ELEPHANT HEAD

Just as Elephant Head has many faces it also has had many names. Driving south from Tucson on I-19, it is hard not to be intrigued and curious about the massive monolith of the Santa Cruz River Valley. It appears to be nestled in the womb of the Santa Rita Mountains from the northern approach, while from Amado, the huge peak of granite towers over the landscape, presenting its face in full glory. However, the vista from the southern approach through Nogales, Rio Rico, Tumacácori, Carmen and Tubac is just plain awesome. Elephant Head sails out from the fortress of the Santa Ritas like a grand ship of the desert.

Of course, Elephant Head is the peak's latest name. It has had many names over the centuries given by various latecomers. Long gone are the names given to it by the Hohokam, Sobáipuri, Pima, Tohono O'odham and Apache. Was it perhaps a sacred mountain in earlier days — the site of holy sacrifices? Or could it have been the place of violent death for tribal enemies? The truth to the stories of Indians taking captives to the peak and throwing them off is given some credence with the account of the 1860 kidnapping of Larcena Pennington Page in Madera Canyon. Larcena told of her capturers, member of the Tonto Apache tribe, stabbing her, striping her of her clothing, throwing her off the trail into a ravine high atop the Santa Ritas, then stoning her as she lay unconscious. Firsthand accounts of similar incidences associated with Elephant Head may exist, but have yet to be uncovered by this writer.

Elephant Head or
Elephant Head Butte

The head of an elephant on the face of the monolith is very easy to see from Amado. While the entire left side of an elephant climbing up into the Santa Rita Mountains appears best from the Green Valley approach. With head held high, and trunk curling downward on the backside of the formation, one front leg and sometimes one hind leg can be seen when the shadows are just right.
Seeing the image of an elephant in the big peak, may date back to forty-eighters and forty-niners of the California Gold Rush era. "I've seen the elephant," was an expression used by emigrants crossing the plains and possibly the southern trails as well. Seeing the elephant was an acknowledgement of the hardships and continual challenges the emigrants encountered as they crossed our vast continent.
Many versions of the term "I've seen the elephant" abound. One of the earliest appeared in Olive Newell's book, Tail of the Elephant: The Emigrant Experience on the Truckee Route of the California Trail, 1844-1852.

A farmer wished to see the circus, but to pay the entrance fee he had first to market his wagon load of produce. As he entered town, [he] met the circus cavalcade led by a magnificent elephant. This gigantic and strange animal so terrified his horse that it reared and bolted, overturning the wagon, breaking the wheel, harness and shaft and throwing the farmer into the ditch. Emerging from the spilt milk, broken eggs and crushed vegetables, himself bruised and dazed, he was greeted with sympathy from bystanders. But he only shrugged and grinned, ‘At least I got to see the elephant.’

Elephant Head as a name was probably first attached to the peak around 1910 when the Elephant Head group of mining claims was located. The Elephant Head post office was established on July 10, 1914 with Henry W. Williams as Postmaster. Prior to that, Elephant Head was considered part of the Pete Mountain formation. (More on Pete Mountain a little later.) Who among the miners and speculators first saw the elephant and named the mine for the vision is not yet known, but perhaps the answer will turn up in a dusty archive somewhere.

Waldeck Peak

Byrd Granger in her updated version of Will C. Barnes' Arizona Place Names notes the following alternate names for Elephant Head. "Diablo Mountain appears as Mount Waldeck Peak on the GLO Field notes for 1905. It is conjectured that Waldeck (or Walldeck) may have been a member of the surveying crew." Could she be right in her assumption?

The referenced 1905 survey and GLO Field notes were for the controversial Baca Float No. 3 Land Grant, ordered by the Surveyor General of Arizona. Phillip Contzen, a well-known and highly respected Arizona surveyor was given the assignment. In mapping the lower area of the Santa Rita Mountains, he referred to Elephant Head as Waldeck Peak. No surveyors named Waldeck turn up in Arizona for the period in question, however, a quick Google search brings up the fact that there is a town in Germany named Waldeck. Could there be a connection?

