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pcttrailsidereader · 8 months

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The Ghosts of Kentucky Camp

"Deep in the heart of the Santa Rita Mountains lies a ghost town called Kentucky Camp. It was once a bustling mining town, abandoned after a freak accident that killed the lead mining engineer. Some say the town is now haunted by the ghosts of the lead engineer and miners who lost their lives. The locals say that on quiet nights you might hear the sound of pickaxes and shovels coming from the hills, but be warned, if you hear the sound of a lone miner's whistle, you certainly are not alone."

Dave Baugher, a regular contributor to this website, started his multi-year thru-hike of the Arizona Trail this year. Dave estimated that 30 percent of those on the Arizona Trail had either left the PCT or altered plans to walk the PCT because of the epic snowpack on the PCT. This story is based upon a stop early in his Arizona Trail walk.

Ever see a ghost fly? No? How about a man about to become a ghost as he "flew" off the third story of a newly constructed hotel in Tucson, AZ? No? Neither have I. However, my buddy Ed and I spent some time in the old gold mining town of Kentucky Camp. Let me tell you about the "Ghosts of Kentucky Camp."

Gold. The yellow metal has driven men mad, sent conquistadores over the oceans, and even led to war between nations. However, much of the gold on Earth is thought to have been incorporated into the planet since its very beginning, as orbiting debris formed the planet's mantle early in Earth's creation.

About 55 million years ago, during earth movement and mountain building, hot solutions bearing gold and other minerals worked their way into the faults and fissures of folded and compressed rock. Later, these mineral-laden veins eroded along with the host rock, freeing the gold. Long before any people arrived on the scene, water and gravity began the gold-milling process better than any human invention carrying and concentrating small particles of gold along the bottoms of streams and gulches. These are placer deposits: water-laid sand and gravels that contain eroded and redeposited particles of valuable minerals.

Gold was discovered in the Santa Rita Mountains in 1874. In the following years, up to 500 miners worked in what became known as the Greaterville Mining District. Early on, the miners had to haul their pay dirt to the few running streams in the area or haul bladders of water to their claims on the backs of pack animals. At first, this laborious effort was worthwhile, but by 1886 the easy pickings played out, and most miners moved on.

In 1902, a charismatic California mining engineer, James Stetson, had an idea to solve the water problem. He believed collecting seasonal runoff into a nearby reservoir would be possible, thus creating a permanent water source and making placer mining again profitable.

Stetson sold his idea to investors and formed the Santa Rita Water & Mining Company. Kentucky Camp in the Santa Rita Mountains was the Company's headquarters. It was an attempt to get the land to give up its gold with placer mining. That process, successful in California, uses water cannons to break up desert hillsides so gold can be washed out and recovered in sluices, a sort of industrial-sized gold panning. Stetson believed the California process would work in Southern Arizona. Californian George McAneny put up $150,000 to get things started in 1902 and was made president of the new Company, with Stetson as the manager.

Stetson designed a dam near three streams with over eight miles of pipe and ditches to get the water to the mining site at Kentucky Gulch. A company office building, a house for Stetson, a barn, and two other buildings were constructed. The 40 to 100 workers lived in a nearby tent camp, and the operation opened in 1904.

Unfortunately, it all washed out. Only about $3,000 was repaid to McAneny, so a meeting was called in Tucson on May 22, 1905. McAneny and several other stockholders were to meet at lawyer Samuel Kingan's office. However, around 3 o'clock the afternoon before, a maid working on the 2nd floor directly below Mr. Stetson's room heard a thud on the windowsill of the room she was cleaning. She went to investigate. She leaned out her window and saw Mr. Stetson's dead body on the concrete sidewalk below. Stetson mysteriously fell, jumped, or was thrown from a third-story window of the Santa Rita Hotel and died. The truth of his death was never determined.

McAneny's health and finances fell apart after that day. He got divorced and claimed that ghosts were ever after him. He died in 1909. The Santa Rita Water & Mining Company ended, and the land was used by ranchers. Kentucky Camp was abandoned in the mid-1960s, and the U.S. Forest Service took it over in 1989.

