Lost Nigger Gold Mine

As Lost Nigger Goldmine a legendary, never found gold deposits in the folklore of the United States is called.

William Kelly

According to legend, four brothers Frank, Jim, John and Lee Reagan set in 1887 in Dryden, Texas an illiterate young people named William Kelly from the Indian tribe of Seminoles on to help them on their ranch. Kelly was called Nigger Bill; Nigger was in the Big Bend region of a then common slang term for mestizos. Kelly said to have worked as a cook and horse - wrangler. When he was hired at the Reagan, he was said to be only 14 years old.

Kelly is said to have reported one day on the ranch that he had discovered a vein of gold, but was not taken seriously and ridiculed. When he wanted to tell something about the Reagans the following day, he even showed them a lump of gold ore, but was cursed for it.

After this removal Kelly should have gone to San Antonio to see a metallurgist, so that analyzed the ore. The reports then are contradictory: One version says that he returned to Dryden, where the Reagans intercepted a letter addressed to him, according to which the gold was tremendously valuable. They would Kelly allegedly killed and disposed of his body in the Rio Grande. The other version says that he had " borrowed" shortly after his return a horse and fled. Whatever was the case, the Reagans had tried all her life to find the mother lode. 1930, three of the brothers have been still alive and still looking for the gold.

Other prospectors

In addition to the Reagan sought many other prospectors the legendary gold vein. According to legend, some prospectors had found it, but had died before they make a profit or would forward information about the mine can.

One of the most serious of William Broderick Cloete was looking, a British mine owners, made ​​of so fully believed the story that he offered U.S. $ 10,000 to the Texans Lock Campbell for an expedition to the mine. On July 19, 1899 Campbell and four other men signed an agreement to seek the gold vein, and one of the men later claimed to have discovered in the Sierra Ladrones in New Mexico, but this was never confirmed.

In 1909, a man traveled named Wattenberg from Oklahoma with a map to Alpine, according to the mother lode in Mexico should be, and a pioneer named John Young went so far as to enter into a partnership with Wattenberg and to be giving a mining permit of Porfirio Díaz for subsequent years in vain to search for the mother lode.

Whereabouts of the gold vein

These failures led to debates about what had happened to the mother lode. John Young believed that they had been deliberately hiding after the death of Kelly of prospectors. Another theory is that the gold was not really gold ore, but consisted of pieces of zurückgelassenem by the Spaniards Feingold. A third theory is that the gold was left behind by a group of Mexicans fleeing the Mexican Guardia Rural, because it slowed their escape. Since the vein of gold supposedly was in a canyon, another theory assumes that was deposited from the river washed out gravel over it and the gold deposits in a natural way was untraceable.