Desert Messenger

March 5, 2014 www.DesertMessenger.com 21 Registra� on for The GRAND Gathering THRU SUNDAY, MARCH 9 Pick up your Offi cial T-Shirts and Lapel Pins 9am - noon Monday through Friday at QIA Offi ce. Quartzsite Improvement Assoc. 235 E. Ironwood. Be Part of History! REGISTRATION PACKAGES GUINNESS WORLD RECORD ATTEMPT OF THE WORLD'S LARGEST HUMAN LETTER "Q" takes place SUN. MARCH 9TH at 2pm. Par� cipants must wear sky blue (or Offi cial The GRAND Gathering T-Shirts) www.TheGrand Gathering .com OPEN TO ALL AGES! QIA: 928-927-6325 The Trigo Mountains - Bishop Ranch Excerpts from " In the Shadow of Saguaros " by Rosalee Oldham Wheeler "In the Shadow of Saguaros" Vol. I & II are now available exclusively at the Tyson's Well Museum and Reader's Oasis Book Store Voices from The Past in Quartzsite, AZ In 1946, Bill Keiser told us that the best way to get to Cibola was through the Trigo Mountains. Bill warned us that the Trigos was very rough and rugged and had many old road ruts that dead-ended at long- ago abandoned mines. For this trip, our ultimate destination was the Bishop Ranch situated in the foot- hills just west of the Trigos where we planned to go and buy the annual honey crop produced by Bob and Zetta Bishop. Bob (1886 - 1968) and Zetta (1890 - 1970) were the son and daughter of Louis William Bishop (1850 - 1919) and Carrie Josephine Stroh Bishop (1859 - 1937), early settlers who had come from Kansas via San Diego to Cibola Valley in the 1890s. From the old-timers around Quartzsite, we had heard many stories about the gold mines in the Trigo Mountains and the steamboats that carried supplies to them up the Colorado River from Yuma. Bob and Zetta had told us they were getting too old to do the hard backbreaking work with honeybees and asked if we were interested in buying their small outfi t. We de- cided to check out the country east of the Trigos for where we might locate hives of honeybees. Using Bill's directions, we traveled south from Quartzsite for about 23 miles on the graded dirt Quartzsite- Yuma Road to a turnoff that only went west. There was a white porce- lain sign with dark purple embossed letters indicating that Cibola was 45 miles away. After several miles, we turned onto what appeared to be an even-less traveled dirt road. After a short distance, we turned onto a road that was barely visible, or should I say we turned onto a trail that was going in the direction of the Trigo Mountains. As Bill had warned, the old wagon trails were rough as we drove in and out of vari- ous canyons. There was evidence of prospector diggings with many mining monuments staked out. Bill and other old-time miners around Quartzsite had told us that the gold from the southern Trigos was dif- ferent. He claimed that he knew southern Trigo gold when he saw its light-yellow colored nuggets caused from the silver contaminate. Inter- estingly, he said he recognized gold from the northern Trigos because it carried a reddish cast from the cop- per contaminate there. We drove up, down, and around the Trigos and fi nally came to a somewhat-better road as we neared the Colorado River. Long unused, the road was grown-over with salt cedars and arrow weeds. Fortunately, it was not hot weather and we just rolled up the windows in our truck to keep the salty needles from whip- ping our arms and faces as we plowed through a jungle of large tamarisk and mesquites trees that grew horizontally along the road's edge. This road lead us to an old lead and silver mine. There was a time when lead and silver mines were more sought after than gold, because of the mineral's use in the manufacture of bullets. That fi rst trip into the Trigos had made us curious enough to make a return trip when we could spend more time, but for now we needed to get on to the Bishop Ranch. On our next trip we took water, food, and bed rolls. At one point, we drove up to a deep canyon that couldn't be crossed. Before turn- ing back, we decided to have our lunch on a ledge overlooking the 150-foot deep canyon. In the bottom was a wash with trees and a little stream of water moving slowly down the canyon with three deer grazing along the streambed. We sat there enjoying the sight; the deer never knew we were up there. Upstream, we could see that there was water coming out of the mountain with a SEE TRIGOS PAGE 26 Reflexology Do you have Neuropathy, Diabetes, Poor Circulation, or Just Aches & Pains? Put your feet in my hands and let Nature start to heal 928-276-1267 SAME Location, Same old Price! 80 W. Sunset, Quartzsite South of Herb's Hardware 1 hour session $30 Call for your appointment today! TELIC FLIP FLOP & Z STRAP SANDALS as seen at Big Tent! was grown-over with salt Bob Bishop in front of Cibola Post Offi ce by Harold O. Weight - Circa 1951

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