March 2, 2009 © Thomas J. Kollenborn. All Rights Reserved.
The trails of the
Superstition Wilderness Area have yielded many interesting characters
during the past century. They came here to search for lost treasure or
gold mines. These individuals followed in the footsteps of Coronado’s
Children, according to Frank J. Dobie, noted western author. If anyone
could be classified as one of Coronado’s Children the ‘Whistler’ was
certainly such a man.
This obscure recluse wandered the deep
canyons and towering peaks of the Superstition Wilderness for more than
two decades. His search for the Lost Dutchman Mine began in 1939, and
was immediately interrupted by World War II. The Whistler’s first
knowledge about the Lost Dutchman Mine came from Barry Storm’s book, On
the Trail of the Lost Dutchman.
The Tortilla Flat area served as the
Whistler’s base camp from 1949-1951. In the years following 1951, he
prospected an area around Willow Springs. The Whistler walked from First
Water to Apache Junction monthly to up pick his VA disability check and
his monthly supplies. He was always whistling a tune.
Keen eyes of hikers and prospectors
rarely spotted the whistler. They often heard him, but didn’t see him.
Even the Barkley cowboys rarely saw him.
He always wore dark clothing, even
during the hot summer months. His dark clothing was his trademark. It
was his whistling at night while he walked that gave him his nickname.
His nocturnal habit of hiking through the Superstitions at night during
the summer months caused other prospectors to be suspicious of him. Some
men claimed he was a camp robber.
It was quite strange for cowboys to be
sitting around a campfire and hear somebody whistling a tune while
walking in the distance. Many of us believed the Whistler was afraid of
the dark, whistling to vent his anxiety.
The Whistler spent much of his time in
the West Boulder Canyon area. His camp was located in the high rocks
above the canyon floor. He chose this location because he wanted a camp
safe from detection and from the flash flood waters of West Boulder
Canyon.
While rounding up cattle in West Boulder
Canyon in the spring of 1959, we came across the Whistler’s Camp by
accident. We heard somebody with a serious cough. When we rode up the
hillside to investigate we found the Whistler flat on his back with
either the flu or pneumonia. Barkley sent me back to First Water and
Apache Junction to contact the Sheriff’s Office. The next day the
Whistler was taken out of the mountains and admitted to the Pinal County
General Hospital then transferred to the VA hospital at Fort Whipple
near Prescott. The Whistler asked us to look after his meager belongings
while he was in the hospital. I rode back to his camp three days later
with a packhorse and picked it up. Among his possessions was a small
Christian Bible given to American soldiers during World War II with the
following inscription in it: “To Hal, The service you have given to your
country in the time of war will never be forgotten by this grateful
nation,” signed General “Hap” Arnold, U.S. Army, 1943.
How ironic this statement was I thought.
Here was a man who gave everything for his country in the time of war
and now was just trying to hold on to a few meager possessions while
hospitalized. I couldn’t imagine the Whistler being a war hero, and also
being in this desperate position. To this day I don’t know who the
Whistler was, except for his first name. Bill Barkley just considered
him another one of the nuts hunting for the Lost Dutchman Mine and
wanted me to clean up his camp. He might not have been a war hero, but
somehow he had attracted the attention of General “Hap” Arnold.
This tale enlightened us about those who
we sometimes prematurely judge. Most of the cowboys thought the
Whistler was a bum wasting time on a legend of gold. The Whistler
eventually returned to the First Water Ranch and picked up his camp from
our tack shed where I had place it. He returned to the mountains to
search for his dream.
The only treasure the Whistler found in
the Superstition Mountains was probably peace and solitude. He never
found gold, but then again he may not have been searching for it. I had
only met the man once, and to this day I don’t recall exactly what he
looked like. What I do recall were his penetrating blue eyes, gray hair,
and his rugged calloused hands. Was the Whistler a war hero? Or was he
searching for peace and solitude to ease his tired and worn out soul?
He is now a forgotten man swallowed up
by time. He’s a ghostly face from the past that once defended our
nation, walked the trails of the Superstition Wilderness and followed in
the footsteps of Coronado’s Children. Ironically I have never forgotten
General Hap Arnold’s words, “never to be forgotten by this grateful
nation.”
Many lost souls have roamed the
Superstition Wilderness over the decades searching for gold. The
Whistler was just one of many searching for peace and solitude. Many
years later Tim O’Grady told me the man I knew as “The Whistler” was a
highly decorated hero of World War II who had an extremely difficult
time readjusting to civilian life after the war.