The Silver Slabs "Planchas de Plata" Discovery

By then, a discovery would leave her mark on the legend, not only national but continental: at the end of 1736 a Yaqui Indian discovered almost at the surface enormous slabs of silver near La Arizona, in a site which since then received the name of Planchas de Plata.


In a few weeks, the unihhabited place was populated by miners which, using axes and oxes carried the enormous slabs of pure silver, the largest of which was calculated to weigh some 150 arrobas (almost 2 Tons).

Captain Juan Bautista de Anza (father) went to the place from Fronteras in November, as he says:

Having arrived at this "puesto" yesterday afternoon, on the twentieth... I went a little later to give title to Don Bernardo de Urrea, mi Lieutenant in this jurisdiction, which helps in the small Real of Agua Caliente.

Even today we can find the small hot spring in the place.

to notify everybody there, to manifest and deliver all the portions of silver that have been found, and deposit them ... and to proceed with the inquiry about the way and circunstances how the silver was and is being found

So, the inquiry was ordered, finding that:

The slabs were buried in the ground at about one and a half "cuartas," while the largest of the slabs, discovered by Joseph Fermin de Almazan, which with what has been taken from him and what is about to take, would weight around a hundred arrobas [a little over a ton] and is as heavy that seems to have been melted, and in the center is as white as any purified silver...

The doubt arose if it was a natural deposit, and therefore was subject to the Royal Fifth, or a buried treasure, and in that case would belong totally to the King.

The inquiry would continue for many years, and in spite of the constant attacks by the Apaches and the exhaustion of the surface metal, in the collective Sonoran memory would continue the remembrance of the finding of Planchas de Plata. And by association with the nearby site of La Arizona, the latter place would inherit itīs fame, feeding the imagination of the people throughout time, until it inherited itīs name to the State of Arizona, in the United States.

And here a small explanation is necessary about the origin of the name of Arizona. For many years it was thought that the name came from the Piman words: "ali" and "shonak" which mean "small spring;" however, recently the Historian Donald Garate came up with the theory that the name has a Basque origin. That is because "ariz ona" means "good oak" in the Basque Language. So, currently there are two versions about the origin of the name ARIZONA.