![]() ![]() For nearly a century, the y drilled and transported ore through tunnels for $2 a day - half of what their Anglo counterparts earned. With the mines came thousands of workers and their families, most of them Mexican Americans and Latinos. Within three decades, the Patagonia Mountains had produced 79% of all the ore processed in the territory, with a total value exceeding $346 million yearly in today’s currency. A patchwork of mining claims soon covered the region, with 40 operations in Harshaw alone. government passed the General Mining Act in 1872, giving prospectors the right to claim mineral deposits on public land for no more than $5 per acre, investors poured in. It held some of the Arizona Territory’s highest-grade silver, lead and gold ore, so when the U.S. Now a ghost town, Harshaw was one of nine mining camps in the area that saw waves of prospectors come and go in the 19th century. A crumbling wooden building, relic of a mining supervisor's home, and a cemetery are all that remain of what once was one of the West’s richest mining towns. Where houses once stood, flat barren earth stretches to the base of nearby low oak-covered hills. ![]() Centuries-old sycamore trees tower over the dry riverbed of Harshaw Creek, in the Patagonia Mountains of southern Arizona. ![]()
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