Renters around the ranch sometimes report ghostly noises, and a ghost-hunters group has spent time documenting the strange happenings in the cabins. But seasoned visitors say it is mice in the place and skunks making a winter den under the house near the propane heater that account for the mysterious night sounds. A resident jaguar living in Santa Ritas may also visit the area.

On the hot afternoon of Friday, March 31, 2023, Ed and I dropped our packs on the covered porch of Mr. Stetson's house. There was water for us to fill our bottles, electricity to charge our electronics, and displays describing the past history of Kentucky Camp. I'll be honest, we did not stay too long. There were still miles of trail ahead before we could call it a day. However, we enjoyed the shade, and several other visitors joined us on the deck to cool off from the sun.

Ghosts? We did not see or hear anything that afternoon. Later, camped by a small lake, Ed and I talked about the place, and we both thought it might be exciting to return to in the future. Calling it a night, we dove into our tents as the cold chilly wind ran down from the Santa Rita Mountains high above our camp. Tired, I did hear things in the evening twilight. Shovels and pickaxes? No. Whistles? You could say that the cooing of doves in waning light or the soft chirps of quail in the brush might resemble a whistle as I drifted off to sleep thinking about the ghosts of Kentucky Camp.

#Arizona Trail #Kentucky Camp #gold mining #ghosts

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purkinje-effect · 5 years

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Slum Religion and Nuka-Cola

Ours Is the Kingdom, Chapter One. Go to next.

The gatorclaws had vanished. Finding only brahmiluff and gazelles in the wastes North of Nuka World, August lost all urge to hunt once he set foot South of the Northpoint Reservoir. Beguiled, the tall man-shaped creature of the cloth pressed across the barren terrain to the Safari Adventure Zone to the Northwest of the park grounds, where he knew they had nested, and still found none as he neared it. His aquiline nose flared and his pale eyes widened beneath his trim black tricorner hat, and caution informed his body’s every movement, as he stared up at the enormous looming serpentine mass of metal, then stared beyond it up at the hundred-foot treehouse within its high stone walls. Even in the clear day, he could see the lightbulbs decorating it had sprung to life.

It didn’t take risking stepping foot inside it to know that raiders now inhabited the Safari Adventure.

He hugged the wall to follow the cobbled waterway which bifurcated Nuka World. It was fever blossom season, and the dark, wild vines swathed everything it could reach in the replete cherenkov glow of its spherical flowers. Picnic areas, winding lazy streams with a network of small cobbled bridges, debris doomed to a limbo of blowing around here until rainfall and time would macerate it against the fixtures of the space by rainfall and time. Were it not for the circumstances unfurling around him, he preferred a leisurely stroll through the Nuka Island thoroughfare on his way to Market, to soak in a commune with naked Atom, but today it did not serve him to celebrate Her so passively.

Hidden behind a large dead tree, the creature gawked all around him in every direction with a clear view of the entire park. His head spun with grief. Respectively the rocket on the sign at the Nuka-Galaxy building and the Observation Wheel, he could even at a distance see the tallest attractions in the Galactic Zone and Kiddie Kingdom now in motion for the first time in two centuries. Dread sublimated any enthusiasm remaining for this sabbatical to his holy place, and he licked at the insides of his fangs. If Safari Adventure, the Galactic Zone, and Kiddie Kingdom had become animate again, he could presume so had Dry Rock Gulch to the West and the World of Refreshment to the Northeast. The raiders had spread out from their home base in the Southernmost zone, Nuka-Town USA, and had successfully restored power to the entire park.

Nuka World’s veins flowed readily again with Atom’s pulse. He’d never seen such a place. The closest approximation was Megaton, back in the Capital Wastes, but the lights that the Megaton settlers had harvested to illuminate their fortified settlement had served a patent utility function before the Transfiguration. These lights, they clearly intended only to dazzle and entice. Aircraft lights cautioned their existence to other craft in the sky, while these lights... August certainly took caution. The breath fell from him at the thought what this place must now look like at night.

