The Lost Silver of the Hills

Now here's a tale to keep you scanning these hillsides as you walk — Ranger Merrick — because somewhere out in this hill country, folks have sworn for two hundred years, there is a fortune in lost silver, and men have spent their whole lives and more than a few of them their bones hunting for it. They call it, most famously, the Lost San Saba Mine, or Bowie's Mine, and it's the greatest treasure legend in all of Texas.

The story goes back to the old Spanish days. The Spanish, so the tale runs, found a fabulously rich vein of silver somewhere up in these hills, and worked it with Indian labor, and hauled the silver out by the mule-load. And then — the mission was attacked, or the Comanche drove them out, or the whole thing was abandoned in blood and panic — and the location of the mine was lost. Buried, hidden, forgotten. A king's ransom in silver, somewhere in these hills, and nobody left alive who knew where.

And then, decades on, in comes the most famous name of all — Jim Bowie, the knife-fighter, the hero of the Alamo himself. The legend says Bowie, before he died at the Alamo, got wind of that lost Spanish silver, and befriended the Indians who knew the secret, and was led to the mine — and saw it, and knew where it was. And then Bowie died at the Alamo with the secret still in his head, and the mine was lost all over again, now doubly cursed and doubly famous. 'Bowie's Mine,' they've called it ever since.

For two centuries now, friend, that story has pulled dreamers and diggers and fortune-hunters into these hills. Old maps have been sold, and forged, and killed over. Men have dug up half the county on a whisper and a rumor. Whole lives have been poured out chasing that silver — and near as anybody can tell, not one soul has ever found it, if it was ever there at all. Some say it's pure moonshine, a story spun out of Spanish tall tales and Bowie's own gift for legend. Some swear it's real and still out there, waiting.

Now I trade in tales, not treasure maps, so I won't tell you which. But I'll tell you this much, standing here in these beautiful hills: the real silver of this country is running right down there in that clear river, and burning red in those maples every fall, and rolling away blue to that horizon — free, and out in the open, for anybody with the sense to come and look. The treasure-hunters dug right past it for two hundred years, eyes down, hunting a hole in the ground. Don't you make their mistake, friend. The riches of this hill country were never buried. Look up. It's all around you.