The Mystery of Hidden Canyon

[Music] this is Larry Hedrick for Mysteries of Superstition Mountains where we bring the past into the present for our future viewers today we have another great story by Jack San Felice this story about the Superstition Mountains is called the mystery of hidden canyon now where is hidden canyon it's a hard!.... that's my name for it it's a hard.. hard hard place to get to! a very difficult you drive out past Canyon lake past Tortilla flat and you take the road toward fish creek hill you're going up the hill and then there'll be a dirt road going to the right and it was an old cowboy road but you take that dirt road and it was part of the original road built to Lake Roosevelt or Roosevelt dam when they were working on building the dam in the early 1900s I believe the dam was opened and officially in 1911 with Teddy Roosevelt but part of those that foundation of the road is still there the bridge is there so you ride back and it's directly across from a place called Mesquite flats mesquite flats so you park there because you can't go anymore that road is dead-ended right there and the you're now on the new road which will be to your left well anyhow you're back in air not on this dirt road it was it was a part of the old stagecoach road back in the early uh 1900s late 1800s well an old friend a cowboy friend of mine from Montana named Don Warner I met him about 1993 and we went there the first time in 1994 he showed it to me and we go up this very steep vertical climb wow I mean it was it was tough so once we get up there which it levels off and you're but you're still going uphill and you and you climb underneath a gun sight and if you're looking if you're up if you're up near fish creek and um on the other side up on the knoll up there you can look across and see that gun sight you can actually see it and that was one of the clues the early clues that some of the searchers for the lost dutchman mine used the gun site well we walked up under that gun sight and then we kept to the left because if you go to the right you're headed towards Tortilla flat and that is really really hard way to get there so we hiked up to the left and we found an old fence line and we followed the fence line up and to the right and then we continued on up there till we found a peculiar looking rock it looked like one of the early dinosaurs and it had the eye in it so if you don't find that rock you'll never find your way into hidden canyon so we find the rock and i climb up over talk and look and here comes dawn and we're looking down he said there it is there is the omega on your left and the heart-shaped rock with a crack in it on the right underneath the shadow almost of tortilla mountain he said i want to go there i said well don it took us so long to get here we'll never make it down in there and out before dark i can't do we won't be able to do where's the trail he said well there is no trail he said you just got to make your own route you mean you've never been in there he said no i've never been able to get anybody in there well this like a horse of a different color right now one it's hard trip to get where we can see the thing two that looked like the only way in and number three this is a big old cowboy so okay we'll do it another time but we plan on spending the night so a few weeks later we go back up and we come to the same entrance and i see before we get there though the other way we took was closer to tortilla creek he took me another route and so we take this other route like i said there was no trail and we had to go over the hog backs it was quicker to get to the hog backs but harder get over them so now we're bouldering over the hog backs to get to this dinosaur with that eye so we finally get up right on why didn't we take the other way he said i wanted to try this way to see if this route was easier well guess what it wasn't easier when how we get up and we looked down i said dawn if you if you take one way and i take the other and look down in the middle of that canyon in this valley and you look at this valley you will see in there that huge boulder the boulder was as big as this great room and it you could climb on top of it and uh and what i did when i got there but dawn said i'll go to the right i want to see if over on the right here there's an easier way because if we if there was a way down to the right we could have gone easier to get to that boulder where we had planned to make camp i go to the left which now i'm falling line of sight i'm going to come up my route should come out at the omega and then we could go right down no way there's just no way i get out there and i get on a ledge i'm dead-ended now i have a choice took me an hour and a half to get to that point or i can either rappel down or go back and take another hour and a half and then go down the very rough route down through the middle which i had never been before so i decide i'm going to rappel down this hill it's about 50 feet of rope's what i need in my pack i have just 50 feet of rope i toss my stick over the mountain with the hill and it's bought straight down and but being in the army i'd rappelled a lot and i'd i worked as a lumberjack for a while so i'd have a problem except when i have to i had to find a place to tie off so i had to climb up a little bit eight feet i found an old ironwood tree tied off my rope jumped around on it make sure it would hold and i go back down where i'm gonna leap over this little cliff and go down but when i get down guess what i'm eight feet short so i have a choice there i'm hanging on the rope i'm looking