Cerro Colorado, AZ
During the 1860s one of the Cerro Colorado mines, near Arivaca, was the single largest silver producer in southern Arizona. It was in the middle of nowhere in the frontier, but miners are always attracted to the payload, regardless of their nationality or ethnicity. Then came the unexplained hard-rock cave in. Death was common on the frontier that would become a state, but this was an unexplained tragedy with racial overtones.
Mine supervisors routinely separated workers into Mexican and native American groups to help relieve racial tension and overcome language barriers. Unfortunately, when the walls of the silver mine came tumbling down, more than a dozen native Americans were trapped and killed in one of the two main shafts. Their bodies were never recovered, and the unmarked wreck of a mine stands as a gruesome monument to those who died in the unexplained incident. Their bodies are still interred there.
The surviving native Americans, who apparently suspected their Mexican counterparts of having a hand in the fatal incident, vowed revenge and slowly drifted back into the desert toward their villages or outposts to watch for opportunity.
Morale deteriorated steadily and hit an all-time low when the mine foreman was called away and his younger, allegedly meaner, brother was left in charge. Soon after, most of the workforce that had remained had deserted to the relative safety of the cantinas south of the border.
One fateful afternoon a Mexican shift supervisor was caught smuggling silver out of the mining camp red handed. He was made an example for the other workers, who were lined up and forced to watch as he was executed.
Within the next few weeks the remaining Mexican workers, fearing for their safety, fled across the border. The only people who were left in the once-busy town of Cerro Colorado were the foreman, John Poston, brother of the so-called "Father of Arizona" Charles Poston, and two German supervisors.
Location
31.671477° -111.267596°
