# @downinnadesert on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DdDRKMzm36U
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/70300015-downinnadesert-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/1a8a04a85f.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-09-09T03:12:47.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** Down In The Desert🌵 (@downinnadesert) — https://gondola.cc/downinnadesert

## Caption

For more than a decade, a man from Missouri convinced people he owned a massive piece of Arizona. And people paid him.

James Addison Reavis had learned forgery during the Civil War, then later realized Spanish land grants could be extremely valuable because the U.S. was required to recognize legitimate claims.

So he invented one.

Reavis created a fictional noble family called the Peraltas and claimed King Ferdinand VI of Spain had granted them an enormous tract of land in 1748. He spent years studying old records in Mexico and Spain, then planted forged documents into real archives to make the story look legitimate.

He even bought old portraits and presented the people in them as Peralta ancestors.

His claim stretched from around Phoenix toward Silver City, New Mexico, covering millions of acres.

Then he found a teenage Mexican orphan, convinced her she was the last surviving Peralta heir, altered records to support the story, and eventually married her.

And somehow, it worked.

The Southern Pacific Railroad paid him. Mining companies paid royalties to keep operating on land he did not own. Lawyers, businessmen and politicians publicly backed his claim.

Federal investigators eventually unraveled the scheme after finding the supposed 18th-century documents were written on paper that was too new and with writing tools that did not exist at the time.

Reavis lost his case in 1895, was convicted of fraud in 1896 and went to prison in Santa Fe.

He died in 1914 with little left.

But for years, James Reavis managed to convince some very powerful people that millions of acres of Arizona belonged to him.

Sources: University of Arizona Special Collections, New Mexico Archives Online, Phoenix Magazine, True West Magazine and The Saturday Evening Post.

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#Phoenix #Arizona #ArizonaHistory #DownInnaDesert

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## Tags

arizonahistory, arizona, phoenix, downinnadesert

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