By Harold Kitching
A comprehensive report on the land scam and con man, including clickable links and citations, is found at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Reavis
As you zip along Jimmie Kerr Boulevard you probably don’t notice a small historical marker on the north side just east of Noble Street and that metal tubing sign promoting Casa Grande service clubs.
Unlike other historical markers, there are no signs saying that one is just ahead, leaving it in relative obscurity. Strange for something that marks the home of the “Baron of Arizona” and his “Barony of Arizola,” the work of a con man who pulled off the biggest land scam in Arizona history using a forged Spanish land grant to claim 18,600 square miles stretching from the area of the present city of Maricopa, running east through what is now Casa Grande, Coolidge and Florence, jogging north covering the Phoenix area, then running east again to the Silver City, N.M., area.
(By comparison, Pinal County is about 5,374 square miles and Casa Grande about 110 square miles) The “Baron” was James Addison Reavis, a man who used his forgery techniques learned during the Civil War to falsify the Peralta grant.
According to the plaque marking the site of the long-gone town of Arizola, established about 1892 on the Southern Pacific Railroad line and lasting until about 1904, “He and his family lived here in royal style until his fraud was exposed.
From the barony, he went to federal prison in 1895.” Well, he lived there for a while.
Various references say he built a mansion and lived in luxury there, children dressed in velvet until things got too hot for him in the Arizona Territory.
Overall, they say, he then preferred his mansions in New York and California, all obtained with the estimated $150 million in today’s dollars that he extorted through threats to businesses such as the Silver King mine, the railroad, illegal rentals, selling quitclaims and through some scam investment plans, including the Casa Grande Improvement Company.
Casa Grande Improvement Company Limited, 50 share certificate
It’s a long and twisted story, beginning during the Civil War when he learned that he could forge his commanding officer’s signature perfectly, allowing him to falsify passes for himself and other Confederate soldiers.
Perhaps as an early indicator of his future, he used one of the passes to leave his military area, deserting to the North.
He later came to Missouri, using his forgery skills as a real estate salesman to forge land contracts.
Reavis eventually traveled to Arizona, where he met a man who claimed to have a deed for mineral rights on a Spanish land grant.
To make a long story short, the two of them consulted with William Gitt, a man known as the “Old Spanish Land Title Lawyer” following a series of dubious land deals in Illinois and Missouri.
According to the Wikipedia sources, the three men began meeting for several hours each week to examine the grant paperwork.
In addition to the deed, there was an expediente, a copy of the legal papers relating to the Peralta grant.
Accompanying the copies was a letter dated 1853 bearing the signature of Mexican President Antonio López de Santa Anna claiming a diligent search had been performed to locate all related documents and that the expediente established secure title of the grant.
The grant had been a “floater,” a grant for a certain amount of territory but lacking a fixed location.
Such grants, while common, were useful as legal nuisances capable of scaring an unsophisticated land owner but of little real value.
Reavis decided to change this and fixed the location of the grant.
To deal with ambiguities regarding various historical measurements, he chose the definitions most advantageous to his goals.
With the center of its western boundary set near the confluence of the Salt and Gila Rivers, the forged grant contained the towns of Phoenix, Globe, Casa Grande, Florence, and Tempe and stretched to the outskirts of Silver City, N.M.
Other points of interest within the grant boundaries were the fabulously rich Silver King Mine near Superior and a section of the Southern Pacific Railroad.
He later filed all of the forged paperwork in Tucson.
After filing his claim, the Wikipedia sources say, Reavis established his base of operations at Arizola just east of present Casa Grande containing a small set of ruins that had supposedly been used by the first Baron as La Hacienda de Peralta.
Reavis brought in craftsmen to build a mansion of redwood and red brick on the site, complete with servant quarters, stables, storage sheds, and a protective stone wall surrounding the site.
While the construction was beginning, Reavis began hiring rent collectors and agents.
He also opened negotiations with James M. Barney, owner of the Silver King Mining Co.
