One local prospector, William “Flint” Carter, has been mining the Santa Catalina Mountains most of his life.
Now in his mid-60’s, he spent the last
forty years venturing deep into the mountains to service his mining
claims. He is the only prospector with a continuously active mining
claim in the Catalina Mountains. [1]
With the scarcity of ongoing mining projects in the mountains today, he may be the last, lone prospector.
William “Flint” Carter was lured,
as hundreds before him, by the prospect of finding the Lost
Mine with the Iron Door and the natural occurrence of precious
minerals.
After Flint Carter moved to Southern
Arizona in the early 1970s, Susan Thurman introduced him to
Burton Holly, the man who helped build Hollywood and owned land in
the Cañada del Oro. Holly shared with him the legend of the Iron
Door Mine.
Holly told Carter that he was sitting
on the largest gold mine in the U.S. Later, Carter learned more
about the history of the area and about the biggest gold legend in the
West. The story of that rich mine was just part of the reason the
legend still exists and continues to grow. Carter believed that the
largest land treasure in the world, over 100 tons of gold, was
partially moved out of the Catalinas and carted a few hundred miles
east. “The local legend mentions a treasure, but it is more focused on
the lost mine,” Carter remarked. [2]
It was during one exploration of the
Catalinas in the 1970s that Carter and his group stumbled upon more than
just an old mine deep within the Cañada del Oro. His claim to discover
the Lost Iron Door Mine [3] became overshadowed by the minerals he has been quietly recovering from his claims over the past decades.
In 1972 Carter purchased an acre on the former Samaniego Ranch [4] from
Holly. There was a chicken coop between two old adobe buildings.
Carter built a natural stone-incorporated earth shelter with a black
sand iron structure from the chicken coop as an alternative solar energy
concept. It was documented as Arizona’s first solar heated and
cooled museum by the Arizona Governor’s Office in 1986. No other
building had incorporated alternative building designs in the structures
at that time.[5] The building used Paolo Soleri’s design of arcology– [6]
a combination of ecology and architecture–allowed the walls
inside and out to be farmed, thereby increasing space instead of
decreasing it. No fossil fuels were required. The house was to be used
as a charging unit to run a vehicle one hundred miles a day, truly
non-polluting transportation.
“At the beginning 1970s, there was a
350-acre man made lake called Golder Dam. I was the only person to buy
lake front property and build. The concept was simple. I wanted to be
self-sufficient. The house would heat and cool its self while acting as a
vehicle charging unit for 100 miles a day travel. But, funding was the
major problem.” [7]
