This topic was posted , thanks nickcarraway.
Posted on 05/17/2021 7:13:29 PM PDT by nickcarraway
For centuries, a legend has persisted across the Ozarks. Lore holds marauding Spaniards once discovered a rich silver deposit within a cave somewhere in the hills, and then sealed it shut for future mining. Several variations of the tale are told, but one notion is constant, the treasure is said to still remain hidden.
Many people in South-Central Missouri have searched for this fabled lost silver mine. Some went empty-handed to their graves after a lifetime of digging. Others got so far as thinking they found the site, and even had their ore tested at Missouri S&T. However, no great argent fortune has yet been found.
The lost silver mine myth endures today as a tantalizing local yarn, but also something of a trance. It remains a fantasy which seemingly promises riches to the lucky wanderer or dredger who happens upon the foretold bonanza.
De Soto
Hernando de Soto’s mission for Spain was simple. Plunder. As a loyal lieutenant, de Soto abetted Francisco Pizarro’s massacre of the Incan people and 1533 sacking of Cusco. The exploit’s stolen gold and silver won de Soto the favor of the Spanish crown. He was thereafter appointed to govern Cuba with the mandate of colonizing the North American mainland.
From Cuba, de Soto landed in Florida with an army in 1539. For his planned four-year campaign, de Soto enlisted more than 600 Spanish and Portuguese volunteers along with a caravan of horses, hogs and supplies. Over the following two years the conquistador searched for gold, traded with tribes and fought several bloody conflicts throughout today’s Deep South. By 1541, hundreds were dead, and no great cache of treasure found. After Tuskaloosa’s fierce attack at the Battle of Mabila, de Soto turned west in desperation and stumbled upon the Mississippi River. He was the first European to chart its waters.
De Soto entered what is today Arkansas midway through 1541. Archeological evidence supports the theory de Soto first camped with the Casqui people near today’s Parkin, Arkansas. The site is now a state park. From there, de Soto proceeded into the Ozarks where he spent the final months of his life forlornly looking for riches.
De Soto died of fever in the native village of Guachoya on May 21, 1542. The site is thought to be somewhere in southern Arkansas. Following his death, the surviving members of de Soto’s campaign retreated south to Mexico City. They left behind several escaped hogs, who survive today as the wild razorbacks of Arkansas.
The local legend of the lost silver mine is rooted in de Soto’s lust for precious metals. In America, de Soto had hoped to find a city as rich as Cusco to ransack, but no such target was found. Once in Arkansas, de Soto’s chroniclers recorded the expedition reached as far north as a village called Coligua, which is believed to be near today’s McHue, Arkansas. From there, folklore holds that in the absence of a grand city to plunder de Soto instead sent units to search for and mine gold.
One legend claims a small detachment of de Soto’s forces reconnoitered north from Coligua into what would today be Missouri. Somewhere in the hills they purportedly discovered a significant vein of silver within a cave. After excavating a fortune, they sealed the cavern off before traveling back south to inform de Soto of the find. The legend says the detachment then greedily turned on each other, and one by one, murder led to only a single, maimed survivor making it back alive. In Coligua, he died, but not before telling the others of the hidden cave to the north. Other versions of the legend cite attacking native warriors as accounting for the detachment’s demise.
In the eras after de Soto died, silver was found in the Ozarks. Notable sites of extraction include from mines within Arkansas’s Ouachita Mountains and Missouri’s St. Francios Mountains. For pioneers of South-Central Missouri, these known deposits provided a pebble of truth that silver could indeed be found in the region. For some who heard it, the lost silver mine legend was seemingly an insider tip that untold riches could be found if only the hidden cave could be reclaimed from its rocky veil.
Searching for silver
The Rolla Herald provided a hometown paper for the Ozarks’ mining braintrust. Over its run, the paper reported several prospective silver finds in South-Central Missouri. One such strike was near Summersville in Texas County in 1890.
“For years past there has been more or less hunting for what is known as the ‘Old Spanish Silver Mine,’” The Herald reported. “Tradition has it that ore which would show $75 to the ton had been taken out. The explorers claim that the excavation is large enough in which to turn around a wagon and four horses. Specimens of ore have been taken to Rolla, to the school of mines, and upon being examined show $17 to the ton.”
No further information on the Summersville mine was found in The Herald. It apparently, quietly, went bust.
In 1892, The Herald reported Abe Rowden and Mark Whittaker thought they’d discovered a prospective silver mine near the Miller County/Maries County border. They also sent ore to Rolla to be assayed. However, no follow-up information was found.
Next, the Herald reported Enoch Sprague found silver in Dent County in 1894. But again, no follow-up information was found.
The Salem Monitor reported in 1902 that a cattle driver named Jud Curly claimed he found the Old Spanish Mine by accident near the Bourbeuse River in Crawford County. Curley said a cow dislodged the mine’s camouflage, and for a certain sum, he would lead a buyer to its whereabouts. An Argo merchant took the offer and bought the property. No silver was evidently found judging by the lack of subsequent reporting.
