Heart Mine

The place...was marked by a high promontory of land, where two small creeks came together. One of those creeks sank from sight in a swirling sink hole, only to surface again a little further down canyon. Close to that sink hole there was a cavern..., and just downstream from that cave there was a natural stone bridge or arch spanning a steep side gulch. Just downstream from that natural arch and the sink hole, a branch of Dry Fork Canyon turns right or northward to the Red Cloud Loop, a scenic drive. If you watch carefully where that road begins to climb steeply, you will see a heart carved into a very old pinion pine. There is an old Spanish mine about fifty yards from that tree, but it has been filled with rocks and brush. During the 1930s an old Indian named Hackford with several helpers cut dozens of trees and carried thousands of rocks to fill it. One of them said it took a month of hard work to do the job, but when he was asked why they went to such labor, he said it was just an old hole with nothing of value in it. It seems like an awful lot of hard work to cover nothing!--Faded Footprints, pg. 166