly obscured by huge rock tumbled from the cliff face above it. Here’s a long-ago view of Buffalo Bill playing Santa Claus here though:

The view looking outwards remains splendid:

In Marriott’s chapter on Elizabeth Lambert Wood, there is a diary entry mostly describing Buffalo Bill’s wife, who had confided to Elizabeth that his long white hair was a wig. She loved knitting, and was using one of Buffalo Bill’s Medals of Honor to wind her wool. Wood also comments that she saw the saddle that Queen Victoria gave Buffalo Bill just lying on the ground. She writes:

They told me they had so many valuable things thay had no place to put them…To her they were only ‘negligible trifles’. (104)

A larger than life character in every way. Elizabeth Lambert Wood later bought the Southern Belle Ranch and the mine, and made a fortune in Tungsten.

The walk to get up to Hijinks and the mines was brilliant. We started at the Arizona Trail head just alongside the American Flag Ranch (our map had that wrong, so it took us a while to find.) We walked up the Arizona Trail to meet the Oracle Ridge trail, along that a ways, and then down along the old roads to the mines and then back to the Arizona Trail. You can see the Biosphere II from here once you come up to Oracle Ridge, though this picture hardly does its SF feel justice as it sits white and gleaming in the desert landscape.

We saw three white-tailed deer, huge numbers of birds, and traces everywhere of a most abundant wildlife. A wonderful spot for hiking.

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