One of the more forlorn prospectors was Frank Tyrrell, who searched for the lost silver mine in Shannon County his entire life. The St. Louis Globe-Democrat visited him in 1948 to share his story.
“In the hilly, isolated section of Shannon County an aged man trudged over a natural limestone bridge. Pick and shovel were over his shoulder,” The Globe-Democrat reported. “Tyrrell stopped on the bridge, looked around as if searching for something and struck his pick against the base of a granite-red boulder. He has sought silver here since he was a boy. He believes in the legend of the lost silver mine, and he is a graduate geologist.”
The version of the lost silver mine legend Tyrrell related focused not on a Spaniard, but a Tennessean.
“Seventy-eight years ago a Tennessean visited here,” Tyrrell told the Globe-Democrat. “He went hunting and trailed a bear to a small cave where he shot it. He leaned his gun against the mouth of the cave while he skinned the carcass, and when he picked up the gun there was a blackish green substance adhering to it. It had a silvery glint. Thinking it might be lead or zinc, he put some into his shot pouch, and when he returned to Tennessee he had it assayed. It was neither lead nor zinc. It was sulphite of silver, evidently from a rich vein.”
Tyrrell said the Tennessean dashed back to Shannon County to find the silver cave, but to no avail. His previous steps could not be retraced. Before departing home, the Tennessean told his tale of woe to locals camped at Round Spring. Legend says the cave was then found, sealed shut and its true location lost due to murder. From there, the story spread to St. Louis, where Tyrrell’s father heard it and subsequently bought up 900 acres where he was told the silver was hidden.
“My father built a home and we moved here. He died believing he left me a legacy of great wealth,” Tyrrell told the Globe-Democrat.
To guide the search, Tyrrell studied geology in Rolla at the Missouri School of Mines. Well into his 80s, Tyrrell weekly scoured Shannon County’s soil in hopes of finding the mythic treasure.
“Father was right,” Tyrrell concluded. “There is porphyry in Shannon County just as there is granite in Iron County. Silver was once mined extensively in Greene County, to the west. The porphyritic granite that’s here in Shannon County is the type that often bears sulfite of silver. … I’ve been digging in this vicinity for 75 years. I’m getting old, but I still drive here from Salem every week with my pick ax and shovel. … I’ve never found the cave nor silver. But I believe it’s here because porphyry is here. Some day, someone will locate the cave and the vein of ore.”
If I pay an advance fee, can I share in the windfall?
There was a blue-skinned congressman not that long ago.
Take enough colloidal silver and you turn blue.
The Bon Terre lead mine with its 400 ft deep pools is now used as a kind of waterpark for divers.
The lost silver mine is not in Missouri, it is on the Buffalo River within a mile of Rush, AR. It is not lost. It is registered to Fred Durst.
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The OLD SPANISH TREASURE CAVE is still north of Gravette Arkansas.
NO silver around here but I have plenty of clay if you want to make pottery.
It depends. How much did you have in mind?
My county. When I was researching this property, I ran across mining exploration records. They've checked the entire county using a grid system to bore holes and see what came up. If there was anything of value in the ground, Doe Run Mining Co would be mining it. They've mined a little bit of everything in MO, iron ore, gold, silver, copper, lead. Lead is the only thing there's plenty of still. East MO is considered The Lead Belt. We have an Interstate Battery plant down the road not too far from the Royal Oak charcoal factory.
“Importantly, Spain had any number of slave labor silver mines in northern Mexico,..”
That was the Montana Senate candidate Stan Jones.
The Lone Ranger’s silver mine, from which he cast his silver bullets, is missing too.
I doubt there was too much of a direct connection, because advances in mining technology seemed to have transcended the Dark Ages because of war and mercantilism.
Even before the masterpiece De re metallica (1566) was compiled and written, there was a vast amount of post-Roman innovation within, much of which was known to Spain. (N.B.: the first good English translation was done by none other than the soon to be President of the United States, Herbert Hoover.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_re_metallica
I might also mention that a mining historian I knew was amazed that in one of their mountains, the Spaniards had built a very large, square, downward *diagonal* shaft, solely for tailings from the mine, much higher up. He said had it been horizontal you could have driven a modern train through it.
The silver miners were also known for their innovations. One such mine was pestered by banditos after their monthly silver production was stolen. Their response was to create enormous man sized silver balls that could only be carried by being rolled, tugged by a very large mule team.
When the banditos showed up, they just abandoned the silver ball, as there was nothing the banditos could do with it. Then they just waited until the frustrated banditos left.
One advantage of using oxen on the Oregon Trail over horses, is that oxen were relatively theft-proof. Although quite strong hey don’t move all that fast. If the Indians tried to steal an ox at night, they’d still be in sight when the sun came up. q
I’ll stick with the silver, thx.
Clay doesn’t have intrinsic worth (too common).
This topic was posted , thanks nickcarraway.
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