over i said i go to the left it's all saguaros and saguaros have spines that go straight out i go to the right i'm gonna i'm going into the cholla cactus the choi were about four to five feet high i said they have rounded curved needles i said that's where i'm going so i figured that's the way i'd go so i kicked myself around made the drop land on the right and i roll into the barrel i roll into that sucker and it tore my arms up because i hit boom i hit with velocity and rolled what happened was i put my sleeping pack on the top and i was out of balance but one thing the sleeping pack hit first and so all it tore out was my arms I patched myself up by bleeding all over the place I patched myself up because it was you know wasn't cold it was warm during the day and uh I had stuff to fix me up reset my bag and I walked on down the hill and up on top the rock no sign of Don absolutely no sign of Don I don't know where to look I get out my binocular little binocular I can't find them I don't see them it's all rough terrain and a lot of saguaros and ironwood trees mesquite trees I look up I still don't see them it finally I stay on top of the rock so I could see him and I'm waving on I'm getting ready to shoot my gun off and just about the time I'm ready to shoot my gun off he comes walking out of the wooded area and he comes on down to the rock and he said wow you're here in time for supper so build a fire we have our supper and we chit chat about what the morning would bring we're gonna we're gonna follow the creek, creek bed that we're gonna walk in the dry part of the creek bed and that'll lead us right to the back of tortilla mountain and we go right it it leads right to the heart rock well that's where we want to go was to the heart rock we we go to bed that night it was the worst night I ever had the superstitions in my mind in my life in my mind this was a spooky spooky place for one thing the noises that come out at night when you're out in the mountains in the valley by yourself I heard a baby crying all night a baby crying and not only that from the way we came in I looked on up on the ledges and there was what appeared to be a man watching us yeah you could see his silhouette and he was there he was there all night I had a baby crying sounds of a baby crying I had that and when the moon came up over the tortilla mountain it was like the whole mountain is swallowing you up and I said man this is a weird weird place and as the story continues you'll see why I felt that way I couldn't sleep so at four o'clock in the morning I said enough of this I get up start the fire I filter some water from tortilla creek that was the one good thing we're 40 feet from the running water now that I liked we're 40 feet from running water and that's great so I make some boil some water I have some oatmeal wow in the desert and I'm having cooked oatmeal and I had some tea and some muffins whatever I had finally Don wakes up about 5:30, 6 o'clock now it's daylight I look on the ledge no man no man no rock it wasn't a rock and there's nothing there nothing there I said you're kidding me it's not a rock that was an imagination of a rock there's nothing there so now I'm getting weirder feeling I get weirder feelings so at the same time I'm looking at that rock it's not there or man that's not there I see a bobcat going into its den right below where the man had quote supposed to have been that answers the question the baby crying a bobcat or a cat even a mountain lion sometimes can make sounds like a baby crying or kittens young mountain lions will cry and they sound like a baby that answered that so by six o'clock uh i'm already had my breakfast and I'm ready to daylight Don uh he must have smelled my oatmeal cooking so he finally got up we said we got to get a start on the day so I said don I'm while you're eating your breakfast I'm going to go behind this boulder huge boulder we're on like and I walked behind it and I see a fire pit and it was about four feet by four feet okay and in the middle of it was a tree growing up about this big I said well somebody's been here but they ain't been here in a long time so I go around and I find a bridle and a bit and a rope old blue rope and bones some animal with four feet died there and it was tied to that tree I said where's the prospector so I started looking some more I called for Don he comes around and we find we move some dirt we see some stuff sticking out a black tarp I pull it out it's a rolled up handmade sleep.... sleeping bag within that sleeping bag there was a pair of pants like your checkered shirt it was a checkered pair of pants white and brown checkered pants and paisley shirt nobody wore that combination except the hippies in the 60s and 70s so whoever was here was here in the 60s and 70s what else I find some old uh an old top not a top like a hat it's called a top tobacco can and there he was old canned goods and the date on there was believe it or not there was a date on one of those tobacco cans like the 1970s and it was from a a drugstore that had closed down in mesa in about 1970. so whoever was out there was a hippie type guy would wear paisley with checks who would do that only a hippie I figured this is a strange character the mule's here that's there where's the guy where's the prospector the trees growing up that's a mystery where happened to the mule no but no no person in the right mind would leave a mule tied up to die or a horse tied up to die I'm quite sure so dawn i said we're going to leave this mystery let's let's go find the cave by the the stone uh heart sometime over the years that