(upbeat theme music) - For over the past 60 years, Arizona PBS has told incredible stories of Arizona's distinctive people, beautiful landscapes, and treasured history.

Now relive those memories we've pulled "From the Vault."

Hello, I'm Alberto Rios.

Dive into the 48 states' rich past, from the rise and fall of a mining town to the legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright's unique architecture.

Discover the history that defined Arizona's legacy.

"From the Vault" presents "Arizona Stories."

(gentle music) (wind softly blowing) - [Bob] But it's in there.

There's no doubt in my mind it's in there.

- [Narrator] No doubt, Bob Corbin believes gold is hidden in the Superstition Mountains east of Phoenix.

That's why the former attorney general has journeyed into this wilderness hundreds of times over the past 50 years.

- Well, the reporters know I was attorney general.

They asked me why I like to go in there so much.

I told them that's the only place I can go where you can't get to me.

- [Narrator] Gold has been found here, but its source has been in dispute from the beginning.

It all started in the late 1800s, when a German prospector named Jacob Waltz emerged from the Superstitions with gold ore. That created quite a stir in Phoenix.

Before he died in 1891, he supposedly left clues to the location of his mine.

- He also, when he died, had 24 pounds of very, very rich gold ore underneath his bed in a candle box.

- [Narrator] The legend of the Lost Dutchman mine was born.

The Lost Dutchman mine was brought to popular attention by the 1949 film "Lust for Gold," starring Glenn Ford as Jacob Waltz.

But it wasn't the movie that brought Bob Corbin to Arizona.

It was the legend of the mine.

- Well, I was a Hoosier back in Indiana, and I was going to Indiana University.

And one of the things we had to do was write a theme on a subject, and I picked lost mines.

And in reading and researching, one of them was the Lost Dutchman mine.

And from that point on, I was hooked.

- The Lost Dutchman mine is the holy grail, the great-granddaddy of all lost mine stories.

- [Narrator] Ron Feldman operates the "OK Corral" in Apache Junction.

He's also spent decades in the mountains on a quest for gold.

- I've spent 37 years of my life looking for it.

But people from all over the United States come looking for the Lost Dutch mine, all over from the world, actually.

I have had people coming out for the last 35 years, the same people coming to hunt this thing, and now their children and grandchildren come out and hunt this thing.

(upbeat country music) - [Narrator] Organized treks have been made into the Superstitions at least as early as 1934.

One year, the Dons of Phoenix, an organization preserving local culture, welcomed over 2,000 guests.

They arrived in busloads.

Over the years, visitors have been entertained with Dutchman lore and the opportunity to pan for gold.

The day culminated with the re-creation of Jacob Waltz's story.

(gun firing) (upbeat music) Near the west face of the Superstitions on the streets of Goldfield, tourists soak up the Old West atmosphere, trying to grasp what it might really have been like 100 years ago.

This site marks the spot of the original gold-mining town.

- We revived it over the last 20 years.

We've been fixing it up and opened it up for tourism and stuff like that.

A lot of people just love the history.

- [Narrator] Maybe they love to feel a little heat from gold fever down in the Goldfield mine.

Around Goldfield are several abandoned mines like the Queen here.

Filled with water, its secret's safe.

The secret of the Lost Dutchman's mine, over a century old, also remains safe, but that doesn't deter those who seek it.

- He said that his mine was two miles back from the face.

Well, what does he mean by back?

Did he mean back into the Superstitions?

Well, you're right at the foot of Weaver's Needle two miles back.

Or out this way, two miles back?

And it's little things like that that screw people up for 100 years.

- What I learned real quickly is, well, actually it wasn't too quick, took me 25 years to learn: where the Dutchman wasn't.

- [Bob] Since I've been looking for, since 1957, for it, I've come up with a lot of clues.

But there's no question.

A lot of people say there's no gold in those mountains.

And there is.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] The Superstitions have an air of mystery about them, a whisper of danger.

There've been over 100 documented deaths in this wilderness.

- A lot of people have died looking for the mine.

You know, it's real easy.

It's a harsh environment.

You go out there without the right equipment and supplies and water, it's pretty easy to get dead in a hurry.

Some of them have been shot, killed over a piece of dirt that they thought was the...

They had the location, and they didn't want anybody else around.

- I think it's an obsession.

People go in there, some people go in with the idea they're going to find it, and it gets a hold of them, and it destroys their lives.

