Author Archives: Rossi

Crown King & The Bradshaw Mountain Railroad

A visionary and entrepreneur named Frank Murphy built a railroad from Mayer up into the Bradshaw Mountains to Crown King

Back in the 1870’s people were finding gold up in Crown king .was the largest mining town in Yavapai county of the Bradshaw mountains. Tons of people were flocking into Crown King!

Frank Murphy was the Man who had the idea to build the Bradshaw Mountain railway. The dirt road up FR259 is actually the railroad bed that Murphy had built, because it costed $21.50 a ton to haul the ore by muleback! Frank Murphy hired workers via newspaper, offering a dollar a day to work on the railroad.

Newspaper clips

By 1920, Murphy’s railroad was abandoned, Frank died three years prior. Below are present day photos of the trip we recently took up FR259 into Crown King, enjoy!

Before going up, this is Cleator, another ghost town. Not much but some historic homes and a general store.
Cleator General store
A view going up the road, it gets a little bumpy going up, be careful of off roading vehicles and some speeding drivers that cause a lot of dust! The rails give some sense of security.
Entering into Crown king, you will see Christmas ornaments still left on the pine tree entrance. Very cheerful.
On the left side of road, you will see this old truck.
Take a right, you will go into Crown king and see this general store, to the left a church and behind the church is a lodge, cabins. Right now you can buy the home, lodging business, church and event center for $2,499,900@CrownKingSanctuary.com!
They are doing renovations in Crown King this month
Once you get to Crown King, you can always go in and enjoy the food and drinks, just don’t get drunk and drive down the road, please!!!

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Vanessa Rossi-Sondgeroth

Scarlet Macaws, Chocolate, And gems trading business between ancient Anasazi & the Aztecs!

Archaeologists have discovered ancient bones of the parrot and cacao in Chaco canyon! Which means the ancient meso-Americans were doing some trading business with the ancient Pueblo Indians! Pueblo, also known as the Anasazi.

These gorgeous Scarlett Macaws are from the tropics of south & central America.

The Chaco canyon was the home of ancient Anasazi Indians. Thousands of these people lived here in an isolated area between 850 and 1250 A.D. The Chaco Canyon heritage center is located in Northwestern New Mexico between Albuquerque and Farmington.

This historic site is very far out and almost inaccessible!
An image of Chaco Canyon

The prehistoric people would trade chocolate for turquoise and had a tight connection between the 11th & 14th centuries. Archaeologists have found so many items here! They found these containers that were used to hold Cacao (chocolate! Powder inside

Anasazi were well known for not only cliff dwelling, but these beautifully designed jars were used for drinking hot chocolate!!! Yes, archaeologists found many of these!!!
Anasazi pottery found at Chaco, look at how great the artist made this design!!!

The archaeologists found the skulls of 35 Scarlett Macaws at Chaco, 30 found in the Pueblo Bonita area.

A skull of the Scarlett Macaw!

Major amounts of Turquoise was found there as well, in fact over 200,000 pieces of the gem were found!! I definately am making the Chaco culture historical park a definately place to visit in the future and buying some real Chaco turquoise jewelry, maybe buy a bright Scarlett Macaw as well,and since I am an artist, I may just paint one as well with a cup of hot chocolate!!!!!

I really hope you enjoyed this article! As always please share with others about this site , reviews welcome and donations always accepted on my cashapp @desertexpl

Have a great weekend everyone!

Regards.

Vanessa Rossi-Sondgeroth

Tucson’s Serial killer “The pied-piper”

Charles Schwib

Along with exploring and making my homemade soy candles, I am also into crime cases! I had never heard of a Serial killer that terrorized Tucson back in the mid 1960’s!!!!

So, I was fascinated when I came across this serial killer named Charles Schmid. Or as the Pied-Piper killer. He was a 22 year old who told two other people to help kill a 15 year old girl by the name of Alleeen Rowe. Charles yelled out “ I can kill someone and get away with it!” He took the fifteen year old outside Tucson . He then raped and took a large rock and smashed her head in with it. Then he told the other two to dig a hole. The other two who were with him was John Saunders and Mary French. They managed to provide alibis to the police, making Alleens disappearance sound like she just ran away from home! Everything went dormant until about a year later when a young lady by the name of Gretchen Fritz who was 17 at the time, was dating Charles had gone missing along with her sister. Charles was actually quite a charming and handsome guy, although he was short. He hated being short so he would shove paper in his boots to add height.

The pied-piper was often spotted along Speedway driving around. Most of the teenage community in Tucson actually liked him and never saw the dark side of him. He was eventually found guilty in 1966. He was given the death penalty. The police didn’t find Allen Rowe’s body til 67’ and his death sentence had ceased during the death sentence was temporarily haulted in 1971. In prison he was not liked and he was killed in prison by other prisoners on March 10, 1975 at age 32. Incidentally, he wore makeup and the mole on his face was drawn in by him, Crazy!!!!

Hope you enjoyed this very interesting article today!

I just made my pine candles if your interested in buying in my rossicoasterscandles.myshopify.com store! Have a wonderful rest of your day!

Regards,

Vanessa Rossi-Sondgeroth

White Oaks has a fascinating history!

I took this picture of the abandoned 1887 Hoyle mansion from afar in White Oaks. The man who built it was Watt Hoyle built in 1893, one of the owners of the OldAbe mine. He built this Victorian mansion for his then fiancée, who decided not to marry him, They call it “Hoyles folly”
Old Abe’s mine, gold in White Oaks

Fourty miles east of this ghost town called White Oaks was where Billy the kid loved to party. He loved gambling, and hanging with some rough necks. It was after the Lincoln county wars that Billy and his “gang” would go after the cattle in White Oaks. The people of White Oaks were not happy what Billy and his posse did with their cattle, so some of the White Oak citizens got together and planned on going after the kid and his guys.

Eventually these citizens caught up with them and then the gunfight started!

But the cattle thieves got away and came back to White Oaks just to flaunt it in their faces! That’s when Dave Rudabaugh shot at Sherriff Redman for the heck of it. Redman got away from the bullets and about thirty of the citizens joined forces with the sheriff to run Billy the kid, Dave Rudabaugh and Billy Wilson out of White Oaks!

Dave Rudabaugh
Billy Wilson was both outlaw then law officer

White Oaks ghost town still has a few of its original buildings like the Schoolhouse

This schoolhouse is now a museum

Also, another attraction for many cowboys is the “No scum allowed Saloon” which is rated as one of top ten cowboys Saloon.

The historic Gumm house, what a beauty!
Historic Brown store has had many different paint jobs, it was not these colors when I visited!

So if you want to go on a road trip and check it out, it is in Lincoln county in Carizzozo, New Mexico. you can also check out White Oaks miners home, valley of fires recreation area, Smokey Bear museum, Carizzozo heritage museum, or Fort Stanton historic site!

Happy New Years to you and yours, hope you enjoyed this article, share my site, write a review, but please keep all comments and reviews calm and respectful please! No rude statements allowed. Also wanted to add I got Organic pine soy candles coming this week up for purchase at my Rossicoasterscandles.myshopify.com store ok✌️👍🥰❤️

Regards

Vanessa Rossi-Sondgeroth