One of the best known and most widely related lost mine tales is that of the Jonathan Swift Silver Mines located somewhere near the point where Kentucky, Tennessee, and Virginia joing borders. What is not as well known is that, according to evidence, long before silver was taken from this area by Swift and his company, it was mined extensively by Spaniards, perhaps as much as a century or more earlier. Research has also indicated that the Spaniards, after accumulating about twenty burro loads of ingots at a time, journeyed westward to the Mississippi River where they rafted the silver to the Gulf of Mexico.
Here they loaded the ingots onto a Spanish frigate which, in turn carried them across the ocean to Spain. Research has also indicated that at least one such pack train never made it to the Mississippi River, and the twenty or so burro loads of silver being transported were hidden at a location in western Kentucky and never reclaimed. I, with the help of three friends sought to identify the site where the silver was cached and, with luck, recover it.
An old, musty journal found in a trunk in a monastery in Seville, Spain, tells the story of the ill-fated pack train. As a party of approximately twenty Spaniards led the slow-moving silver-laden burros across western Kentucky toward the Mississippi River, they were set upon by a band of nearly fifty indians. Initially, the commander of the Spanish contingent attempted to outrun the attackers, but the burros were slow and difficult to handle. Finally, after entering a large meadow, they circled the animals and attempted to defend themselves against the marauding Indians. One by one, according to the journal, the Spaniards fell to the Indian arrows fired unceasingly into their midst.
Captain Juan de la Garza, the commander of the guard given the responsibility of delivering the silver to the gulf, decided he and the few remaining soldiers should try to escape. Before doing so, he determined, he would hide the silver. As de la Garza looked around for a suitable place to cache the ingots, one of his soldiers called his attention to a nearby "well." Believing the silver would be safe in the well until such time as he could mount an expedition to return for it, de la Garza and three of his men unloaded the pack animals and tossed the wodden crates filled with silver ingots into the depths of the shaft. Minutes later, de la Garza was killed, and only two men escaped, a priest and a soldier. It was the priest's journal that was discovered in the monastery in Seville from which the elements of this story was derived.
After spending several wekks translating the Spanish writing in the old journal and obtaining what amounted to rather vague directions, I, along with three companions-Will Sexton, Aaron Wingo, and Ed Maddox-traveled to western Kentucky to try to locate the well described by the priest.
Western Kentucky has changed dramatically since it was visited by the Spaniards centuries ago, and retracing a three hundred year old route was difficult. Matching certain landmarks with descriptions found in the journal, we finally arrived in the town of Munfordville on Interstate 65. Traveling southwest from Munfordville, we entered a region underlain bt eons-old limestone and replete with caves. After spending three days in this area, we selected a location that best matched the description contained in the priest's journal. And here we encountered our next obstacle-the site was on private property.
After pouring over courthouse records, we identified the owner of the land, looked him up, and recieved permission to enter and search his property. Completely honest about our intentions, we offered him an even split if the silver was recovered. When we asked him about an old well on his acreage, the land owner said he had never heard of one being located out there. In fact, he said, in his memory no one had ever lived in that area. The next morning, Sexton steered his Land Rover onto the land owner's pasture and we commenced our search. Nearly everything in the area matched up with the descriptions from the journal and we felt confident that it was only a matter of time before we discovered the old well.
For a full day we searched the pasture but found nothing. As we considered returning to town for the evening, Maddox called us over to a point about mid-feild where he stood staring at something on the ground. There, at his feet approximately three feet in diameter. Here, proclaimed Maddox, was the well!
But it was not a well at all, it was the opening to an incredibly deep sinkhole, and we realized at that moment that the priest, probably not even knowing what a sinkhole was, actually believed the soldiers had thrown the silver in a well. We dropped several rocks into the abyss but could never hear them hit bottom. Darkness was encroaching on the pasture and we thought it prudent to quit for the day and get a fresh start in the morning. Excited with the anticipation of discovery, none of us could get sleep that night, and by 5:00 A.M. we were heading back out to the pasture.
