| Lying somewhere in this
remote country, the Bill Kelley Mine was not only said to have been
one of the richest in all of North America, but also was cursed, as
many of those who claimed to have found the gold or were close to
discovering its location, often died a violent death.
In 1884, the four Reagan brothers, John,
Jim, Frank and Lee, established a cattle ranch near Reagan Canyon in
southern Brewster County. On numerous occasions, the Reagans drove
their cattle to the Southern Pacific Railroad at Dryden,
Texas ,
a rugged 75 mile journey to the northeast. During one of these cattle
drives, the Reagans met a man named Billy Kelley, a Seminole-African
American man who was trekking from the old
Indian settlement in northern Coahuila, Mexico, looking for work
in the ranch country of West
Texas .
Though only 19 years old, dressed in
rags, and unable to read or write, he convinced the brothers that he
was experienced with horses and the ranch owners hired him. Proving to
be as good as he claimed, the Reagans soon allowed Kelley to care for
the stock on his own. On one of these occasions, when Kelley was
rounding up strays on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande River, he
stumbled onto a gold mine. Upon his return to the ranch, he told the
Reagans of his find, but they only laughed at him.
The next day Kelley, along with Lee
Reagan, was once again rounding up stray horses near the location that
Kelley said he had found the mine. Near the end of the day, Kelley
told Reagan that they were close to the mine that he had found and
offered to take him there. Once again, Reagan only laughed. So, Kelley
retrieved a fist-sized piece of quartz from his saddlebag, showing
Reagan the rich gold vein that ran through it. Reagan, obviously not
familiar with gold, scoffed once again, tossing the quartz to the
ground and telling Kelley to focus on his job rather than looking for
gold mines.
Undaunted, Kelley knew what he had
found and a few weeks later took a train bound for
San
Antonio, where began to visit with the train conductor, a man
named Locke Campbell. He told Campbell about the mine and even
provided him with a piece of quartz as proof. Kelley’s new found
friend promised he would have the gold evaluated and would be in
touch. In the meantime, Kelley also took a piece of the quartz to an
assayer, who promised to send the results to the Reagan Ranch.
Kelley then returned to his work and after
several weeks, while he was out on the range, a letter came for him
from the assayer. The Reagans, not believing that Kelley could read,
opened the letter to discover that the gold that Kelley had found was
valued at $80,000 to the ton.
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| When
Kelley returned to the ranch three days later, the cook told him that the
brothers opened his letter and read it. Nervous, Kelley feared that the
Reagans would want him to lead them to the mine, where they would then
kill him. As a result, he stole a horse and disappeared southward. The
Reagans tracked him for two days but finally gave up the search as the
tracks crossed the Rio Grande into Coahuila, Mexico.
Next, Kelley went to work on the Piedra Blanca
Ranch owned by George Chessman in Coahuila,
Mexico. After a while, Kelley grew to trust his foreman, John
Stillwell, and related the tale of the lost mine and showed him a
saddlebag filled with gold nuggets. He also told Stillwell that he was
afraid for his life and was thinking about returning to his relatives at
the Seminole settlement in Coahuila.
A short time later, after Kelley and other
ranch hands had driven a herd of cattle to Mexico City, Kelley
disappeared. Later, it was found that he had returned to his Seminole
settlement for a time, before moving north to
Oklahoma. There, he was imprisoned for illegal
bootlegging. After his release he moved to
San Antonio,
where he lived until his death.
In the meantime, Locke Campbell, the
conductor Kelley had met on the train, had begun to look for the mine.
Ironically, at a cattlemen's convention in
San Antonio,
Campbell met Jim Reagan, and the two exchanged their stories of Bill
Kelley’s lost gold mine. Campbell soon paired up with the Reagan
brothers and began to look for the mine. Though they searched for several
miles in each direction from the place where Lee and Kelley had rounded up
strays, they were unable to find anything. However, the Reagan brothers
continued their search for years, investing thousands of dollars in their
efforts.
Around this same time, a black man appeared
at a store in Eagle Pass,
Texas ,
wanting to exchange a bag of gold nuggets and information regarding the
location of the mine for $1,000. However, the storekeeper refused, only to
find out several months later, that the man had been Bill Kelley.
In June, 1899, Jim Reagan partnered with
ranchers D.C. Bourland and O.L. Mueller, and a prospector named John Finky
to search for the mine. While the ranchers provided the financing, Finky’s
job was to find the mine and the five men would share in any proceeds.