Sure enough, Contzen's father, Frederich better known as "Fritz," was born in Stormbruch, Waldeck in present-day Germany. An early Arizona Territorial pioneer, Fritz came to Arizona in 1855. He was a member of Major William H. Emory's U. S. Boundary Commission surveying and locating the border between the U.S. and Mexico after the Gadsden Purchase of 1853. Upon completing their duties, the survey team was dismissed in the general area of what is now Nogales. The senior Contzen decided to remain in Arizona and soon established a ranch and stage stop at Punta de Agua (point of water) near Mission San Xavier del Bac.

It is now easy to surmise that son Phillip named the monolith, for his father's place of birth — Waldeck. Fritz was still living in 1905, but by the time of his passing in 1909, the battle for Baca Float No. 3 was raging in the courts, and Contzen's survey and field notes were never filed or approve. Thus the name Waldeck never officially came into use.

Pete Mountain

Pete Mountain or Old Pete Mountain was the name given to the peak behind Elephant Head, and originally included Elephant Head itself. Barnes identifies the source of the name as being Peter Gabriel, a Prussian immigrant who mined in the area for a short period of time. The earliest map reference to "Old Pete Mountain" that I could find is found on the 1893 Official Map of Pima County by George J. Roskruge, Pima County Surveyor.

The Gabriel family arrived in the U.S. in 1848, when little Pete was nine and settled in Wisconsin. Eleven years later, Gabriel served with Colonel Frederick W. Landers's expedition from 1859 to 1860 establishing the Lander Road for the California/Oregon emigrants. He joined another survey expedition that same year, a job that lasted until 1864.

1870 Census records show that Gabriel was prospecting in the Prescott area. Probably not having a great deal of success, he headed south to Florence. From 1879 to 1882 Garbriel was elected Sheriff of Pinal County and then again from 1885-1886. In between Gabriel served as a Deputy United States Marshal.

Today, Gabriel is primarily remembered for his historic 1888 shootout with his former deputy, Josephus Phy in a Florence saloon. Both men were running for the office of sheriff against the incumbent, Jere Fryer.

Historian Larry Ball notes Gabriel had fired Phy two years earlier and Phy began to make a list of grievances against his old boss. When a local journalist wrote that it appeared Gabriel would win, Phy stormed into the saloon where Gabriel was drinking and opened fire on him. Gabriel returned his fire. Both men went out into the street to finish the fight receiving many wounds. Phy would die that night, May 31, 1888. Gabriel survived, but had nightmares for the rest of his life according to Ball.

Strangely, I have been unable to find confirmation of Gabriel serving as a peace officer in Pima County. Contemporary pioneers and historians writing about Pima County make no mention of Gabriel. So if Elephant Head wasn't named for Gabriel, who would be the most likely candidate. My guess would have to be Pete Kitchen. Kitchen's first ranch was located on Sopóri Creek in the shadow of Elephant Head. Kitchen's neighbors were William Kirkland at Canoa and Elias Brevoort at Reventon.

Picacho del Diablo/
Diablo Mountain

Picacho del Diablo, (Devil's Peak or Peak of the Devil), was the name given to the prominent outcrop by the Spanish and Mexican colonists. A few other name variations reflecting mixed languages such as Diablo Mountain and Diabilto Mountain were also used as Americans settled in the valley. Early maps of Arizona rarely note more than the names of mountain ranges. But the name Picacho del Diablo was still in common use in 1861 when Sylvester Mowry's mining engineer, F. Beirtu, drew a map in his diary of the various ranches and settlements in the Santa Cruz River Valley and referenced only one single peak, Picacho del Diablo.