- [Narrator] All the more reason to pack a bit of perspective, along with the pick and ax, on a trek into the Superstitions.

This land is beautiful on its own, without what may be a fool's promise of hidden riches.

(stream flowing) But that fact doesn't deter the most ardent of seekers.

They leave only to return.

- [Bob] There's something about those mountains that...

They're very rough, and just something about them intriguing, but you can't go in there with a thought you're going to find it, because 99 out of a multimillion times, you're not going to.

(upbeat accordion music) (upbeat accordion music continues) (upbeat accordion music continues) (upbeat accordion music continues) (Mexican-style music) - [Narrator] The town of Sonora, Arizona, exists only in the photos and the memories of those who once called it home.

- My mother had a lot of pictures, and I started putting them all together.

- [Narrator] Frankie Olmos grew up in Sonora in its heyday in the 1940s.

At its peak, the population reached more than 5,000 people.

- It was a lot of fun.

I had a lot of friends.

We'd go swimming.

We'd go into the mountains and picnic.

We'd go on bike rides.

- It seems like there was so much to do in the small community.

And the only entertainment was radios.

Very few people had televisions, I'm sure.

I know we didn't.

- [Narrator] Jessie Hill grew up in the mining town.

It was one of three segregated communities established by the local mine around the turn of the 20th century.

Ray for Anglos, Barcelona for Spaniards, and a town Mexican miners named Sonora after their home state.

- And the attitude in that early period was that the workers were to be kept separate.

They were going to be paid differently, or separately, and they were going to live separate from each other.

- [Narrator] In time, the town of Sonora took on an identity.

- [Christine] So when they came to Arizona, you can say that they reinvented their community, their town.

So they brought this richness of family and cultural traditions and customs with them.

(Mexican-style music) - [Narrator] Sonorans celebrated traditional Mexican holidays, such as Cinco de Mayo and Mexican Independence Day.

They also held 4th of July parades and over the years developed an annual fiesta the whole town took part in.

- [Frankie] We loved those fiestas.

They had all kinds of games for the children.

- We had people that came in from all over the state for those fiestas in that little town.

How they managed to spend all that time there partying.

But we prepared for that months ahead.

(crowd at a baseball game chattering) - [Narrator] The American pastime of baseball became a way of life in Sonora.

A semi-pro ball team was made up of miners from Ray and Sonora.

They played teams from around the state and usually won.

- [Frankie] Every Sunday, we'd get dressed, and we knew we were going to baseball game.

The Ray-Sonora Tigers were really good.

(Mexican-style music) - [Narrator] Sonora had become the quintessential American immigrant town, but what supported the community's livelihood also led to its demise, for mining no longer took place below ground but above, and large amounts of earth were moved to get to copper ore. - We more or less knew that the town was going down because the homes started cracking.

When they did their blasting, all the homes started cracking.

So everybody on the outskirts of town had to start moving out because it was dangerous.

That's when the church cracked too.

- [Narrator] The mining company demolished the old church in 1951 and paid for a new one, built on the other side of town, complete with a crucifix and an altar imported from Italy.

The company could not do the same for people's homes.

- We were one of the first families that had to move out of Sonora.

In fact, I was in the seventh grade when we were told the mine was closer to, you know, the open pit was closer to our home.

And I cried, of course.

I didn't want to move to Ray.

And that's where we had to go.

- [Narrator] By 1963, the remaining residents of Sonora were told they had two years to leave the town.

- [Jessie] No one was paid anything for their homes.

We just upped and moved.

- [Narrator] The town of Sonora was demolished in 1966.

- The company didn't just demolished the town without any kind of feeling behind it.

The company wasn't that cruel, simply because the company recognized that these were important families and that they cared enough about their town to want to try and save it.

- [Narrator] The mining company paid to have the town's church relocated with the blessing of the Catholic priest.

- He prayed the rosary in front of the church.

I think it took him a week to bring it down.

And he walked ahead of that church, praying a rosary the whole way.

And it's here in Kearny, and it's beautiful.

We love our church here.

- [Narrator] A new cemetery was built in Kearny, and the remains of graves from Ray and Sonora were dug up and buried here.

The area where the town of Sonora was located became part of a large pit.

The ground that held so much life became lifeless mine tailings.

- But after it was all done, then we realized we didn't have a place to go back to.

This was it.

It was a permanent thing.

It was gone.

- I don't know, maybe if Sonora would've continued existing, I don't know if our outlook in life would've been as it has, to succeed and strive for more, or if we would've still been back there with that guitar music and fiestas and raising our children as we were.

