Webber Creek is best known today for the Geronimo Boy Scout Camp that occupies its headwaters under the Rim, and for the Geronimo Estates, a residential subdivision just downstream from the Boy Scout Camp. However, for generations before white
Webber Creek is best known today for the Geronimo Boy Scout Camp that occupies its headwaters under the Rim, and for the Geronimo Estates, a residential subdivision just downstream from the Boy Scout Camp. However, for generations before white settlers entered the area, Native Americans found it a good place to camp during their seasonal sojourns and to this day a number of Tonto Apaches claim this vicinity as a homeland.
The first white men to “discover” Webber Creek came during the 1868 expedition led by Col. Thomas Devin, as they scouted the Rim Country for Apache camps. The Army engineer in that detachment was C. H. Webber who mapped the area for the first time. He bestowed his own name on the creek; a bit of ego boosting allowed first-time explorers.
The next time Webber Creek appears in the public records is in 1883 when William Craig filed a claim on its upper waters and established what he and his partner Paul Vogel called the Spade Ranch. The name referred to all the digging they had to do in planting their large orchard of fruit trees. The Spade Ranch would become a major source of fruit, fresh and dried, for the Payson area.
Craig, a wagon master, and Vogel, a muleskinner, had met in the Army and after being mustered out they became partners in the search for gold. Hearing about the discovery of rich ore in Arizona’s central mountains, they came to Marysville west of Payson in 1881. From that base their prospecting led them to stake the Single Standard Mine, but it proved to have little pay dirt, and soon closed down.
The two made their living as builders in the Payson area. Among their work: the Pieper Mansion and Payson’s oldest standing building, the poured mud house, both on Main Street.
The same spring they staked their claim to the Spade Ranch, Craig and Vogel prospected all along Webber Creek and discovered a rich deposit. They called it The Grand Prize Mine and it helped them pay for their ranch and the orchards. By 1900 the mine operation had grown large enough to demand professional oversight, and Craig hired George Albert Randall from Denver to take the position of mine superintendent.
Several major improvements to the operation were effected immediately. A small smelter was installed at the crossing downstream from where Webber Creek enters the East Verde River. This placed the smelted ore on the Pine-Strawberry Road, which was the main road to Flagstaff and a transcontinental train connection. The road from the mine on Webber Creek would have had to follow that creek to its confluence with the East Verde and then down to the crossing. Instead, the owners blazed a short cut, a new trail that cut directly south from Webber Creek to the Pine Road. Remnants of that wagon trail can be traced today. Also, pieces of black slag from the smelter were still being found scattered under and near the modern bridge at the East Verde River as late as the first decade of the 21st century.
Not far below the crossing, Sycamore Creek joins the East Verde River. This is a short spring-fed creek (a bit over one mile in length) that parallels today’s highway 87/260. This is not to be confused with many other creeks in Arizona by the same name, notably one that flows south from the Mazatzals. Randall built a bunkhouse and cabins f