part of tortilla creek had filled up with large boulders and we had a difficult very difficult time navigating so we tried to stay on the periphery or the outer edges sometimes we have we have to go back back and forth across it to find our way up there we and it took forever it didn't seem like it was that long but it took forever bouldering around those those rocks to get there besides Don was not that good of a hiker and he was like a cowboy and he was wearing cowboy boots who hikes in the mountains where his cowboy was an old cowboy he was from montana we go up to the stone heart and I'm looking around there's the old cave and it's collapsed in I said well Don you know this we looked around some more for he was there forever I walked over to the uh the omega now alpha means the beginning the omega means the end on the old peralta stone maps both of them are there there's an omega sign and there's the stone heart and if you move the heart there's like a depression like a cave or a mine now that was his theory you move the heart or because behind the heart underneath the heart was a cave or a mind we couldn't get in there I said we are not going in there you surely today are not have any designs on trying to get in there he was looking for debris in other words he was looking for mule shoes horseshoes he was looking for signs that the spanish were there or that the jesuits had been there and left some sort of a monument none of that we found and also I found no... no Azurite, Chrysocolla or Malachite or white quartz and those are signs there'll be copper in the first copper in arizona there's going to be gold that's about 99 percent didn't find any of that then finding copper gold or silver or whatever I didn't find it but then we were in a pretty confined area and it was so difficult to get there he was so slow going across those the rocks with cowboy boots so I said Don we ate some lunch we I had some snacks and he didn't have any lunch he didn't bring any breakfast he didn't bring any supper I said you really weren't prepared for this were you he said no I thought we'd get down in one day and out so he didn't even have a sleeping bag he brought a little blanket that was all but he was an old cowboy I guess he roughed it in Montana he was used to it so we decided we're going to head back we're going to head back okay well about halfway back Don falls and knocks himself out bam he's laying down there and he's not moving I mean he knocked himself out he hit his head right here he's got a big old lump I go there to get him and he's behind me now he's behind me about a maybe a hundred feet because I'm making away and breaking a path I go back to check on him and he's just laying there I said oh crap he died of a heart attack so we sat there for about an hour or maybe an hour and a half and I talked about him he was telling me about his cowboy stories in Montana how he was a cowboy there he break he broke bronx as a young man and he broke the wild steers and whatnot I said Don how old are you he said I'm 75. I was 53. I said what am I doing with this old man I'm 81 now 81. that's what I think guys think of me in their 50s they think I'm an old man but here I was 53 in good shape and he can't even come too I said dawn I'm going to leave you my knife and some matches you could start a fire or something and I'm gonna I've got a cell phone i'm gonna climb on the ridge it'll take me about three or four hours to get out of here maybe and where I can get service and we'll call you I'll call for help say no no just i'll be okay he would very got mad at me he was old cowboy remember they're they're self-reliant so he says okay he's he's uh he says you help me jack and we'll get out well it was a six hour getting out of there six hours we finally we.... I know first aid and any and things I thought maybe had a concussion but I didn't see signs of a concussion one he wasn't nauseous he he didn't have uh the other side his he could focus his eyes how many fingers i'm holding up he was out that way he was just knocked himself out so get him up and we're walking out and I'm holding on to them and going up the hill that remember there's no trail I have my hiking stick I have my backpack and I've got Don and we're going up this mountain up to get out where the dinosaur with the eye is and we're going through the little gap it's just a little saddle in the mountains there we get up there and we what the good thing is you can from the time we get up there where that dinosaur is you can look over and see canyon lake you can see part of canyon lake and also you can see almost see part of tortilla flat and but you can see the rifle site or the pistol site right as to where we're going to go down the mountain and get back to the my ford explorer so it was all weekend it's almost dark by the time we got to the the rifle sight or the gun sight which is called to the clue and go down now remember the last part is also the hardest part now we get under the gun sight but then you got to go vertical down I said Don this is going to be tough he sat on his butt all the way down that vertical part he sat down and of course his clothes were black but time he gets in my... I made him sit on a blanket [laughter] he didn't like that but he sat on the blanket I said Don I said uh we I want to come back here I said I guess I'll have to get back and he says yeah Jack you know what he said I don't think you better take me he said I don't think I can make it you know what else he told me he said the reason he couldn't get anybody else to go with him he's known about that place for 10 or 