The following information can be found on page 277 of Bourke Lee’s book “DEATH VALLEY MEN”. This story of a strange tunnel was told after the men had been discussing a local Indian legend, similar in many details to the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, from Greek mythology:
“…”Now! About this tunnel,” said Bill, with his forehead wrapped in a frown. You said this Indian went through a tunnel into a strange country, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. “I think I called it a cave or a cavern, but I suppose a miner would call it a tunnel. Why?”
“Here’s a funny thing,” said Bill…
“This Indian trapper livin right across the canyon has a story about a tunnel, an it’s not a thousand years old either. Tom Wilson told me that his grandfather went through this tunnel and disappeared. He was gone three years, an when he came back he said he’d been in a strange country living among strange people. The tunnel is supposed to be somewhere in the Panamints not awful far from where we’re sitting (Emigrant Canyon, near Death Valley). Now! What do you think of that?'”
The same book, DEATH VALLEY MEN, also tells the following story (pp.301-308) of an ancient city beneath the Panamint mountain range in south-eastern California. Bill Cocoran and Jack Stewart, one time residents of the Death Valley area, upon one occasion came across three individuals who were experiencing troubles with their automobile. They were kind enough to let the visitors stay at their place for a few days, whereupon the five of them became good friends. Because of their generosity, the visitors had decided to let them in on a secret:
“Thomason looked from Jack to Bill and asked, “How long have you men been in this country?” Jack
spoke before Bill had a chance… “Not very long,” said Jack quietly. Bill glanced curiously at Jack but said nothing. If Jack thought that thirty years was not very long that was all right with Bill.
Thomason said, “I’ve been in and out of the Death Valley country for twenty years. So has my partner. We know where there is a lost treasure. We’ve known about it for several years, and we’re the only men in the world who do know about it. We’re going to let you two fellows in on it. You’ve been good to us. You’re both fine fellows. You haven’t asked us any questions about ourselves, and we like you. We think you can keep a secret, so we’ll tell you ours.”
Jack blew smoke and asked, “A lost mine?”
“No, not a mine,” said Thomason. “A lost treasure house. A lost city of gold. It’s bigger than any mine that ever was found, or ever will be.”
“It’s bigger than the United States Mint,” Said White, with his voice and body shaken with excitement. “It’s a city thousands of years old and worth billions of dollars. Billions of Dollars! Billions! Not millions. Billions!”
Thomason and White spoke rapidly and tensely, interrupting each other in eager speech.
Thomason said, “‘We’ve been trying to get the treasure out of this golden city for years. We had to have help, and we haven’t been able to get it.”
“Everybody tries to rob us,” put in White. “They all want too big a share. I offered the whole city to the Smithsonian Institution for five million dollars — only a small part of what it’s worth. They tried to rob us, too! They said they’d give me a million and a half, and not a cent more.” White’s fist crashed on the table… “A lousy million and a half for a discovery that’s worth a billion dollars,” he sneered.
“Boats!” demanded the astonished Bill. “Boats in Death Valley?” Jack choked and said, “Sure, Boats, There used to be a lake in Death Valley. I heard the fishing was fine.”
“You know about the lake,” Thomason pointed his blue chin at Jack. “Your geology would tell you about the lake. It was a long time ago… The ancient people who built the city in the caverns under the mountain lived on in their treasure houses long after the lake in the valley dried up. How long, we don’t know. But the people we found in the caverns have been dead for thousands of years. Why! those mummies alone are worth a million dollars!”
“I had nothing more to do with them.”
Jack got up and found his plug of tobacco. He threw away his cigarette and savagely bit off an enormous chew. He sat down and crossed his legs and glowered at White as he worked his chew into his jaw.
Bill’s voice was meek as he asked’, “An this place is in Death Valley?”
“Right in the Panamint Mountains!” said Thomason. “My partner found it by accident.
He was prospecting down on the lower edge of the range near Wingate Pass. He was working in the bottom of an old abandoned shaft when the bottom of the shaft fell out and landed him in a tunnel. We’ve explored the tunnel since. It’s a natural tunnel like a big cave. It’s over twenty miles long. It leads all through a great underground city; through the treasure vaults, the royal palace, and the council chambers; and it connects to a series of beautiful galleries with stone arches in the east slope of the Panamint Mountains. Those arches are like great big windows in the side of the mountain and they look down on Death Valley. They’re high above the valley now.
