Real or not, the ‘Iron Door’ mine makes a ripping yarn
From Dec. 10, 2007:
Have you ever heard of the Mine With the Iron Door? Do you think it really exists?
Well, because I’d never heard of it before you asked, I am hardly in a position to opine on whether it really exists.
The gist of the story is this: At some point in the 1750s or 1760s, Jesuit missionaries feared for their lives, either because of a revolt by their Native American charges or because of attacks by the implacable Apaches.
So they stashed a whole bunch of silver and gold in either a mine or a cave somewhere in the mountains north of Tucson and sealed it with a heavy iron door.
Then the Jesuits lit out for friendlier environs, and over time the exact location of the treasure was lost.
Lots of people have searched for it, but, obviously, no one has ever found it, if, indeed, it is there to be found.
One of the people who believed in the legend was Buffalo Bill Cody, who owned some mines in the area at one time and looked around a bit for the Mine With the Iron Door.
In 1923, a popular storyteller named Harold Bell Wright cranked out “The Mine With the Iron Door,” a novel featuring brave and honest prospectors, a plucky orphan girl, a wrongly accused hero and a couple of villains named Sonora Jack and Lizard.
Of course, the good guys won in the end and found the mine and were fabulously wealthy.
Of Wright, a Time book critic wrote, “He writes badly, but directly. He is sincere — he uses his cliches as if no one had used them before. And he is completely and happily impervious to criticism.”
The novel was made into movies of the same name in 1924 and 1936.
Of the 1924 version, Variety said, “The plot has dignity, drama, romantic interest and a definite appeal. When melodrama enters the picture it is true melodrama and grips because it carries the suggestion of reality.”