15 years because he had his stomach was was messed up from bronc riding and he had mesh put in his stomach twice and they wouldn't put it in a third time and that's why nobody else would hike with but couldn't get a doctor to put that in a third time so here I am up there on the mountain with the guy weighs 250 pounds he has no cell phone he has no other clothes he doesn't have a backpack he's not prepared for this he's prepared for an in and outer we got them and we got and I had food always carry food and drink I got them and I got them home okay I never again hiked with Don never again and I lost track of him. well! here we have the mystery of the hidden canyon we have the heart rock that fits a description of the peralta stones we have the omega the omega being the ending here's the end here's the heart it fits the story if you believed in the stone maps me was always a 50 50 at that time as I later and later in some stories you'll find out about stone maps and what I know about them now today 25 years later but that the thing of the mule or the horse tied up and the old prospectors somebody died out there because the man would not le a man that got a mule or a horse will not leave them in the mountains I'm going back and I'm searching the newspaper besides these were hippie clothes checkered pants paisley shirts give me a break and I said paisley shirt flowery and then when I said these were bell bottoms the checkered pants were bell bottoms so this is early 70s and the top cans so that's when I found out that they're from the drugstore that they quit about 1970. so I started looking for people who are missing in the superstition mountains who may have been missing there I find a story of a doctor that's missing in the superstitions here's a story of this doctor he was a young doctor and his father was a medical doctor and they were both surgeons also and the the young doctor didn't really want to be a doctor anymore he said he had seen enough he had seen enough blood and guts and he couldn't deal with any more he was going to get himself a mule and become a hermit in the superstition mountains didn't say where I said wait a minute the word the the things are starting to put together here the doc he's a doctor who wants to give up on life and hide where nobody's going to find him okay where he can live and live like a hermit number two he's going to take a mule the mule I said aha number three he's going to have supplies and have to have remember I said this whole air this whole we dug it out there was canned goods that had been there for years and years where things had just dried up in them so there's the this is the mystery I find the mystery of the doctor going in there but I went to asu uh library where they have microfilm all in the early newspapers I spent weeks looking for a found person a found doctor I'm keeping the names out of it to protect the innocent so to speak he may have been found may not have been found I felt had he been found they would have buried the mule or whatever but I never saw that story that a man a missing person or let alone a doctor let alone a mule and there was a a blue um an old blue um rope it's all rotted the bones some of the bones were there it was right at the angle where tied up to a tree the rope was tied up to the tree and the bones were there I went back there several times with some young hikers hi guys that I knew could have including Jack Carlson and he and some other younger guys than Jack and I I would go with those so they could help an old guy not like me because it's now 2000. so finally Im back in there and uh I take one of the leg bones and I have it taken to a veteran animal vet that treats horses and mules and whatnot I said that's definitely a mule bone she's definitely from an old mule okay that solved that thing now I go back to ASU looking for a mule being found dead I don't and I couldn't find any let me say this I couldn't find any evidence that anybody else been there at that campsite nobody where that big tree had grown up there nobody would start a fire there and I found no more fire pits the last time I was there about 2007 or 8 I went back in with a couple young guys and showed them how to get in and out of there somebody had built a set of steps out of out of uh weathering wood so you when you start going down and they put it and they put a wire piece of wire down so it would be easier to get down in there so somebody had built maybe someone looking for cattle maybe it was a cowboy because I don't know when they stop I do not know when they stop running animals in that in the area of tortilla ranch maybe somebody like Larry could tell you or another old cowboy but they're there their lies are one of the true mysteries of the superstition mountains the heart the Omega the missing Doctor the mine uh... mine or cave that was collapsed and the old mule who died tied up to a tree one of the real mysteries and that hidden canyon as far as i'm concerned one of it was probably one of the toughest hikes I've ever gone on in two thousand times going into the mountain thank you for watching this episode of Mysteries of the Superstition Mountains [music] mountains foreign

Channel: Mysteries of the Superstition Mountains

Views: 204,549

Keywords: Charlie LeSueur, Superstition Mountains, The Lost Dutchman Mine, Superstition Mountain Museum, Opal Images, Arizona, History, Gold, Treasure, Larry Hedrick, Jack San Felice, Hank Sheffer, Canyon Lake, Tortilla Flats, Apache Trail, the Heart

Id: AS7p-8j06gk

Length: 29min 41sec (1781 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 11 2020