- We made good lives for ourselves.

And maybe it was a blessing in disguise.

I don't know.

- [Narrator] In 1999, Sonora was recognized with an historical marker that sits below a hill that once overlooked the town.

- [Jessie] There were no records of Sonora, Arizona, but now there is.

They can look for it.

There's a historical marker.

And I think it makes people feel a little bit better.

There's a sense of belonging.

They can take their children up there and say, "Well, this is where our town was at.

And it makes you feel good.

- [Narrator] A cross put up by residents more than 50 years ago is the only reminder of what once was a place hundreds of families called home.

- It was a beautiful life, and it's something that I'll carry in my heart the rest of my life until I'm gone.

(traffic speeding past) (gentle music) (fiddle music) - [Narrator] In the shadows of Picacho Peak off I-10 between Phoenix and Tucson, stands a monument honoring the Mormon Battalion.

- [Commander] Fire!

- [Narrator] It was 1846.

The United States was at war with Mexico and needed troops.

Responding to the call, 500 men and 32 women formed the Mormon Battalion, began marching west from Council Bluffs, Iowa.

They were the first to raise an American flag in Arizona during their brief stop in Tucson.

Pushing on, the brave trailblazers spent a cold winter's night here at Picacho Pass, then continued their trek on to the Pacific Ocean.

When they reached San Diego, they had marched 2,000 miles, the longest infantry march in U.S. history, blazing a wagon road along the way.

(old-timey piano music) - [Narrator] In the 1930s and 40s, movie theaters were magical places with memorable names.

Phoenix had the Rialto, the Studio, the Fox, and the Strand.

They were all wonderful theaters, but only a few could be called movie palaces, places so large and ornate, they were almost bigger than the entertainment itself.

The Orpheum is one of those places.

Built in 1929 at 2nd Avenue and Adams, it's owned by the city now, and to the delight of many is being restored to its original glory.

(old-timey piano music) - Orpheum Theatre?

You bet.

You bet I remember the Orpheum Theatre.

That was probably the best-looking theater.

It was like an opera house (jazzy music) - [Narrator] In the theater's heyday, streetcars ran through downtown Phoenix, and it only cost a nickel to ride.

Drive-in restaurants were all the rage, and people came to the Orpheum for more than just a show.

- It was cool.

That had a lot to do with people...

When they wanted to be entertained, if you could be entertained and get cooled off at the same time, that was something pretty good.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Every movie palace had a feature that made it memorable.

At the Orpheum, it was the ceiling.

Prior to each show, it came alive with the illusion of moving clouds against a clear blue sky.

- You could sit there looking at the ceiling for a while and think you were sitting outside somewhere.

- We always held hands at the movies.

You know that.

And every once in a while, I would sneak in a smooch or two.

The kids now for their proms go out to dinner, and they have limousine rides.

Well, for us, the grandeur was a date going to the Orpheum Theatre to see some great movie that was in town, that kind of thing.

(jazzy music) - [Narrator] All the famous names from stage and screen appeared at the Orpheum Theatre, but for three nights each year, the biggest stars were children.

(jazzy music) In the thirties and forties, hundreds of Phoenix schoolchildren took dance lessons from local instructor Gene Bump.

Then each spring, they showcased their talents on the Orpheum stage.

- My first recollection of the Orpheum Theatre was the night that my parents took me to see a Gene Bump revue.

And I remember my father saying to me, "Would you like to do that, Marie?"

And I was, you know, "Oh, yes!"

- [Narrator] Four-year-old Marie Getty began taking lessons right away, and within a year appeared in her first big revue.

(jazzy piano music) - [Marie] Gene Bump's dance reviews were equivalent to the kind of show you see in Las Vegas now on the stage.

In Las Vegas, you don't see little children, four and five, six years old on the stage in these revues.

But with Gene Bump, it was the same professional quality.

- [Narrator] Phoenix looked forward to these annual revues, and the 1,700 seat theater was always packed.

It was a proud moment for parents.

And for the children, it was their opportunity to shine.

(jazzy piano) - [Marie] I imagined myself in the movies.

I imagined myself star of stage and screen, like Shirley Temple was.

- [Narrator] Thousands of children had similar dreams that were shared at least for a moment by a community that nurtured its children, at a movie palace called the Orpheum.

(mellow music) (gentle music) - [Narrator] On the foothills of the McDowell Mountains north of Scottsdale lies Taliesin West.