Richmond Jones, Jr., who would meet an untimely death at the hands of the Apaches that same year, simply called the peak “Sugarloaf,” probably never having heard the Spanish name. While Richard J. Hinton in his Handbook to Arizona, 1877 also identified it as Picacho del Diablo.
And once again in 1880 E.A. Echoff and P. Riecker labeled the peak as Picacho del Diablo on the Official Map of the Territory of Arizona.

Cerro de los Muertos

Cerro de los Muertos (Hill of the Dead) was the way Arizona pioneer Joseph King referred to Elephant Head. My good friend R. Joe King (Joe King, IV) remembers his grandfather (Joe King, II) talking about Elephant head as Cerro de los Muertos. King, II told King, IV that the family never traveled the road at the foot of the Santa Ritas in the early morning or early evening. It was considered unsafe to travel at these times due to Apache raiding.

The senior Joseph King, arrived in Arizona in 1864 and would make his home in the Tumacácori Mission for several months. He built an adobe home across the river from the mission, and in early 1871 was seriously wounded in an apache raid on his home. He was reported as dead in some eastern newspapers but fortunately survived. Although King, II claimed his father was shot in his backside, newspaper accounts note he was shot in the groin. King would recover, marry and father three fine sons, Manuel, José (Joe) and Jésus Santiago. His good neighbor and friend, Leslie B Wooster, was not so lucky a couple of months later. On March 20, 1871, Wooster, his wife and unborn baby were brutally murdered, and his wife's niece was kidnapped. The raid would trigger the Camp Grant massacre.
Mama Maria

Long time Tubac resident, the late John Elías, son of Juan B. Elías and Margarita Redondo was born in 1911 and knew Elephant Head by a different name. A descendant of one of the area's oldest families, his widow Mrs. Bernadine Hiler Elías, recounted the following story in an oral history located at the Tubac

Historical Society:

John told me that when he was a little boy living on the Soporí Ranch, his grandmother was there and his mother of course, and whenever he was naughty, he was told about the big Elephant Head rock over there. They said, 'That is Momma María and she is watching you.' And he could look out at that bluff and see the face of a woman with a shawl across her head. And even today, if you look out there from the Soporí Ranch area, and look at that bluff, you can see it is a figure of a woman with a shawl over her head. He said, 'I never liked her very much because she always told my mother what I had done that was naughty--because she always watched me.'

Elephant Shrine

Atop the peak of Elephant Head is a little shrine. Over the years, hikers have made their way to the top and left little elephants of varying sizes, colors and artistic merit. If you make it to the top, you can truly say, I have seen the elephant.

Sources:
- Ball, Larry D., Desert Lawmen: The High Sheriffs of New Mexico and Arizona, 1846-1912. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992.
- Granger, Byrd H., Will C. Barnes' Arizona Place Names. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1960, 1985.
- Hayden Arizona Pioneer Biographical Essays: "Contzen, Frederick (Fritz)" and "Gabriel, J. P." http://www.asu.edu/lib/archives/azbio/azbio.htm
- Hinton, Richard J., Handbook to Arizona, 1877. Glorieta, NM: The Rio Grande Press, Inc., 1970.
- King, R. Joe & Bingham, Mary, "Elephant Head: From Proboscis to the Tail of the Tale." Unpublished article, 2007.
- McClintock, James H., Arizona, Prehistoric, Aboriginal, Pioneer, Modern: the Nation's Youngest Commonwealth Within a Land of Ancient Culture. Chicago: S.J. Clarke Pub. Co., 1916.
- Newell, Olive, Tail of the Elephant: The Emigrant Experience on the Truckee Route of the California Trail, 1844-1852 (California Sesquicentennial Publication). Nevada City, NV: Nevada County Historical Society, 1997.
- Schrader, Frank C., Mineral Deposits of the Santa Rita and Patagonia Mountains Arizona. Washington D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1915.
- The Pacific Reporter, Vol. 185. St. Paul: West Publishing Co., 1920.