But we believe that those entrances in the mountain side were used by the ancient people that built the city. They used to land their boats there.”
White, his eyes blazing, his body trembling, filled the little house with a vibrant voice on the edge of hysteria. “Gold!” he cried. “Gold spears! Gold shields! Gold statues! Jewelry! Thick gold bands on their arms! I found them! I fell into the underground city. There was an enormous room; big as this canyon. A hundred men were in it. Some were sitting around a polished table that was inlaid with gold and precious stones. Men stood around the walls of the room carrying shields and spears of solid gold. All the men – more than a hundred men – had on leather aprons, the finest kind of leather, soft and full of gold ornaments and jewels. They sat there and stood their with all that wealth around them. They are still there. They are all dead! And the gold, all that gold, and all those gems and jewels are all around them. All that gold, and jewelry! Billions!” White’s voice was ascending to a shriek when Thomason put a hand on his arm and White fell silent, his eyes darting about to the faces of those who sat around the table.
Thomason explained quietly, “These ancient people must have been having a meeting of their rulers in the council chamber when they were all killed very suddenly. We haven’t examined them very closely because it was the treasure that interested us, but the people all seem to be perfect mummies.”
Bill squinted at White and asked, “Ain’t it dark in this tunnel?”
“Black dark,” said White, who had his voice under control again. His outburst had quieted him. “When I first went into that council room I had just some candles.
“I fumbled around. I didn’t discover everything all at once like I’ve been telling you. I fell around over these men, and I was pretty near almost scared out of my head. But I got over that and everything was all right and I could see everything after I hit the lights.”
“Lights? There were lights?” It was Bill asking.
“Oh, yes,” said White. “These old people had a natural gas they used for lighting and cooking. I found it by accident. I was bumping around in the dark. Everything was hard and cold and I kept thinking I was seeing people and I was pretty scared. I stumbled over something on the floor and fell down. Before I could get up there was a little explosion and gas flames all around the room lighted up. What I fell over was the rock lever that turned on the gas, and my candle set the gas off! Then was when I saw all the men, and the polished table, and the big statue. I thought I was dreaming. The statue was solid gold. Its face looked like the man sitting at the head of the table, only, of course, the statues face was much bigger than the man’s, because the statue was all in perfect size only bigger. That statue was solid gold, and it is eighty-nine feet six inches tall!”
“Did you measure it,” asked Jack silkily, “or just guess at it?”
“I measured it. Now you’ll get an idea how big that one room — that council room — is. That statue only takes up a small part of it!”
Steady and evenly, Jack asked, “Did you weigh the statue?”
“No,” said White. “You couldn’t weigh it.”
Bill was puzzled. “Would you mind telling me how you measured it?” asked Bill.
“With a sextant,” said White. “I always carry a sextant when I’m on the desert. Then if I get lost, I can use my sextant on the sun or moon or stars to find myself on the map. I took a sextant angle of the height of the statue and figured its height out later.”
“A sextant,” said Bill, frowning heavily.
Jack said, “It’s part of a church, Bill. Never mind that…. Tell us some more about this place. It’s very interesting.”
Fred Thomason said, “Tell them about the treasure rooms.”
“I found them later.” White polished his shining pate with a grimy handkerchief. “After I got the light going I could see all the walls of this big room and I saw some doors cut in the solid rock of the walls. The doors are big slabs of rock hung on hinges you can’t see. A big rock bar lets down across them. I tried to lift up the bars and couldn’t move them. I fooled around trying to get the doors open. It must have been an hour before I took hold of a little latch like (thing) on the short end of the bar and the great big bar swung up. Those people knew about counter-weights and all those great big rock doors with their bar-locks — they must weigh hundreds of tons — are all balanced so you can move them with your little finger, if you find the right place.”
Thomason again said,”Tell them about the treasure.”