The amusement park’s parasites only felt that much more an umbrage now that its ley-lines no longer lay dormant. These raiders, who had huddled up practically hotbunked in Nuka-Town USA for the past year without so much as batting an eye once at expansion, had either been too incompetent or too unambitious to even attempt it. But now, the three uncouth, violent factions threatened to choke out the wilderness that had reclaimed these grounds. Either something major had lit the fire of urgency in Colter’s ranks, or a new player had entered the mix.

A troupe of three Pack members came across the Island, and August cut to the opposite side of the tree to wait for them to pass. The garishly bright raiders dyed their hair and painted their bodies, and crafted their armor from the attraction prizes left unearned, a mixture of stuffed animals and Nuka-Cola memorabilia. He did not attack, focused on cultivating a mental sketch of future points of interest and planning out how many return trips he would need to make to assess the severity of the invasion. Having traveled with the primary intent to hunt and return to Retreat, he’d packed far too lightly to stay for any significant duration. It unnerved him not to know whether the restoration of power had tampered with the ecosystems of each zone, but he knew for certain the presence of the raiders could guarantee an impact.

Hallmark to Nuka-Town USA, the Fizztop Grille building, a massive fifteen-story tall building in the shape of a Nuka-Cola bottle, loomed high over the fortifications which surrounded the original zone of the park. He crept inside the North gate and followed the wall to stick to the shadows. With fewer people occupying the space, it felt like everything could breathe again. Various buildings and carts here had also lit up as expected, and strings of lights chased overhead in the walkways leading West, East, and to the South. Even many of the street lights still worked, and the fountain in the trash-filled water fixture at the front of the Fizztop Grille now flowed again. A mixture of the wild Pack and the crisply-tailored Operators milled about in a previously unobserved idle contentment. They even seemed to nearly get along for once. The amusement park food trash scattering the entirety of the park grounds was most concentrated here, owing to the density of the restaurants and food carts, and August grew more mindful of his catskill-clad footwork to avoid the crunch of bicentennial styrofoam.

It crept upon the back of his skull, to notice the total absence of Disciples in the observable population. The bladethirsty clan with a fetish for polished eyeless metal masks had made themselves present in every corner of Nuka-Town USA. Had the Pack and Operators driven out the Disciples altogether, or did they now simply exclusively inhabit the other zones of the park? He recognized the polished, razor-adorned stylings signature of Disciples armor on a handful of raiders of the other two factions, and understood that the factions had not decided to begin sharing their shticks. How, in three months’ time or less, had these raiders had overthrown the Disciples, returned power to all of Nuka World, and occupied all six zones, when they’d done nothing for a year? He couldn’t unpack the mere notion of it, let alone the reason for it.

Of all the things to be familiar to him, near the colonnade that divided the Fizztop grounds from the rest of Nuka-Town USA, he spotted a woman with chin-length pale blonde hair, wearing jeans and a Nuka World T-shirt, and bright red round sunglasses in the shape of a pair of bottlecaps. At first, he thought she might be asking for directions from the Operator which harangued her, but he quickly learned from her frustration that the Operator denied her access outside Nuka-Town USA. She huffed and slouched her shoulders with balled fists and stomped off, biting her bottom lip, and he followed her to where she stood staring with a whine at the corner of a peeling yellow three-story building with an awning bedecked in patriotic bunting. He plucked a cherenkov blue Nuka-Cola Quantum from a nearby vending machine unnoticed, and slipped behind her to dangle it over one of her shoulders in offering, stooping a bit to smile endearingly over the other.

“You’ve no idea how I’ve missed your Mississippi Quantum Pie.”

She jerked and yelped at having been sneaked up on, let alone by someone of as great a stature as him. She sniffed and instinctively clutched at the bomb-shaped soda bottle with one hand while she clutched her chest with the other. He let go and she stared up at him.

“I-- August? Brother August!?” Her shrill, jubilant voice cracked. She bear hugged him around the middle, with her face mashed against his chest, and he petted her head. Muffled in his raiment, she mumbled, “Sorry I didn’t bring any--My god you had a growth spurt.”

