Mining a family history

CENTURIES-OLD SYCAMORE TREES tower over the dry riverbed of Harshaw Creek, in the Patagonia Mountains of southern Arizona. Where houses once stood, flat barren earth stretches to the base of nearby low oak-covered hills. A crumbling wooden building, relic of a mining supervisor’s home, and a cemetery are all that remain of what was once one of the West’s richest mining towns.

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. It held some of the Arizona Territory’s highest-grade silver, lead and gold ore, so when the U.S. 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. A patchwork