On the road in Arizona: Historical marker shows where Hollywood legend ended

Stations across the state profile notable road markers in the “On the Road in Arizona” series. The four-part series is a collaboration between KJZZ, AZPM and public radio stations across the state. This episode is about the site north of Tucson where the life of a Hollywood legend came to a sudden end.

“In memory of Tom Mix, whose spirit left his body at this place, and whose character and depictions of life have served to better fix memories of the Wild West in the minds of living men.”

Before Clint Eastwood, before Roy Rogers, even before John Wayne, there was Tom Mix:

TOM MIX: “Hyah! That's enough! Get up from there and well, take that money back to the reservation. Come on, get out of there….”

Born in Pennsylvania in 1880, Mix was a true cowboy, before becoming a cowboy star.

CHRISTINE REID: “His father was a mule driver for a logging company and so he was around horses and he knew horses and was very good with them.”

Christine Reid is a retired Pinal County historian.

REID: “Selig Pictures eventually hired him to work with horses and then realized: He's a nice guy. I think we could put him on screen.”

BOB M. BLANC: “In the silent film era, he was the big movie star. He made 336 films. All but 10 were silent.”

Scottsdale car collector Bob M. White restored Tom Mix's banana yellow 1937 Cord convertible and wrote a book about the car and the man.

WHITE: He was the highest paid actor in Hollywood at the time. »

But times are changing. Talkies replaced silent films and westerns fell out of favor. Mix's last film role was in this 1935 series called “Miracle Rider.”

In 1940, Tom Mix was performing in a circus and had licensed his name to a radio show, although he never appeared on it. On October 12, around 2 p.m., he was on his way from Tucson to visit friends in Florence on unpaved U.S. Highway 80 when fate intervened.

REID: “It was a dirt road and the crew was there working on it and they could see someone coming really fast.”

A road crew was repairing a bridge destroyed by water.

REID: Some say 80 miles an hour, some say 100. He could do 100 in this car.

WHITE: “You know,” John Adams said, “he was on the construction crew, he kept seeing this car, this yellow car coming and coming and coming, and he ran to try to report it.”

Mix liked to drive fast and was hungover after a night of drinking with friends in Tucson. By the time he saw the danger that awaited him, it was too late.

REID: “He saw that he had to stop suddenly and he braked suddenly.

WHITE: “Adams said actually he got up on the brakes and he had these three metal suitcases in the back. You know, they flipped over in the ditch and flipped over and broke his neck.”

Mix died on the spot. Hundreds of people attended his funeral in Hollywood, followed by his burial at Forest Lawn. In 1947, the Pinal County Historical Society erected a stone monument at the site of the accident, topped with a steel sculpture: a profile of a head-down horse and a plaque.

You can visit the Tom Mix Monument just off State Highway 79, 12 miles south of Florence. That would be the end of the story, except someone stole the horse from the top of the monument, so the Historical Society ordered it replaced. Then the original horse reappeared, and so the society built a second monument, outside its museum in Florence.

REID: “So there is an identical monument that looks like this in front of the museum with, supposedly, the original horse.”

No one knows who stole the horse or who returned it. And it's a fitting end to Mix's story: the mystery of an unknown horse thief. This is the kind of mystery Mix could have solved.