“Quite all right. ...Somehow, I knew I’d run into you here eventually.” He gestured off to the colonnade to the South, annoyed by the sound of the Operator using the fiberglass Bottle and Cappy statue in the center of the walkway for target practice. Though, it relieved him that this also meant he had not yet been detected despite standing literally across the street from what had once been the Operators’ base of operations: The Parlor, a high end eatery with a theater. “We should go someplace... quieter, Sierra. Perhaps the parking lot. Or the Market.”

“I will not!” She let go to cross her arms with a defiant pout. “If I’m getting anywhere, I’m getting out to the other zones of the park. I didn’t come all this way to leave empty-handed! How did you get in? ...You could help me sneak out into the park, right?”

“Absolutely not.” His eyes shifted incessantly to every head on Main Street. “The locals dislike me a great deal. It’s for your safety and mine that we relocate. Can we step inside this building, perhaps?”

“If only!”

Sierra looked around, then back to him to nod in agreement. August followed her closely as they walked South to the circular thoroughfare with a round building at its center. Here there existed a larger concentration of individuals in tattered rags and shock collars, and August’s ears rang. He caught the unmistakable Valkyrie-like bladed silhouette of Nisha’s helm out of the corner of his eye, and in a panic he snatched Sierra aside into the shadows and clamped a hand over her mouth. Moments after the observation, his jaw slacked to recognize the helm of the Disciples’ queen worn by anyone but.

Rather than adorned by strapped smooth-hammered curve-hugging armor, this figure wore a green jumpsuit rolled down to the waist with the sleeves tied, wrapped faded green fabric for a shirt, elbow-high black leather work gloves, and thick leather armor that looked in many places to be crafted from tool aprons. He chewed at a lit cigar through the downward-sloping spines which formed a grill over the lower half of his pink-painted face. The raider who’d won Nisha’s helm walked along with his arm across the shoulder of a ghoul wearing a beaten brown tricorner cap and a Nuka-World letter jacket.

“Man, you splattered that super mutant,” the ghoul praised with awed disgust.

“No power armor needed.” The raider reminisced, “I do kinda miss the bumper cars, though. Gotta admit it’s kinda sad just how many rides here are too hard t’repair.”

“Too late for regrets.” The ghoul stopped and draped his arms on the other’s shoulders with a heavy-lidded smolder. “Come on, I know what’ll cheer you up. Let’s celebrate your Gauntlet victory with a trip through the Nuka Galaxy.”

“Every time I beat the shit outta somethin’s not a good excuse for a chem break,” he clamored, getting dragged along by the hand toward the North gate of the zone.

“So Colter IS out of the picture,” August uttered, at a loss. And Nisha, clearly. He let go of Sierra’s mouth, and she nipped at him. “Here, the pavilion outside the Cola Cars should be secluded enough. Come sit with me.”

Once she’d taken a seat at the aluminum patio table, he joined her and tucked his hat in his lap, revealing his pointed ears, dark wild hair pulled into a low ponytail, and wiry, bushy sidewhiskers.

“I knew you’d be tall when you were a kid, but gosh.” Oblivious to most nuances of his features, she shook her head and frowned with a defiant urgency. “How long have you been here? I just arrived, and they won’t let me go anywhere! It’s infuriating, really.”

“I’ve been coming here for years. It’s changed so much in the few months since my last visit. I take it you came here hoping to do more than slake your thirst?”

At the mention of a beverage, Sierra remembered her death grip on the soda and cracked into it with a bottle opener keychain at her waist, pocketing the cap. She downed a good third of it in one gulp, and she grinned with a refreshed sigh.

“Ohh, sweet Quantum, mama’s gone too long without you.” She wiped her mouth with the back of her free hand. “I’m here to add something very special to my museum!”

“You don’t say,” he smiled, warmed as always by her passion. “I guarantee you’ll find far more than you could imagine. For example, I’m sure you know it, but there are park-exclusive flavors that only the machines here can concoct. I’ve been collecting the recipe cards to complete the book for some time, but I’ve only so far put my hands on a few.”