“It’s gold bars and precious stones. The treasure rooms are inside these big rock doors. The gold is stacked in small bars piled against the walls like bricks. The jewels are in bins cut into the rock. There’s so much gold and jewelry in that place that the people there had stone wheelbarrows to move the treasure around.”
Jack sat up in sudden interest. “Wheelbarrows?” he asked, “wheelbarrows a million years old?”
“We don’t know how old they are,” said Thomason, reasonably, “But the stone Wheelbarrows are there.”
“Stone wheelbarrows,” marveled Jack. “Those dead men must have been very powerful men. Only very strong men could push around a stone wheelbarrow loaded with gold bars. The wheelbarrows must have weighed a ton without a load in them.”
“Yes,” said Thomason, slowly, “the wheelbarrows are stone and of course they are very heavy…”
”But they’re very easy to push around even with a load in them,” White explained.
“They’re scientific wheelbarrows.”
“No,” objected Jack in a low tone of anguish.
“Yes,” insisted White, pleasantly sure of himself. “A small boy could fill one of those stone wheelbarrows full of gold bars and wheel it around. The wheelbarrows are balanced just like the doors. Instead of having the wheel out in front so that a man has to pick up all the weight with his back, these wise old people put the wheel almost in the middle and arranged the leverage of the shafts so that a child could put in a balanced load and wheel the barrow around.”
Jack’s heart was breaking. He left the table and threw his chew out the door. He went over to the stove with his cup. “Anybody want more coffee?” he asked. No one did.
Bill studied Thomason and White for several moments. Then he asked, “How many times you been in this tunnel.”
“I’ve been in three times,” said White’. “That’s counting the first time I fell in. Fred’s been in twice; and my wife went part way in the last time we was in.”
Mrs. White stroked her blond hair and said. “I thought my husband was romancing when he came home and told me what he found in the mountains. He always was a romancer. One of the reasons I married him was because he was such a romancer. I was sure he was just romancing about this city he said he found. I didn’t believe it until they took me into it. It is a little hard to believe, don’t you think?”
Bill said, “It sure is.” Jack stirred sugar into his coffee and sat down at the table again. Bill asked, “Did you ever bring anything out of the cave?”
“Twice,” said Fred Thomason. Both times we went in we filled our pockets with gems, and carried out a gold bar apiece. The first time we left the stuff with a friend of ours and went to try and interest someone in what we’d found. We thought, the scientists would be interested or the government. One government man said he’d like to see the stuff and we went back to our friend to get the gold and jewels and he told us he’d never seen them; and dared us to try to get them back. You see, he double crossed us. We were in a little trouble at the time and the loss of that stuff just put us in deeper. We couldn’t get a stake because we were having hard work making anyone believe us. So we made another trip out here for more proof.
We brought out more treasure and buried it close to the shaft entrance to the underground city before we went back to the coast. I persuaded some university officials and some experts from the Southwest Museum to come out here with me. We got up on the Panamints and I could not find the shaft. A cloudburst had changed all the country around the shaft. We were out of luck again. The scientists became unreasonably angry with us. They’ve done everything they can to discredit us ever since.”
Jack watched Thomason and White across the rim of his coffee cup. Bill said, “An now you can’t get into your treasure tunnel. It’s lost again. That’s sure too bad.”
Thomason and White smiled. “We can get in all right,” said Thomason in a genial voice his cold eyes did not support. Mrs. White smiled confidently and her husband bobbed his head. Thomason went on “You’ve forgotten about the old boat landings on the Death Valley side of the Panamint Mountains. All we have to do is climb the mountain to the openings where the galleries come out of the city on to the old lake shore. Do you know the mountains along the west side if Death Valley?”
“I been down there” said Bill.
Thomason turned to White: “How high do you think those galleries are above the bottom of Death Valley?
White said, “Somewhere around forty-five hundred or five thousand feet. You looked out of them; what do you think?”
“That’s about right,” agreed Thomason. “The openings are right across from Furnace Creek Ranch. We could see the green of the ranch right below us and Furnace Creek Wash across the valley. We’ll find those windows in the mountains, all right.”
“You goin down there now?” asked Bill.
“That’s what we came for,” said Thomason. “We’re going to take out enough gold to finance ourselves, and we’ll open that city as a curiosity of the world.”
