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Lake Pleasant Regional Park, within the area controlled by the Northeastern
Yavapai during the historic period, was inhabited by Hohokam peoples during the
prehistoric era. Five archeological sites were located during an archeological
study of the Lake Pleasant area. Included in these five archeological sites
were a defensive site, a stone workshop, a farmhouse, and two small villages.
Undoubtedly many more sites were once present along the Agua Fria but have gone
under the waters of Lake Pleasant. The five sites located during the study were
occupied during the period A.D. 700 to 1450.
In the park area, high bluffs rise directly from the bed of the river, greatly
restricting the amount of area available for prehistoric habitation and
agriculture. Despite this restriction, the area was apparently fairly heavily
populated during prehistoric times, as sites were located on almost every flat
terrace close to the river.
The Lake Pleasant Regional Park area, while historically part of the mining and
range industries of Central Arizona, had no significant influence upon either.
Prospectors met only with frustration. The few mines that did exist in the Lake
Pleasant area were short-term projects. There was no lack of prospectors who
roamed the area in hopes of finding their bonanzas. Mollie Sawyer Monroe and
Jacob Snively were among the more colorful.
Mollie Monroe, an eccentric female prospector during the 1860's and early
1870's, was a co-discoverer, along with her common-law husband George Monroe
and others, of Castle Hot Springs. In 1877 Mollie was sent to Stockton,
California, where Arizona's mental patients were kept, after being declared
insane. She died in 1902 at the State Hospital in Phoenix.
Jacob Snively, a man of unbounded energy as a prospector in California and
Arizona and long notorious for his leading part in the Texas Revolution,
prospected the area about the same time as Mollie Monroe. Snively was killed by
Big Rump (Wa-poo-i-ta), an Apache chieftain, in 1871 near the White Picacho, a
prominent landmark about 18 miles northwest of the Park.
Evidence of extensive interest in mineral possibilities is visible in numerous
prospect holes in the area, but a search of mining claims and claimants at the
Maricopa County Recorder's office reveals only a few mining locations filed in
the Park boundaries.
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