James Addison Reavis forged a Spanish barony covering 12 million acres of Arizona, presented a ranch girl as its heiress, and went to prison

George M. Willing, a prospector, said he had bought a Spanish land grant from a man named Miguel Peralta. In 1874 Willing was found dead the morning after he went to Prescott to file it. James Addison Reavis obtained Willing's interest in 1881 and arrived in Arizona in 1882. He collected genuine documents and planted forged ones in archives in Guadalajara and Madrid to create a line of Peralta barons descending from a 1748 grant. He claimed more than 12 million acres of Arizona and New Mexico, from Phoenix to Silver City. The Southern Pacific Railroad paid him $50,000 for a right of way, and the owners of the Silver King mine paid $25,000. He took a young woman with no birth record from a California ranch, made her his ward, and presented her as Sofia Loreto Micaela, last of the Peraltas and Baroness of Arizona. Arizona Highways names her as Sophia Treadway, a servant. Surveyor General Royal Johnson found inconsistencies, and an investigator in Spain found forged pages inserted in the Madrid archives. In June 1895 the claim and Reavis's $10 million suit were tried at Santa Fe and rejected in full. He was convicted of conspiracy to defraud, sentenced to two years in a federal penitentiary and fined $5,000. Sofia divorced him for non-support and went to Denver with their twins. Reavis died in 1914.