Probing the interior of the deep sinkhole with flashlights, we could see nothing. As the vast hole deepened it also widened considerably, and even the sides could not be seen beyond the first twenty to thirty feet. We flipped a coin to see who would make the descent and I won. Wingo was elected to remain at the top.After tying one end of a 150 foot rope to the bumper of the Land Rover which Sexton backed up next to the fittings on the repelling harness I wore. Maddox suggested the hole might be deeper than 150 feet, so I threw a coiled rope of equal length over my shoulder and lowered myself through the opening. Each of us was an accomplished mountain climber and cave explorer with hundreds of expeditions to our credit, but none of us were prepared for what followed.
The eerie silence of the sinkhole was broken only by the occasional chirp of bats. Forty feet down, the walls of the shaft had widened so much that they were barely visible in the light of my helmet-mounted carbide lamp. As I descended, the opening appeared as a tiny circle of light above my head, gradually growing smaller. My breathing echoed in the darkening abyss. Deeper and deeper into the sinkhole I lowered myself, dangling freely while slowly rotating on the twisting rope. After I had droped about 120 feet, I became concerned about running out of line before reaching the bottom. A few seconds later, I saw the end of the rope dangling a short distance below my feet, but there was still no sign of solid ground in the glare of my light.
Halting my descent by wrapping a portion of the dangling rope around one leg, I pulled up the end and tied it to the rope coiled around my shoulder. Very slowly and carefully, I let out the spare line, careful to keep it from getting tangled. Now for the dangerous part. It was necessary to remove the rapelling gear from the first rope and reattach it to the second one below the knot. Securing myself to the top rope with a prussic loop, I managed the transfer. To my delight and relief, the knot held and I continued downward.
After repelling another twenty feet, I began to hear the gentle trickle of a small stream somewhere below. A few more feet, and my light illuminated a portion of the bottom of the sinkhole. scattered about were hundreds of larger and small boulders, remnants of some long ago collapse of the ceiling, and among this jumble of rocks, almost directly below the opening, flowed a clear, narrow stream along a ten to twelve feet wide stream bed.
After untying myself from the rope, I signaled for the others to descend, and I began to explore the bottom of the hole. Large rocks lay all around, but over the millennia, the stream had carved a sinuous path through this maze of boulders. Because the streambed was so much wider than the narrow current trickling down it's center, it was clear that the flow had been much wider and deeper in the past. stepping onto the streambed, I sunk nearly a foot into the soft muck.
By the time Maddox joined me, I had explored about 100 feet of the streambed, but found no silver. Several minutes later sexton arrived, and together we searhed the area for some kind of evidence that this might be the so-called well in which the Spaniards dropped their silver. About forty-five minutes later, Sexton whistled for us to join him. When we arrived at a point almost directly under the opening, he pointed to a piece of wood sticking out of the streambed. He pulled the wood from the mud, and we saw that it was a hand-hewn piece of limber. Sexton immediately identified it as a portion of one of the mule crates in which the silver was transported.
Encouraged, we searched more diligently about the area and were rewarded with the discovery of several more pieces of aged, broken lumber and rusted metal fittings. Finally, Maddox held up another piece of wood he pulled from behind a rock which bore a portion of a branded inscription on one side. One of the words was weathered and difficult to read, but the other was clearly "Espana." We found Captain de la Garza's well! After another two hours of searching, nothing more was found. While scrambling over a slippery boulder, sexton severly sprained his right ankle and was unable to walk.
While I was assisting him, maddox found an eight foot long tree limb that had long ago fallen into the sinkhole and plunged it into the streambed. As Sexton and I watched, Maddox forced the limb deeper into the muck and, to our surprise, the entire length of it disappeared! Next, Maddox tossed a twenty pound rock onot the streambed and, as the three of us watched, it slowly sank out of sight. Portions of the streambed were apparently a highly water-saturated type of quicksand. Any objects of sufficient weight landing on the soft sands would immediately sink into the muck for some distance. To what depth we could not ascertain, but it was obvious that Captain de la Garz's twenty burro loads of silver had sunk into the soft streambed to some indeterminable depth.
We are convinced the silver still lies within the soft mud and sand of the streambed. Powerful metal detectors will likely verify this theory, but shovels and a great deal of physical labor will be required to recover the ingots. Since we were poorly equipped for such a recovery operation at the time, and as we felt it necessary to obtain treatment for Sexton's injured ankle, we emerged from the sinkhole after over an hour of grueling ascent.
With the blessing of the land owner, we are currently formulating plans for a return trip to the Spanish "well." On the next expedition, we intend to recover twenty burro loads worth of silver ingots and bring them to the surface
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