Hornswogglers, Fourflushers & Snake-Oil Salesmen (14 page)

Sure, he enjoyed fine things in life, enjoyed slipping out for a cool glass of beer now and then, in fact, but he was not interested in frittering his money away and having little at the end of his days to show for it. He wanted real amounts of money, and all the fineries it could bring. And so while he slogged through his days at jobs he did not care for, he had padded his nest by purchasing real estate.

It went slowly at first, as he taught himself how such things happened, how the intricacies of land transactions occurred, what they required of all sides, and he kept his eyes open. He began to realize in the process that not only could he make more money conducting such transactions, but that he didn't have to expend as much effort for a more harmonious outcome. And part of that meant more money for him.

Who could have predicted that the forgery skills he had honed over the years and put to excellent use in the army crafting passes for himself and his fellows would also come into such excellent play? He smiled again and indulged in another long, satisfied sigh.

And on that day in 1871, that was how George M. Willing Jr. found James Reavis when he entered the small real estate agency's front door. And from that initial meeting to the end of his days, James Reavis's entire life would never again be the same. It would contain all the excitement, fame, riches, and more that he dreamed of. Too much so, as it turned out.

Willing had once upon a time been a physician, but the allure of possibility out among the rocks of the Southwest proved too tempting and he left his practice to become a prospector. He did, however, retain enough semblance of his former profession to enable him to sell patent medicines, bottled cure-alls likely containing more alcohol than anything curative. Willing had the opportunity to visit Reavis on the advice of a friend, Colonel Byser, who had used the creative documentation skills of Reavis some time earlier. Willing told Reavis that he had recently purchased a Spanish land grant from a broken and down-on-his-luck prospector named Miguel Peralta.

The mention of a land grant that was within reach was something of great interest to most people at the time, and Reavis was no different. According to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) and the Gadsden Purchase of 1854, any Spanish land grants posited by either the Mexican or Spanish governments were to be honored by the US government. And anyone possessing a land grant stood a good chance of gaining real wealth; untold to be sure, but the potential was there, nonetheless. Reavis leaned forward, eager to hear more of Willing's tale.

The good doctor admitted proudly that he had paid $20,000 in gold dust as well as all the equipment and mules an ever-hopeful prospector could want. For his part, Willing was only too glad to see those vestiges of prospecting leave, as he held out great hope that the land grant would be the answer to all his future money woes.

Willing's deal with Peralta took place at a mine southeast of Prescott, Arizona Territory, in Black Canyon, on October 20, 1864. The agreement came together in an informal and unorthodox—some might even say suspect—manner: “When the trade was made, I had no paper on which to write the deed, so I scouted the camp and found a sheet of greasy, pencil-marked camp paper upon which I wrote . . . and as there were no justices or notaries present I had it acknowledged before witnesses.”

Willing did what few of us would do were we holding the keys to a potentially lucrative land grant—he waited three years, making it to Prescott by 1867, to have the odd transaction officially recorded. Perhaps the man was a slow walker.

Once he arrived in town, and finding he was, as always, low on cash, Willing revealed his inner swindler to the stable owner. He proposed that should the man purchase rights to half the land grant, the two of them could strike it rich immediately by demanding local mine owners pay them for the land on which they operated. Instead of the excited, greedy response he expected, Willing was verbally threatened by angry locals. He left town early the next day.

And that's the story Willing fed Reavis, the budding title tweaker, on their first meeting. Reavis, intrigued but wary, asked Willing to leave the documents with him so that Reavis might read through them and become familiar with the details. Willing, probably sensing a fellow shyster, said, “Nothing doing, pal,” but did promise to return.

And return he did, with yet a third sleazy swindler in tow, in the form of one William W. Gitt, also known as the “Old Spanish Land Title Lawyer,” who had spent twenty years in Mexico dodging a stateside arrest warrant for his part in shady real estate transactions.

Never were there three more ideally suited partners. The men spent time each week together, poring over the various papers pertaining to Willing's land grant. There was enough substance to them that they continued exploring the possibilities. In addition to the hasty deed, Willing's sheaf of documents contained the all-important
expediente
, which is a copy of all documents known to exist about the land grant. An 1853 letter signed by Mexican President Antonio López de Santa Anna stated that all possible effort had gone into procuring the relevant documentation pertaining to the land grant.

This was an exciting time for young Reavis, a time of much free education, when he acquired skills needed to research the confusing and intricate world of Mexican and Spanish land documents. Eventually Willing and Reavis formed a partnership in order to continue promoting and exploring the land grant's claim.

On May 5, 1874, Reavis married for the first time, to Ada Pope. Then he headed west, first to California to retrieve various documents Willing had left years before with a merchant to secure a loan he'd taken with the man. Reavis also didn't return to his wife . . . for six years. She grew fed up—who can blame her?—and in 1883 was granted a divorce due to desertion by her husband. Reavis, for his part, didn't care. He was like a bloodhound on the heady scent of potential riches and importance, no matter it would at best be mere fabrication.

Willing returned to Prescott, Arizona, in March 1874, and no sooner did he finally file his official claim in the Yavapai County Courthouse than he breathed his last. He was found dead in his room the next morning, and though nefarious causes, including poison and other strange situations, were suspected, Willing's death instigated no official investigation. News of his partner's demise reached Reavis in San Francisco. And he was giddy, for that left Reavis, as Willing's partner, in dire need of those papers that Willing had in his possession.

As desperate as he must have been for them, he was too poor and sickly on his arrival in California to do much about it. He had to build up his health and his bank balance, so Reavis took on the job of schoolteacher in Downey, California, during 1875–76. Then, oddly enough, he headed north to work as a journalist for two Frisco newspapers.