 After
many weeks of searching, Finky arrived at the Bourland ranch, announcing
he had located the mine and produced several large chunks of gold. He
also stated that he had found the long-dead body of a black man in a
remote canyon some 300 yards below the mine. That very night, Finky was
stung by a scorpion and had to be taken to a doctor in Sanderson. There
Finky was hospitalized, where Bourland and Reagan visited him trying to
get him to reveal the location of the mine. Not trusting the ranchers,
Finky refused and told them that the group would have to get permission
from the Mexican government to work the mine.
After his recovery, Finky planned to travel
to Mexico City to gain the proper permission. On the way, he stopped in El
Paso, where he spent two days drinking at a
saloon.
Making friends with the bartender, Finky told him about the Lost Bill
Kelley Mine and invited him to accompany him to Mexico City. Two days
later Finky was found dead.
Shortly afterwards, Jim Reagan died and his
brothers eventually moved their ranching operations to
Arizona.
Locke Campbell continued to search for the mine until he died in 1926.
In 1909, a man named Wattenburg arrived in
the
Big Bend
area with a map reputedly showing the location of a gold mine in the
Ladrones Mountains. Wattenburg claimed that the information came from his
nephew, who was condemned to death in an
Oklahoma
prison. According to the tale, while stealing horses in Mexico, his nephew
and his
outlaw
companions had come across an old man carrying two leather sacks filled
with gold-laden quartz rock. When they threatened the old man, he took
them to the mine. With a posse close behind them, they then killed the old
miner, threw his body into a canyon, and fled across the border.
In Wattenburg’s search, he met a man named
John Young, who was familiar with the Ladrones Mountains and Reagan
Canyon. The pair soon partnered along with another man named Felix Lowe,
to look for the mine. In 1910, while they were searching for the mine, the
Mexican Revolution broke out and with the border teeming with armed men,
they abandoned their search.
Several months later, Young was interviewed
by a San
Antonio newspaper and told the entire story of the lost Bill Kelley
Mine. A man named Jack Haggard, a rancher in Coahuila, read the story and
wrote a letter to Young. He told him that Kelley worked on his Mexican
ranch for several years and that one of his foremen, using Kelley’s
directions, had apparently found the mine. The foreman had returned with
several ore samples that were assayed as rich in gold. However, the
foreman had been killed in a gas explosion shortly after his return.
Haggard also told Young that he, too, was searching for the mine. Years
later, Haggard was preparing for another expedition to the Ladrones
Mountains when he was drowned in a fishing accident.
Another man searching for the mine was Will
Stillwell, Kelley’s old foreman at the Piedras Blancas Ranch. In 1915,
Stillwell told his brother, Roy, that he had found the mine. Though
Stillwell may have been working the mine, he had also joined the
Texas Rangers.
Assigned to a post in the
Big Bend
area he was shot in the back by a Mexican
outlaw
in 1918.
Afterwards, Roy Stillwell, Will's younger
brother, came into possession of the directions to the Bill Kelley mine.
Though Roy was asked by several men to lead an expedition to find the
mine, Roy steadfastly refused, telling them all that the mine was cursed
and pointing out the number of violent deaths associated with those who
either claimed to have found the gold or who were close to discovering its
location.
Several months later, another group of men
offered Roy a large amount of money if he would provide the directions to
the mine. Responding that he wanted a few days to think about it, Roy was
killed two days later when a truck overturned on him.
In the late 1940s, two mining engineers
from the east arrived in the area of the old Reagan Ranch. Hiring a local
guide, they never said what they were looking for, but the guide assumed
it was the Lost Bill Kelley Mine. According to the guide, the pair was
very excited one day about something they found, paid him off and told him
his services were no longer needed. The guide always felt that the pair
had found the mine. However, the two miners were never seen leaving the
mountains and never returned to their homes in the east.
The
location of the Bill Kelley Mine is said to be in the mountains
on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande, south of
Big Bend National Park.
Of those who allegedly found the mine, they said it is on a ridge some 300
yards up a canyon wall. In the canyon are the stumps of several petrified
trees, beyond which is a large boulder. Somewhere above this boulder is
supposedly the Lost Kelley Mine.
Kathy Weiser/Legends
of America, © January, 2007
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