MYSTERIOUS GOLD MINE OF THE GUADALUPE MOUNTAINS
By Marvin Hunter[1]
Twenty years ago, an old Mexican, of Tularosa, who had been captured by the Mescalero Apaches when five years old, related [[68]]that his captors took him along on a hunting trip to Guadalupe Mountains and that while there he saw them gathering nuggets of gold in a gulch.
A Mescalero Apache informed the late G. W. Wood, of El Paso, for whom he worked in the Jarilla mines, that if he sought gold, he should go to the mountains called “Smoky” over the line in Texas, where … his people used to go and gather gold.
Another story is that of John Kilgore, a Texan and a man of undoubted veracity, who said that an old Mexican once told him that he was captured by the Indians when he was about fourteen years old. One day, the Indian who kept him in his wigwam in the Guadalupes called him to his side, blindfolded him, and led him into the fastness of the mountains, telling him to sit down on a flat rock and wait for his return, which he did. The Indian went away and in a short time returned with a buckskin sack filled with gold. This he handed to the Mexican boy, gave him a pony, and told him to go back to his people. The Mexican said he afterward tried to locate the place shown him but could never do so.
Green Ussery, a rich cattleman of West Texas, was walking along a gulch near the Chico Ranch in the Guadalupes when he saw Lee Church, a friend who was with him, pick up a gold nugget from the ground, worth $20.
Several years ago, Cicero Stewart, under sheriff of Eddy County, New Mexico, was up in the mountains hunting for the lost mine. He relates that “Grizzly Bill,” a cowboy, was in camp in the Russell Hills of the Guadalupe Mountains, and came across a gold deposit. He abandoned his cattle and went to Pecos, where he had a great spree, displaying his gold. While trying to ride a wild horse he was thrown off, breaking his neck.
F. H. Hardesty, residing in El Paso, was induced to relate his own experience as follows:
“About a year and a half ago, Lucius Arthur stopped at my place to get water for himself and pack animal, and remained over night. Becoming confidential, he divulged to me the secret that he was making a trip to a mountain range, three days’ journey due east, for the purpose of trailing two Mexicans who left Ysleta the night before.
“He said he had followed them at other times nearly to the mountain, but had been compelled to return before reaching it for want of ‘grub’ and water. He was known as ‘Frenchy’ in [[69]]Ysleta, being a native of France. He had been professor of athletics in Austin, Texas, and while there heard a story about these two Mexicans, and had come to find the gold mine they visited.
“One Mexican, he said, would come from down in Mexico, and meet the other (his brother-in-law) in Ysleta, and start out in the dead of night horseback. The one from Mexico belonged to a wealthy old family who had known for generations about the mine and had kept the location a secret. But some member of the family would go every year and bring back gold.
“I told Arthur he ought to be better equipped for the journey, and offered to stake him with all funds needed. He accepted my offer and agreed to take me as a partner. He left with two months’ supplies and good equipment. After an absence of a month and a half, he returned, saying that he had at last found the hidden mine, and brought me as a proof plenty of rich gold quartz broken off the ledge near the brink of a chasm, which he could not descend into, because its walls were perpendicular. He stayed with me a few days, and providing himself with a strong rope, set out for the mine. This chasm was 80 feet long, east and west, by 40 feet wide, he said.
“From his place of concealment, he said, he saw one of the Mexicans descend by a rope, and bring out several filled sacks. After their departure he slipped down to the place and saw a large opening like a cave in the vein, 60 feet down. The chasm appeared to have widened to 100 feet at that point. Loose broken rock in front of the cave showed that work had been done lately. He was unquestionably at the place where the Mexicans had for generations got their yellow gold.
“Frenchy never returned to me,” concluded Mr. Hardesty.
But the most realistic and marvelous story of gold, in comparison with which the stories of the lost “Cabin Mine” and “Nigger Ben Mine” and similar legendary mines pale into insignificance, is one familiar to nearly every one in Roswell and Carlsbad, New Mexico, and told by cowboys and ranchmen in the winter nights around their camp fires in the Guadalupe Mountain country.
It is the story of a mystery—that of a lost gold mine in the highest and most precipitous, canyon-rent, and rugged mountains in the Southwest, rising 5000 feet above the plains. The lost mine in the fastness of this range is a gold mine (as the story [[70]]goes) that is fairly bristling with the precious metal; its value is estimated at millions, and it is known in Texas and New Mexico as the “Lost Sublett Mine.”
