Why Do So Many Lost Gold Legends Exist?

[mnaz]

Jim knew stories about lost mine legends, more interesting than mining itself, and I was fascinated. I wondered how so many of these stories had survived for so long. So I got a few books at the little museum in town, and when I got into them it seemed the same scenario repeated itself in almost every story: someone finds great wealth in the desert, but when they try to go back and retrieve it they can't find it; the great find is gone, hidden again in those same countless folds and slopes that kept their secret for so long.

But was it real? Maybe in the fevered minds of prospectors who dreamed of a Eureka! moment for so many years, the lines of dreams, memories and reality all blurred together in electric moments of discovery. The desert can change its face and confuse us with space and thirst. Yet so many of these stories had survived for so many years that to think they were all made up was just as dubious as to believe they were all true.

The hook was: could you finally be the one in the right state of mind who heads into the desert and finds what the others missed? Could you write an ending to one of these old legends? Like the one about a Basque shepherd who found a rich gold vein in Becker Canyon. He stuck his pick in a tree, its handle pointing at the vein, then he sold his sheep and returned to the canyon a few weeks later, but he couldn't find the pick nor the vein.

Or the tale of Swede Pete, who chased a stray cow into a side canyon where he found a golden vein. He covered it up and marked it with a pointy rock and drank much whiskey in town. He told people about his marker and staggered from the saloon, collapsed in a ditch and later died of pneumonia, and nobody ever found the gold, despite many attempts.

But legends endure for a reason, and not every lost mine stays lost. Like the story of Helen, a Nevada prospector who heard a story told by a man named Bill, who had a crude map with vague directions to a silver ledge sent by his brother before he died in Mexico. Helen asked Bill for the map, which he quickly handed over, and it led her and a few partners to a silver forge, but no silver ledge. They searched for months, and everyone quit except for Helen, who searched for years until she found that ledge.

It seemed the best prospectors with staying power had a deep reservoir of determination and a high tolerance for hardship. But there had to be more to it than that. Maybe most of all, the best seekers simply liked being out there, among the silent peaks and valleys on the shape of rock, in the dust, cold, heat, thirst and possibility.

[sasha]

The lure of possibility...

We see what we want to see, we remember what we want to remember. How many times did I see desire in her eyes when there was none? Or remember the insult when none may have been intended? How much first-person history was so written after the fact...?

[mnaz]

Yes. A lot of factors enter the overall picture, especially as time passes and memories morph a little and tales are spread by word of mouth. Plus, some of the original protagonists were known to, um, stretch the truth at times...