The Desert Queen Mine's Bloody Ledgers

Not far from Keys Ranch lies the mine that gave the ranch its name, the Desert Queen, and its ownership history reads like a crime novel. Gold was established here by a man named Frank James in the early eighteen nineties. The outlaw Jim McHaney wanted the mine and sent two men to force James to sign it over.

During that confrontation, one of them, Charley Martin, shot and killed Frank James, then was acquitted on a claim of self defense. McHaney owned the mine for about two years and pulled roughly thirty thousand dollars in gold out of it, but he squandered the money, missed his payments, and lost the mine to foreclosure. From there it changed hands again and again through what one account bluntly called murder, robbery, bank foreclosure, sale, and payment for back wages.

That last part is how Bill Keys got involved. Around nineteen fifteen he filed a claim against the estate for unpaid wages, took the mine and its mill site, and then homesteaded a hundred and sixty acres of land around it. That land became the Desert Queen Ranch, where Keys would spend the rest of his life.

The mine itself was never spectacular. Worked on and off into the nineteen sixties, it produced only a few thousand ounces of gold, but it left behind a trail of dead men and desperate deals scattered across the hills.