Lutzer’s Find at Fort Planticlan
About fifteen miles below Casa Blanca, in Nueces County, not very far from the Nueces River, and near a huisache lake, are the remains of what is known as the Planticlan Fort. In a great Indian uprising the Spanish were forced to evacuate it, and when they did, they left everything but their guns, including three jack loads of silver bullion. The retreating Spanish were taken by the Indians and butchered, with the exception of one man who survived long enough to reach his people and tell them about the abandoned treasure on the Nueces.
More than half a century ago three Mexicans came with a chart to seek that hidden silver. After digging an immense hole, they found it, and there on the brink of the excavation they were polishing some of the blackened silver bars when Nick Lutzer happened upon them. (Lutzer is not the real name.) He was riding after cattle and, hearing low voices in the brush, he at once suspected cow thieves. He dismounted and, rifle in hand, crept through the bushes. He had often heard of the riches supposed to lie in the neighborhood, and so he was not surprised at the sight that greeted his eyes. The Mexicans were too intent on their business to sense his presence. Lutzer was a true and quick shot. He killed two of the Mexicans with his rifle and then drew his six-shooter in deadly fire on the other. In a minute he rolled all three of the dead men into the freshly dug pit and covered them.
Later he went to New Orleans, sold the silver ore, and came back and bought and stocked an immense ranch, which still goes by the name of the Lutzer Ranch.
[1] “The company, being six months’ men, were discharged at Fort Merrill on the Nueces, on the 4th day of May, 1851, but reorganized as a new company for another six months the next day.”—Brown, John Henry, History of Texas, Vol. II, p. 356. See a report to the Secretary of War: Sen. Ex. Doc. 1, 32d Cong., 1st Session, Serial 611. [↑]
[2] See, for instance, “The Mission de Los Olmos, near Falfurrias,” by Marshall Monroe, reprinted from the Houston Chronicle, in Frontier Times, January, 1924, pp. 44–45. [↑]
[3] Sutherland, Mary A., The Story of Corpus Christi, Houston, 1916, pp. 2–3. [↑]