The promise of unimagined riches is what brought many of the earliest colonizers to the Arizona Territory. Following the trail to the discovery of the mother lode, they built, then dismantled and finally abandoned communities when mines played out – leaving behind tantalizing clues of difficult hardships. Some towns survived like Bisbee, Jerome, Tombstone and Oatman. Most disappeared, gradually becoming absorbed back into the desert from which they arose. This presentation explores more than a decade of historian Jay Mark’s…