Kraig Nelson, Cave Creek Museum Historian
In 1897, Colonel William Christy was the fifth owner of Cave Creek’s storied Phoenix Mine located in today’s Spur Cross Conservation area. The nationally-famous Phoenix Mine and miner community, with its 1894, 100-stamp, stamp mill (the largest in Arizona), was discovered in 1878 and was named Marion in 1881. Mr. Christy’s mining superintendent renamed the mine Liscum after Army Colonel Emerson Liscum who served in Arizona in the 1880s. For a time (1901-1903), there was a Liscum and Cavecreek (spelling of the town at the time) post office.
Eventually, he owned a lucrative mine on Gold Hill (in today’s Desert Mountain) and had numerous investments in other Cave Creek mines. With his friend and business partner, William J. Murphy, this stalwart pioneer started the Valley Bank of Phoenix in 1884.
Prior to his Arizona arrival, Mr. Christy enlisted in the Union Army in 1861. In 1864, at the Battle of Jonesboro (Georgia), Colonel Christy led a saber-charge and suffered four serious gunshot wounds, his left arm was in a sling for three years. Christy was summarily captured and held for six-months by the Confederates. He survived, later moved to Osceola, Iowa where he taught school, purchased a business college, was elected State Treasurer, and became a banker.