Reavis eventually made his way to Arizona Territory in May 1880. He roved the Phoenix region, then hopped a stagecoach to Prescott. He was armed with a letter from Willing's widow that authorized Reavis, as Willing's partner, to take ownership of the dead man's possessions, held in a safe place by the probate judge who had overseen the case of Willing's death.

Reavis headed back to California with his precious paperwork. And that's when his efforts slipped into top speed. The first thing Reavis did was to transform the land grant from a “floater” to one that was based, or fixed, to a specific location. In this case, Reavis claimed a sizable spread measuring 49.5 miles by 149.5 miles that later metastasized to a mammoth hunk of real estate measuring 78.8 by 236.49 miles. It seems Reavis's boldness knew few bounds, as his grant's reach claimed the burgs of Phoenix, Tempe, Florence, Casa Grande, Globe, and even eastward to Silver City, New Mexico, as well as the land on which resided the famous Silver King Mine and a sizable portion of the Southern Pacific Railroad.

Then Reavis headed eastward to Washington, DC, to examine a rare record book on loan from the Mission San Xavier del Bac, in southern Arizona Territory. He headed west once more, and in 1881 spent three months, from September through November, rummaging in the archives in Guadalajara and Mexico City. He stole documents, altered others, inserted still more—forgeries all—and made copies of more yet, using seals and other official-looking aspects to suit his needs.

From there he headed back to California, befriending archivists in Los Angeles and San Francisco, giving him unprecedented access to all manner of obscure and rare materials. From there he went to Kentucky to see his dead partner's widow, and on May 1, 1882, he obtained full possession of the grant, persuading her to sign over her interest in exchange for $30,000, which he swore to pay to her over time.

And all this time he created a full and stunning, legitimate-sounding family lineage—steeped in old money, naturally—to which he and he alone would have claim. While “studying” the archives of Mexico and Spain, he craftily smuggled out documents, altered them, then smuggled them back in. He also altered various entries, interspersing his fabricated family's name and titles, forever altering old and precious documents.

Reavis also amassed a huge amount of paperwork, stolen, real, old, and new—but made to look old—all in an effort to support what would be a tremendous claim that would establish him as the sole hereditary Baron of Arizona, making him heir to all the holdings his expanding and fictitious Spanish land grant contained. He was engaged in nothing less than creating an empire out of thin air (and his considerable skills as a forger). Everything had to be in place before he unveiled his masterwork.

In San Francisco Reavis used his journalistic experience and credits to pen a number of anonymous articles for the
San Francisco Examiner
in which he claimed “irrefutable evidence” that the Peralta land grant was legitimate. It was his official opening salvo, a shot across the bow to all with whom he would soon begin negotiating.

Among those he engaged in negotiations were Southern Pacific Railroad executives. And it worked—he was ultimately given $10,000 for the railroad's right to an easement across his land. He finally filed his first official claim on March 27, 1883, in Tucson. Part of the process involved him supplying copies of the various papers he had collected, which amounted to two steamer trunks filled with documentation.

Once the claim was filed, Reavis decamped to a town called Arizola, near Casa Grande, location of famous historic ruins tracing back to the thirteenth century. Reavis, however, claimed that they were the ruins of the home, La Hacienda de Peralta, occupied by his fictional forebears, the first Baron of Peralta. Reavis laid claim to the site and, hiring builders, commenced construction on a mansion with servant quarters, a stable, and more.

Filled with righteous self-confidence, he hired a number of individuals to act on his behalf as agents and rent collectors, and he sent them throughout the vast region he had laid claim to and began offering quit-claim deeds to settlers, of whom there were many, in exchange for sums ranging from a free meal to $1,000. Most of those approached were suspicious but not quite sure enough to argue. Many of them had been living there for generations, on land they had bought and paid for. They were threatened with litigation and few of them could afford to go up against Reavis and his men.

Especially not when they began reading notices Reavis had posted throughout the entirety of his claim. Those residents were told they must contact Reavis's lawyer “for registering tenancy and signing agreements, or regard themselves liable to litigation for trespassing and expulsion when the Peralta Grant is, as it must be, validated by the US government.” He even hired publicists to trumpet the news that the all-important water and mineral rights were his as well.

These were small fry compared with Reavis's negotiations with the owner of the Silver King Mining Company, James M. Barney. Incensed but convinced that Reavis had some semblance of veracity to his claims, Barney ended up paying $25,000 for a quit-claim deed. Reavis laughed all the way to the bank, especially once he nailed into place payments from both the Silver King Mine and the Southern Pacific Railroad, all but guaranteeing that naysayers and holdouts had better not go against Reavis or his minions when they came calling.

Many settlers, so convinced that his claims were legitimate and iron clad, and unable to pay potential fees in exchange for the quit-claim deed he was offering, packed up their possessions and abandoned their homesteads.

Two voices of reason, however, Phoenix-based newspapers the
Herald
and the
Gazette
, urged local residents to refrain from buying quit-claim deeds from Reavis, at least until further legitimacy could be proven. A slight setback came when it was found that the owner of the
Herald
, Homer McNeil, had secretly purchased a quit-claim from Reavis. There was public outcry, and McNeil made a public show of renouncing his quit-claim purchase.

Soon enough, holes began to appear in the intricate weave of deception Reavis had so carefully crafted. Various signatures could not be verified, and complaints arose that some documents had not initially been given enough attention to verify authenticity. Reavis was forced to announce publicly that his claim hadn't actually been confirmed by the government just yet. But, he claimed, it was merely a matter of time.