The Savannah morning news., 1902-07-15
FIFTY YEARS OF MYSTERY.
FATE OF A PARTY of TWENTY
MISSOURIANs IN DEATH VALLEY.


While Crossing the Desert They
Were Overcome by Thirst-Drank
From Arsenic Spring and Per
ished Observation-Disclosures OF
Water Drives Those who Enter
This Region Insane.
From the San Francisco Chronicle.
The treacherous, merciless sands of
Death valley have yielded up the
story of another grewsome, CHASTITY
tragedy fifty years after it was en-
acted. Stories of similar tragedies in
that Vale de los Muertos have been
told again and again, yet they are
always new in the telling, for their
fascination lies in their horror. Yearly
as the white men traverse that trap
door of hell they play their lives
against the tales of yellow lure that
lie under it and some lose. The next
year their mummified corpses are
found by others, who pity them as
good men; they played the limit and
lost" There is no occasion for mourn
ing; they were strong men and knew
The game they were against. They &C
cepted the chance in the gamble with
death and, having lost, they paid the
winner in full. But when women and
children go down that journey OF
death only because husbands and faith
ers go there is an excuse among those
who know" for the moisture that
collects on sun-dried eyelids.
Fifty-one years ago a party of men,
women and children-twenty, all told
left independence, Mo, in two wagons
ORA nv OYan hound for tho cold
fields of California. From that day I'M
til now they have never been heard
of and their fate has always been
mystery, although it was thought
probable that they had strayed from
the overland trail and been massacred
by the Indians. All these years has
the bare, brown-breasted" desert held
the secret securely locked, and only
recently have its restless, crawling
sands disclosed the key; that key was
the huge, rusted hook of an ancient
OK chain.
Secrets Key Is Found.
Don Pickett is a prospector. with a
frame of tempered steel and thews and
muscles as tough as whang leather. He
is not we'll known in San Francisco,
but is familiar figure from Carson to
the Mexican line. Tonopah, the sink
the desert of the Colorado know him
He is in the city now and it is difficult
for him to backtrack himself from a
mining office on Montgomery street to
his hotel, but in the country named
he knows the trails as they are known
to the Indians and the eagles. He had
just returned from a prospecting trip
from Tonopah through the Panamint
country and Death valley, by way of
~ nd ~
nortehrn extremity of the Panamint
range that he picked up the key that
unlocked the half-century- old secret.
AT the foot of spur of the Pana-
mint mountains on it's northeastern
slope he and his partner, Len Gorson,
had stopped to rest themselves and
their burros from the exhaustion at
tendant upon their trip across Death
valley. Where they stopped a spring
of perfectly clear cold water dubbed
from the rocks and lost itself in the
sands a few yards farther on. They
did not drink of the water; they knew
it; so did their burros. and the ami
mails hardly shifted at it as they turn
ed to nibble at the scant heritage 1t
was poison, deadly poison, and the ar
senic contained in a good draught
would kill drinker. Years ago some
prospector had Scrawled the word
poison on DOdTQ from packing
box and had fastened it to a stake by
the edge of the spring. 1t was while
resting in the shade of the rocks and
brush that Pickett saw a few feet from
him the top of a rust eaten iron hook
projecting above the sand. He took
hold of it, but it did not come away
easily. and exerting his strength he
uncovered an ancient OK chain forty
feet in length the kind that is prac-
tically out of use now.
Human Remains In The Sand.
From its rusty condition 1t must
have lain buried in the sand for at
least fifty years, and, knowing the
manner in which the desert concealed
its secrets, they took their prospect
ing picks from the packs and began
drawing them through the sand. The
points of the pick turned up bone af-
ter bone and pieces of wagon irons.
Some of the bones were of oxen and
some were of humans, a few evident
ly being those of women and children.
AS many of the bones of humans as
they uncovered they reinterred in a
trench in the sand and then packed
on across the dreary waste that
stretched away before them They
told the story of their find to Indians
and old white settlers in the Amar-