ODDS’N’SODS — Ed and the dirty jackass

Ed and his burro, Millie, got along pretty well. Ed knew when Millie was tired and wanted water. Millie knew when Ed was discouraged and needed to be nuzzled a little. Together they traveled the west, looking for gold.

One summer they settled in a lush area atop the Harquahala Mountains in southwestern Arizona. Ed had a small stash of gold that kept them in beans and bacon for several weeks.

Then three government scientists came up the trail to the mountain top. “We’d like to set up an astronomy observatory here,” they explained. “Well, sure,” Ed agreed, a little bewildered. “Only I ain’t got a lot of grub here. I was just thinkin’ about gettin’ a job on the railroad.” “Tell you what. We’ll share your mountain and you share our grub, how’s that?” That was fine with Ed. The scientists brought up their equipment, and sometimes Ed and the youngest man would take an afternoon off and amble around the mountain, talking about geology.

When the men were called back to Washington, Ed and his friend took one last walk. “I guess me and Millie’ll do some more prospecting when you fellas leave,” Ed remarked.

“Not up here,” the young man said. “You’d be better off trying someplace like . . . see, over there. That shiny spot on the other side of the canyon? That’s where you might find gold.”

So a few days later, Ed and Millie set off to explore the spot that had been lit up for a brief moment . . . Ed posted his claim, loaded some ore onto Millie, and set off to spend the winter in town.

Realizing he wasn’t getting any younger, he took in three partners. On the way up (next spring), one of the men made an unforgivable mistake. He called Millie a “dirty jackass.”

Ed ordered his partners to get lost. No one was going to insult his burro and get away with it.

No one ever saw Ed or Millie again.

While the story of its discovery may be legend, the Harquahala mine is fact. It produced an estimated US$1.6 million between 1891 and 1894, and continued to turn a profit until 1908 when operating costs grew even with the value of the gold mined.

Epilogue: Miners have never given up on the second richest-mine in Yuma County (which was split into La Paz and Yuma counties in the early 1980s.) Many companies have invested considerable time and money in the task of finding more ore at the Harquahala mine. So far, production has come from reprocessing of dumps and tailings.

— From a story in the updated 1993 edition of “From the Ground Up,” by Jack Williams, a former governor of Arizona.