San Xavier del Bac Mission and the Esmeralda Mine
Updated on November 5, 2023 * John has prospected for gold in Arizona 10 years. His experience taught him to deal with the terrain, heat, and gold fever. He makes tools. The sheer size of the mission with its white stucco makes it a grand sight from a distance (The White Dove of the Desert). Lost Silver Mines Some of the fondest recollections of my youth are trips from Tucson, AZ, to Nogales, AZ, when out-of-town visitors arrived. My sister and I would choose which of the broken crayons we would each take for the ride. We would very carefully fill a Band-Aid metal tin with all of the fractured crayons we would need to color our drawings as we traveled south down the highway. There were rocky mountains full of old mines, mostly silver, and mesquite-speckled verdant hills on either si...