Arizona Myths and Legends: The True Stories Behind History's Mysteries - Paperback

Arizona Myths and Legends explores unusual phenomena, strange events, and mysteries in Arizona's history. From strange Grand Canyon deaths, to ghosts at the Hotel Vendome, and the last stagecoach robbery, settle in to learn all the scintillating and unsettling details of the Grand Canyon State's mysterious history.

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Fourteen mind-boggling tales from The Grand Canyon State According to legend, sometime in the late 1860s or early 1870s a number of Apaches threw themselves off a 2,000-foot cliff in an attempt to escape certain death at the hands of the US military. Since this story is neither included in any military records nor comes up in any written or oral Apache history, did anything like it ever happen? Where did the legend of Apache Leap originate? During the spring of 1883, a woman on a sheep ranch was trampled to death--apparently by a large, red camel. Were the hoof prints indeed those of a camel that had been abandoned to the desert after a failed experiment to introduce them as military beasts of burden? Or was this the work of the Red Ghost, a huge red beast said to roam the desert with a zombie-like rider? Are there really untold riches in hidden gold and carefully guarded (or lost) mines throughout Arizona? Since 1870, about forty people have either disappeared or been found dead in and around the suspected location of a lost gold mine in the Superstition Mountains. Legends abound of caches of gold buried throughout the desert by greedy prospectors, fleeing bandits, and even exiled Spanish Jesuit missionaries. From a haunted historic hotel to the last stagecoach robbery in the United States, Arizona Myths & Legends makes history fun and pulls back the curtain on some of The Grand Canyon State's most fascinating and compelling stories. Sam Lowe has lived in and been writing about Arizona for the past forty-five years. He is the author of Speaking Ill of the Dead: Jerks in Arizona History, Speaking Ill of the Dead: Jerks in New Mexico History, Arizona Curiosities, New Mexico Curiosities, Southwest Curiosities, and You Know You're in Arizona, all for Globe Pequot. He and his wife, Lyn, live in Phoenix.