This inscription marks the loneliest, yet richest, grave in the world.
Late in the spring of 1889, Louis Gilbert left his home in Kentucky for a visit to his uncle's mine in the Northwest. He had lung trouble, and the doctor had ordered an outdoor life. While his health improved, he became infected with another ailment, perhaps the only one to be caught at that altitude—the gold fever. Miners were his only associates, the talk was all of lodes, leads and drifts, and the only communication with the outside world was by the train of pack mules that carried the heavy ore sacks down the winding trail. So it was not surprising that his walks took the character of prospecting tours, and carried him farther and farther from camp. Late in October, when his visit was nearly over, he started with three days' food for a last trip, into new territory. From a conical mountain top about ten miles west of the mine, he had looked over a lower range of summits to a great expanse of wild and broken country that he had never explored.
The weather was like summer when he started, but thirty-six hours later, on the evening of the second day, a fierce snowstorm set in. By midnight, the first blizzard of the season was raging through the mountains. On the third day the storm still howled furiously, but searching parties were sent out with a faint hope of finding the young prospector before the trails became entirely impassable. In the dim twilight of the afternoon they returned one by one, almost worn out, convinced that the body of the missing man would not be found till the warm winds of spring should melt away the drifts. Yet, as a humane precaution, lights were kept burning all night in cabin windows, and, guided by one of them, Louis Gilbert staggered into camp and fell like a dead man before the messroom door. He was taken from the snow, wrapped in blankets and laid before a blazing fire. When he showed signs of life he was given hot drinks and put to bed. His prospector's belt dropped to the floor like lead, and when opened was found to be stuffed with nuggets of virgin gold.
In the fever that followed, Gilbert talked deliriously of his long struggle through the blinding drifts, hungry, cold and aching for the sleep which would mean death, yet forcing himself onward with the blizzard at his back as his only guide. The amazing richness of his find had given him the strength that saved his life.
Finally he opened his eyes with the old look and told in detail the story of his wonderful discovery. On the east side of a stream, in a cañon so terribly wild and broken that it was almost impassable, he had found the gold on the very surface of a ledge.
Filling his belt, he had started to blaze his way back, when the storm came down with frightful violence. The rest of the journey was simply a horrible nightmare.
As nothing could be done while the snow lasted, Gilbert returned to Kentucky for the winter, yet could think of nothing but his discovery. He had found a fortune, had even put his hands upon it, and knew it was his whenever he could stake off his claim and take possession. He spent his time in making a chart of the stream he had followed on which he set down every detail he could recall of the eastern bank, along which he had travelled.
Early the following spring he was back at his uncle's mine, waiting impatiently for the snow to melt and be carried away by the swollen streams. Finally, after a tedious delay, he set out with a small party of miners all eager to have a hand in locating the rich prospect.
"Hell's Cañon!" exclaimed the foreman, as, skirting Cone Top Mountain, Gilbert pointed out the way. One of the men, a Mexican, declined to go any farther with the party, and the foreman explained to the wondering Gilbert:
"The Mexicans give Hell's Cañon a wide berth. They say that one of them found a big treasure there, and then lost it and his life in some uncanny way. They found his bones though, next summer. Knew 'em by his divining rod, that he clung to even in death."