“Oh, I know all about The Official Nuka-World Recipe Book!” She giggled filled with energy, and downed another slug of the glowing blue drink. “Have you TRIED any of them yet! Gosh they must taste out of this world-- But no, August. Funny you should mention recipes. I know I can trust you to keep a secret.” She leaned across the table and glanced furtively over the top of those ridiculous Nuka-Cola sunglasses, lowering her voice. “I’m here for the Nuka-Cola formula.”

“Now that really would be something of a centerpiece to your museum,” he lauded thoughtfully. “But where are you expecting to find it?”

“Believe me, I came here with a plan. I know it sounds a bit like a pirate with a treasure map, but there was a contest, before the war.” She pulled out an ancient piece of colorful paper and carefully unfolded it, and turned it on the tabletop for him to see. On it danced six different Cappy’s, the bottlecap of the cap-and-bottle duo mascots for the park, and each listed cryptic hints as to where to happen upon them. “I’m sure you’ve noticed my amazingly superb Cappy Sunglasses by now. I know you notice everything--but you wouldn’t notice what these babies see unless you wore them! There are Hidden Cappy’s scattered all over Nuka World, and each one has a piece of a secret code. Can’t see them without the decoder glasses! The way the contest went, if someone could find every single one, and decipher the code, they got to meet hh--heh! John-Caleb Bradberton himself!” She got too excited to control her volume and cooled her enthusiasm a bit with the last third of the Quantum.

“Refresh my memory... That’s the man that invented Nuka-Cola?” For as much as he loved to listen to her speak with such mirth about the museum she curated in the Capital Wastes, he needed to do his best to keep her on topic.

“Of course! The one and only! I know what you’re thinking. Bradberton’s long gone, who cares about the contest anymore? Well, I’m betting he’s got the recipe in his office. There’s more to this story, and you just might like this part. I promise it’ll be worth your while. Bradberton didn’t just create soda formulas. He was a genius inventor of all kinds of fantastic things. You just might find something to your liking--provided we can get into his office,” she sang.

“For as much as I know you’ve memorized a map of this place by heart, I don’t like the idea of you wandering around. This place is bounds more dangerous than Evergreen Mills or Paradise Falls. In case you haven’t noticed, their new Overboss was just now casually bragging about having killed a super mutant one-on-one in a cage fight.” He picked up the list of hints as to where to find the ten hidden Cappy images, and tucked it into the pocket at the hip of his left leg of Marine armor. “Let me. It seems I have to scout out the zones regardless, so I might as well help an old friend achieve one of her wildest dreams at the same time.”

She snort-giggled in glee and put the glasses on him, and clapped her hands in delight.

“Dashing! Ohhhh, August, I’m the happiest girl in the Wasteland. I couldn’t have gotten luckier, running into you. It’ll be a snap for you!”

“In exchange for me doing this for you, you have to promise me you won’t leave Nuka-Town. There’s plenty to eat and drink here, and they let paying customers sleep in the Market. I know you didn’t come here for simple memorabilia, but it couldn’t hurt to look around. Maybe even spend some time in the Nuka-Cade, if you’re feeling especially ambitious?”

Sierra sat up straight with her hands folded neatly in her lap, and nodded.

“I’ll stay put. I promise.”

“Thank you.” He smiled and stood, putting his cap back on. “There aren’t any Nuka-Mixer Stations in Nuka-Town, but I’ll see if I can’t bring you back a few Nuka World exclusive flavors. I’m going to come back and check on you so often, all right?”

She squealed, but put her hand over her own mouth this time when he flinched.

“There’s plenty in Nuka-Town to keep me occupied. I’ll let you get back to what you came here for. What did you come for? Couldn’t resist the thirst-quenching power of Nuka-Cola?”

“Thirst has something to do with it, I’ll say that much.” He mussed her hair. “Perhaps it’s serendipity to run into an old friend.”

“I couldn’t agree more!”

He pocketed the sunglasses once he was out of her line of sight, and he sighed with worry as he slipped into the round, boarded up building at the center of the thoroughfare.

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#fallout 4 #fo4 #fallout 4 fanfic #fo4 fanfic #nuka world #sierra petrovita #father wachusett #geek #hancock #ours is the kingdom

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