Once the winter residence of one of the 20th century's greatest architects, Frank Lloyd Wright, Taliesin West was and is a community of architects and apprentices learning and practicing organic architecture.

It is also a sublime place of natural and architectural harmony.

- Taliesin West is a statement of a very heroic person, a very heroic nature, of someone who first programmed the life to be experienced in these structures and then designed the structures to support that.

- [Narrator] Considered a visionary today, the iconoclastic architect Frank Lloyd Wright sometimes faced ridicule in his day when he advanced the theory of organic architecture.

He believed form and function are one, that a structure and a site are one.

- What he wanted was for architecture, in his words, to be a natural consort to the ground, for people, in the lives of people, to be kind of a flowering of the spirit of the land, one in the same, both being nature, both being natural.

He would say that what is natural is not necessarily architectural, but what is architectural must always be natural.

(bird chirping) - [Narrator] Wright bridged the gap between environmentalism and development.

Taliesin West is an exemplar of this idea, reflecting a great respect for the land.

- Well, he came out, first time around 1927, '28, working with the Biltmore as a consultant and fell in love with the desert.

He loved it, as a contrast to his pastorale Wisconsin.

- [Narrator] On a Wisconsin hilltop, Wright had built the original Taliesin in 1911.

Taliesin, the name of a Welsh poet, means "a shining brow."

The house served as a home, office, and summer location for his apprentices.

Wright found the site for Taliesin West in 1937.

- So when Wright came out here, he came with his wife, his children, and his daughter, and about 25 young men and women, who were then his apprentices.

And with just that workforce, they began to build Taliesin West, picked the stones off the side of the mountain, sand from the washes, mixed with concrete.

And then the redwood beams, white canvas.

This is the, what we call the drafting room of the studio.

Actually, it was the first room built.

And this block here was the first masonry involved.

You see, in Arizona, you can't dress or till the stone.

So we thought, well, let's put the flat part of the stone against the form, pour concrete behind it, and have what you call a desert rubble wall.

And then the beams overhead carry the canvas flaps.

And this is actually a drafting room, living room, dining room, until the rest of the building was built.

Actually, the first room built was the kitchen.

That's central to the whole thing.

And he called it a galley, because he referred to Taliesin West as like a ship afloat on the desert, with the prow, and the white canvas, and (indistinct) like a ship on the desert.

- [Narrator] Bruce Pfeiffer came to Taliesin as an apprentice more than 50 years ago.

- I lived in a tent for five, six years, enjoyed it, read by candlelight.

'Course at that time, we were really in the wilderness.

- [Narrator] Vernon Swaback began his apprenticeship in 1957.

- I have a very nice house.

Architecture's been very good to me, but as a teenager, I lived in a tent, and at night I walked out into the blackness of night.

Quiet, mystical.

And when I went to sleep in my little tent, I was part of all of that.

I've said it often, and I can say it without any fear of reservation, that in many ways I will never live that well again.

- [Narrator] From the beginning at Taliesin West, the apprentices learned from their mentor and collectively built what is now the home of both the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation and the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture.

There is a theater on-site, as well as a cabaret.

Life was a mixture of manual labor and social functions.

- Our little inside joke about that would be, to be Taliesin apprentice, you needed a hammer, a sleeping bag, and a tuxedo, you know?

- [Narrator] The living quarters in the Wrights' house were unpretentious, tending to be relatively small but filled with beautiful art and cultural clues.

- But I think the most exciting thing about this room, as well as all of Taliesin West, is coming out to the middle of an undeveloped desert, and rather than thinking in terms of survival or shelter, there's this immediate sense of grand pianos and wide open spaces and Indian blankets and just the celebration of cultural life.

- [Narrator] Wright worked tirelessly and imbued his apprentices with vision and purpose.

- [Bruce] I think that's one thing that kept him young because he surrounded himself with youth, and for him youth was a quality, not about an age.

He always reminded us that.

- [Narrator] There were 70 to 90 apprentices at Taliesin at the time of Wright's death in 1959.

All who experienced his life and work in the desert carry with them a reflection of his vision.

- Buildings which are in harmony with nature.

Buildings which are dedicated to the human being.

- In Wright's words, civilization is only a way of life.

Architecture a way, and culture is a way of making that way of life beautiful.

And beauty to him was not prettiness or taste or fashion.

(water falling) Beauty was fundamentally something that worked, like life itself.

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