It was the quest for gold and green that opened up the southwest to settlement. The gold "in them thar hills" brought the fortune seekers, and the endless meadows of green brought the cattlemen. Other entrepreneurs saw riches in the "blue" - water. Both miners and ranchers needed water.
  In 1863, two groups of prospectors led by Joseph Walker and Pauline Weaver, discovered placer gold along the upper Hassayampa River, northeast of Wickenburg, Arizona. Not too far north of Wickenburg, was a place called Box Canyon, where a fantastic find of surface nuggets covered what came to be called Rich Hill. Gold fever raged.
  Rick Hill did not give up its riches easily. Large boulders resisted picks and shovels and the scarcity of water needed to wash the gold, brought frustration and disappointment. The Hassayampa's seasonal cycle of rampaging floods and scorching droughts was described as "times where an ocean steamer could be floated, and where at other seasons even the fish must carry canteens."
  In the 1850's, California miners had discovered a solution to the fickle wet/dry climate - hydraulics. Mine operators built large masonry dams and storage reservoirs. Ditches and flumes, many over 50 miles long, carried the water from reservoirs to the mining operations sites. The water was shot through high-pressure nozzles - "hydraulicing" to wash the gold-bearing earth out of the stream banks and down into sluice boxes.
  In 1881, a New York  miner, Wells H. Bates and his brother, DeWitt, purchased the small Marcus gold mine nearly two miles west of Rich Hill. Two years later, Bates' interests included the nearby Weaver placer mines and he developed plans to use the California-style hydraulic mining. On February 17, 1883, Bates recorded a claim, for mining purposes, for all the water in the Hassayampa. He staked out a site in the Walnut Grove Valley on land owned by rancher Abner Wade. Here, he proposed to build a dam and storage reservoir.
  Around 1885, New Yorker, Henry Spingler VanBeuren rose to prominence in the recently formed Walnut Grove Water Storage Company. The Van Beurens were immensely wealthy, deriving an annual income of nearly one million dollars just from rentals on their properties on West Fourteenth Street in New York City. The plan was to construct a dam on the Hassayampa just below the Wagoner store and post office, 20 miles downstream from Prescott.
  The Walnut Grove Dam was to serve two purposes. Not only would it provide the needed water for placer mining, but could be used to irrigate nearly 500 acres of farmland below the dam. The company hired a well known mining expert, Professor William P. Blake.
  Blake's design called for a dam 80 feet high, with a storage capacity of 1,306,800,000 cubic feet of water. The water company, however, decided to raise the dam's height to 110 feet. Construction began in 1886 and was completed in October 1887.
  Henry VanBeuren and his daughter, Eleanor, arrived in Arizona in December of 1889, intending to spend a pleasant winter along the Hassayampa. They didn't count on the weather. A then unknown phenomena, El Nino, was brewing.

  Joseph Wittmann was born in Germany sometime around 1847. As a young man, he migrated to the east coast of the U.S. He fathered twin sons, Frank and Joseph (II), in 1877. The younger Joseph soon met Eleanor VanBeuren. Presumably, it was his interest in the young woman that led to his involvement with the projects along the Hassayampa.
  In the late 1880's, young Joseph bought a 23 mile stretch of the river that was part of the Walnut Grove group. His romance with Eleanor soon led to marriage. Their land holdings spread east to include the area around present day Morristown.

Joseph and Eleanor Wittmann were spared from the flood of 1889 and soon returned to New York. In 1907, Eleanor gave birth to their only child, Joseph VanBeuren Wittmann.   The senior Joseph traveled to Arizona once a year to look over the family's holdings.The youngest Joseph grew up in the east. Not until the early 1920's did he take on the dream of his father.    There was little talk of rebuilding the Walnut Grove Dam and the project was abandoned until 1925, when Wittmann inherited the property following VanBeuren's death. He hired William A. Farish to re-survey the area. After five years of study, Farish concluded that rebuilding the two dams was not practical. Once again the project was abandoned.

  While the senior Wittmann was working on plans to build another dam on the Hassayampa at Box Canyon, young Joe taught singing as the choirmaster at Morristown while also serving as an attorney. During this time, he met William Hovey Griffin, the first homesteader of the area known as Nadaburg. Griffin's lifelong dream of brining water to the area helped fire Wittmann's own dream of irrigating the desert.
  In November, 1929, Wittmann filed the Wittmann Irrigation Project using the survey done by W.A. Farish. The plan also referred to as the Box Reservoir, called for bringing water from the Hassayampa down through Morristown and on to Nadaburg.  The finances needed for the project were enormous. The few families in the Nadaburg area were all poor, but had fairly large tracts of land. An agreement was reached wherein many of  Nadaburg's land owners gave three-quarters of their land to Wittmann to help finance the project.
  Belief in Wittmann and his dreams was still running high in the mid 1930's. By mutual agreement, the town's name was officially changed  to Wittmann, to honor him. But by 1946, there was still no dam and no irrigation water. A group of residents filed suit for the return of their properties. Eventually, they would recover approximately one-half. Though there was talk of changing the town's name back to Nadaburg, it was never done. Wittmann returned to the east coast and was apparently not seen in Wittmann again.

Special thanks to the Joseph Wittmann family for supplying much of this information.