After several weeks, Barney agreed to pay $25,000 for a quitclaim, a pittance given the wealth of the silver mine.
Reavis then printed and posted notices throughout the claim instructing residents to contact his lawyer “for registering tenancy and signing agreements, or regard themselves liable to litigation for trespassing and expulsion when the Peralta Grant is, as it must be, validated by the U.S. Government.” Arrangements for newspapers and hired publicists announcing the land grant were made, proclaiming the title was ironclad and included both water and mineral rights.
Opposition began rising, forcing Reavis to realize that the complex conveyances he used to base his claim were a serious weakness.
He decided that presenting an heiress to the Peralta grant would strengthen his scheme.
He convinced a woman in California that she was a direct descendant, Doña Sophia Micaela Maso Reavis y Peralta de la Córdoba, third Baroness of Arizona.
She wasn’t, of course, but was gullible enough to believe Reavis.
By the time Reavis returned to Arizona Territory in August 1887 he was using the name James Addison Peralta Reavis, going to Tucson to file a new claim on behalf of his wife.
By the time of the second filing, Reavis was dressing in the finest linen and broadcloth while his wife wore the products of New York and San Francisco’s best dressmakers.
Finding conditions in Arizona too hostile to his ambitions, Reavis rarely spent time at his mansion in Arizola. He and his wife instead maintained residences in San Francisco, St. Louis, and near New York City where they entertained the social and financial elite.
According to Wikipedia, reaction to the new claim by Arizona residents was nearly unanimously negative, with some newspapers publishing open incitements to violence against Reavis. As a result of the opposition, sale of new quitclaims effectively ended. During his trip to Spain and visits to New York, Reavis had gained an understanding of government and big business finance.
He put this new knowledge to work and began offering investment opportunities involving development of Arizona Territory.
With the business leaders he had met in New York advocating the legitimacy of his claim, Reavis began to gain millions of dollars in new funds.
He formed three corporations in rapid succession in 1887, each bearing the name Casa Grande Improvement Company.
Each had Reavis as director and well-known business leaders selected to serve as president and vice presidents. The third, the Casa Grande Improvement Company of Arizona, was incorporated in November and absorbed the prior two entities.
The company planned to develop the land of the grant by building roads, railways, dams, irrigation canals, telegraph lines, and other improvements while simultaneously engaging in leasing water rights, selling live-stock, and performing other activities.
It all began falling apart, drastically so, when the surveyor general of Arizona Territory issued a detailed report saying the whole thing was a complete fraud.
(The complete text is in a footnote of the link at the beginning of this story.) Among the findings:
- Most of the claim’s 18th century documents showed evidence of having been written with steel nibbed pens, a tool rarely used until the 19th century, instead of a quill.
- Printing styles on the Peralta documents differed with documents from the same time period.
- Searches of Spanish archives for supporting documents failed to find information on the Peralta grant in locations where such information was expected.
- Multiple spelling errors and grammar issues were present in the Peralta documents, a situation highly atypical of documents from the Spanish royal court.
Reavis was later arrested, spending a year in jail awaiting trial.
Later, the court sentenced him to two years in prison and a fine of $5,000.
After he was released, he traveled around trying to find new investors for projects, but found little interest.
In 1900, Reavis began the magazine Peralta Reavis Real Life Illustrated where he promised to provide the complete inside story of the Peralta fraud.
The magazine folded after a single issue.
The same year he wrote a memoir that was published in several installments by the San Francisco Call newspaper under the title “The Confessions of the Baron of Arizona.” By 1913 he was living in a poor house in Los Angeles.
He died in Denver on Nov. 20, 1914, and was buried in a pauper’s grave.
As a footnote, the Wikipedia sources say, the mansion that Reavis built in Arizola was rediscovered by the National Park Service in 1953 following years of use as a barn by a local farmer.
An evaluation in April 1963 by the Park Service determined restoration of the building was financially infeasible.
All that remains is the lonely marker along the highway.
