LEGEND AND HISTORY.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 37, 23 November 1937, Page 6

LEGEND AND HISTORY.

MINE WITH THE IRON DOOR. Natlian Sturdy, mining engineer and member of the Smithsonian Institution, is ready to leav efor Tucson, Arizona, to search for ‘‘the mine with the iron door,’’ immortalised in legend and history, says the “Christian Science Moni tor.” In his office in Pittsburgh’s downtown “Golden Triangle,” Mr Sturdy declared he not only hopes to find the mine, hut also more than £18,000,000 in gold, stored there four centuries ago by Spanish priests, the legends claim In the sixteenth century, so the story goes, Spanish missionaries in the southwest accumulated great hoards of gold from Indian miners. The gold was to be shipped to Spain, but Spanish ship captains that could be trusted were rare on the Californian coast .The priests hid the gold until “safe’’ ships arrived, then it was transported from Arizona by pack mule. The last of these priests was Francist. Before he could ship his store back to Spain, he was recalled. He stored the metal, the tradition is, somewhere behind the “iron door” of the Escalante mine.

Francist took with him maps of the great Mogul fault which cuts through the Catalina mountain. It was on the maps that he recorded the amount of his hoard.

“It was 2,500,000 ounces,” Mr'Sturdy said. A great-great-nepliew of Francist came over from Spain with his uncle’s maps. He hired a prospector, known only now as “Old Pearson, 5 and together they searched the hills for months with no success.

A Frenchman, Charleux, spent forty years looking for the “iron door.” His widow and daughter still have the maps. The 80 acres, on which the mine is supposed to be located, is now valued at £BOOO, Mr Sturdy said.' He owns one fourth of it and the rest is owned by a friend and the Apache Indian Reservation.

Mr Sturdy’s friend, C. W. McKee of Phoenix, Arizona, has been searching for the door for 13 years. “McKee and I plan,” Mr Sturdy declared, “to remove tons of rock that have tumbled down from the mountain through the years. All the maps existent lead to one particular mountain. Under these rocks we’ll find the door.” Recently, Mr Sturdy stated, he got a letter from Mr McKee, which read : “I have found the old mission, and the dump of the mine, I haven’t yet found the door, but we will, I am ceitain.” “If wo really find the treasure,” the Pittsburgh engineer said, “we shall contract with an express company to take the metal in armoured cars direct to the United States mint.”