Two men now living have actually seen this famous mine, but neither now remembers its exact location. One is Ross Sublett, son of the original discoverer, who is a prominent business man of Roswell, New Mexico. The other is Mike Wilson, a former crony of “old man Sublett,” who is believed to be on his death bed in a little hut in the Guadalupe Mountains, vainly trying to remember the location of probably one of the richest gold mines in the world.
“Old Ben Sublett” was a native of Missouri, and belonged to an old family of that name in St. Louis. In early life the “call of the wild” and the lure of gold led him to go to the Rocky Mountains with his young wife and three babies, whom he took on all prospecting trips. For years luck never favored him, and while others found mines and grew rich, he continued poor. He was in rags, and his wife and children were hungry. They passed through the Guadalupes and finally settled in Odessa, Texas. Here they made their home in a little hut. Mrs. Sublett did washing and sewing to support the children, while Sublett worked on a ranch just long enough to get money to buy a “rickety old buckboard and a bony horse.”
He spent most of his time in the Guadalupes. He had the “hunch” that in its labyrinthine solitudes he would find gold. Occasionally he brought in a little nugget, hardly of value enough to buy grub for his return trip. His wife vainly begged him to quit the mountains, to settle down to some vocation in which was a sure living; he was stubborn, taking no advice from anyone.
Although the mountains were then filled with the bloodthirsty Mescalero Apaches, ever ready to kill the lonely prospector or trapper, Sublett never carried arms, and by some strange fate was never molested. The old prospector laughed at those who warned him and advised him to be careful. These trips continued; and every time he returned, his return was a surprise to the people of the town. They scoffed at his crazy mode of life.
One day the old man drove up to Abe Williams’ saloon and strode boldly to the bar, inviting everybody present to “join” him. They thought that he was joking, as he was supposed to be penniless, but when Old Ben threw down a buckskin sack filled with [[71]]nuggets and said that he had found a rich gold mine and could buy out the whole town and have plenty left, the crowd was wild with excitement. He went out to his buckboard and dragged in a canvas sack filled with gold so pure, it is said, that a jeweler could hammer it out. “My friends, have all the drinks you want,” he said, “for I have at last found the richest gold mine in the world. I can buy Texas and make a backyard out of it for my children to play in.”
After that Sublett would frequently slip out to the mountains and return in less than ten days with about $1500 worth of gold. He built a fine home for his family, and of course made many “prosperity” friends. All tried to get him to show them the location of his mine, but he would shake his head and say: “If anyone wants my mine, let him go and hunt for it like I did. I hunted twenty-four years and wasted the best part of my life at it. The valley of the Pecos and the peaks of the Guadalupes are my home; I want to be buried there when I die, and I am going to carry this secret to the other world, so that for years and years people will remember me and talk about the rich gold mine ‘that old man Sublett found.’ I will give them something to talk about.”
His son, Ross Sublett, who has made several attempts to find the mine, says: “I have a faint recollection of it. I was only a small boy when my father took me there. We drove out in an old buckboard. I know the mine was about six miles from a spring. The spring is in what is known as the Russell Hills of the Guadalupes. I paid no attention at the time as to where we went, and was always glad when my father was ready to return home. Father got the gold out of a hole or cave, but it seems that it was in plain sight on the ground outside of the cave. When my father was on his death bed I tried to get him to tell me how to go back, but he said it would be useless, that I could never find it.”
Sublett once described the mine to Mike Wilson, who afterward went out to the Guadalupes and found the mine. He emptied his sack of provisions, and put in as much gold as he could carry and began the journey back home. Without recuperating from the effects of the hard trip, Mike went on a spree for three weeks, and when again he tried to go to the mine he became bewildered and lost his bearings. [[72]]
Old Ben Sublett just laughed at Wilson’s bewilderment, and refused to direct him again. He refused to tell anyone else where it was. “If anybody wants it, let him go and hunt for it like I did,” was all he would say. Later Sublett died and carried the secret with him. This was eighteen years ago.
[1] In Hunter’s Frontier Magazine, October, 1916, I, 6, 177–179. Further testimony to the existence of “the Sublett Mine,” given by an old buffalo hunter and prospector named Dixon, is printed in Frontier Times, March, 1924, Vol. I, No. 6, pp. 1–3. Dixon heard of the mine in 1879 from his sweetheart, daughter of a Mescalero Apache chief. [↑]