HikeArizona.COM

On your hikes around Mt Lemmon, especially bushwhacking hikes, have you seen any iron doors in the side of a canyon? If you have, post about it there...

Ha ha, that's the oldest myth in town! The Mine with the Iron Door, made famous in a novel of the same name by the prolific author, Harold Bell Wright, 1923, and a year later by a silent movie. The legend is kept alive, of course, by the restaurant of The Iron Door at Ski Valley on Mt. Lemmon.

Harold Bell Wright's novels are remembered via street names in a Tucson neighborhood near Speedway and Wilmot, near where he lived. The streets are named for his various books. Wright was the first author in the history of publishing to sell a million copies of one of his books. I used to have a nice collection of them, but sold them to a friend recently. They are easy to find on Amazon, anyway.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Bell_Wright
http://nicklabriola.wordpress.com/2010/ ... t-estates/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mine_w ... _Iron_Door

Seems I've read about nearly every mountain having some kind of "dark" entrance to the underworld, typically guarded by big, metal doors. The Panamints in Death Valley - their doors lead to some combination of 1) the hidden gold 2) the underground, under ocean tunnel that connects So Cal to Catalina Island to Washington DC 3) the under-underworld universe where there is a race of alien beings that mirror the appearance of world leaders, like "Invasion of the Body Snatchers".

I wonder if they have Wi-Fi down there?


Sgt Lumpy

azbackpacker, have you read the Mine With the Iron Door book or seen the movie? Are they any good?

I will be canvassing the CDO with my metal detector for the next 40 years. It must be called the "canyon of gold" for a reason, right?

I've been writing my county officials, lobbying them to build a tunnel from Catalina to east Tucson. Perhaps they would run into the massive gold stash from below in the process.

I have read the book. Like Wright's other books, it is an old-fashioned Victorian adventure/romance, with a gallant hero and a beautiful heroine. Wright's saving grace as a writer, in my opinion, was his ability to describe landscape. But it really is very old-fashioned, quaint, syrupy, overdone, etc. Kind of fun, though.

Hahahahaha!
http://hikearizona.com/photo.php?ZIP=332354


At the base of the Organ Mountains, Rabbit Ears Massif.

Sure enough! Seems like some details were lost in the legend. Did you enter and claim your wild fortunes? It kinds of looks like someone has already been there...

It's collapsed inside. The trail above looks down into the shafts which are deep and may go far below. Tunnels, you bet, but I'm not going in without a rope

I know where they are. Send a check made out to cash in the amount of $5k. PM me for where to send the check and I'll send you the GPS coords...

jeffmacewen wrote:I know where they are. Send a check made out to cash in the amount of $5k. PM me for where to send the check and I'll send you the GPS coords...

I'll split the gold with you 50/50. I need to find the contract the Dwarves gave Bilbo...

I've done quite a bit of travel in the Catalina's and I can tell you where not to go! While I haven't seen an iron door, I have seen a pretty cool chandelier!