“That’s it,” said White. “We’re through with the scientists. We tried to make a present of our discovery to science because we thought they would be interested. But they tried to rob us, and then laughed at us and abused us…”
Saying thanks and farewell the treasure hunters left, promising to return, and drove in their car down Emigrant Canyon towards Death Valley.
Late that same afternoon Bourke Lee (the author of DEATH VALLEY MEN, which records his own experiences in Death Valley – Branton) met the three of them on the floor of the valley. Their car was parked beside the road between Furnace Creek Ranch and the Salt Bed. The men were patching a tube. They did not need any help so he (Bourke Lee) said goodbye and went south in the valley. He never saw Fred Thomason, Mr. White or his wife again, and ten days later when he again visited Bill Corcoran and Jack Stewart, they told him that they hadn’t seen them since.
When another week went by and the proprietors of the lost city did not reappear, the author and Bill (Cocoran) made a trip down into Death Valley in their car and took along a pair of field glasses, hoping to see some sign of the explorers or the “windows” in the side of the mountain. They failed to find any sign of either.
About 17 years after DEATH VALLEY MEN was published there appeared an article in the September, 1949 issue of FATE magazine, pp.17-21, which tends to support the story of Thomason and White, to a remarkable degree.
The article was titled – TRIBAL MEMORIES OF THE FLYING SAUCERS, written by a Navaho Indian, Oga-Make, who sent in this tribal secret of the Paihute ‘Indians’ in appreciation for a story on the Navaho Indians which appeared in the Spring, 1948 issue of FATE magazine:
“Most of you who read this are probably white men of a blood only a century or two out of Europe. You speak in your papers of the Flying Saucers or Mystery Ships as something new, and strangely typical of the twentieth century. How could you but think otherwise? Yet if you had red skin, and were of a blood which had been born and bred of the land for untold thousands of years, you would know this is not true. You would know that your ancestors living in these mountains and upon these prairies for numberless generations, had seen these ships before, and had passed down those stories in the legends which are the unwritten history of your people.
You do not believe? Well, after all, why should you? But knowing your scornful unbelief, the storytellers of my people have closed their lips in bitterness against the outward flow of this knowledge.
Yet, I have said to the storytellers this: now that the ships are being seen again, is it wise that we, the elder race, keep our knowledge to ourselves? Thus for me, an American Indian, some of the sages among my people have talked, and if you care to, I shall permit you to sit down with us and listen.
Let us say that it is dusk in that strange place which you, the white-man, calls “Death Valley.” I have passed tobacco (with us a sacred plant) to the aged chief of the Paiute’s who sits across a tiny fire from me and sprinkles corn meal upon the flames. You sprinkle holy water, while we sprinkle corn meal and blow the smoke of the tobacco to the four directions in order to dispel bad luck and ask a blessing.
The old chief looked like a wrinkled mummy as he sat there puffing upon his pipe. Yet his eyes were not those of the unseeing, but eyes which seemed to look back on long trails of time. His people had held the Inyo, Panamint and Death Valleys for untold centuries before the coming of the white-man. Now we sat in the valley which white-man named for Death, but which the Paiute calls Tomesha — The Flaming-Land.
Here before me as I faced eastward, the Funerals (mountains forming Death Valley’s eastern wall) were wrapped in purple-blue blankets about their feet while their faces were painted in scarlet. Behind me, the Panamints rose like a mile-high wall, dark against the sinking sun.
The old Paiute smoked my tobacco for a long time before he reverently blew the smoke to the four directions. Finally he spoke.
“You ask me if we heard of the great silver airships in the days before white-man brought his wagon trains into the land?”
“Yes grandfather, I come seeking knowledge.” (Among all tribe’s of my people, grandfather is the term of greatest respect which one man can pay to another.)
“We the Paiute Nation, have known of these ships for untold generations. We also believe that we know something of the people who fly them. They are called The Hav-musuvs.”
“Who are the Hav-musuvs?”
“They are a people of the Panamints, and they are as ancient as Tomesha itself.”
He smiled a little at my confusion.
“You do not understand? Of course not. You are not a Paiute. Then listen closely and I will lead you back along the trail of the dim past.
“When the world was young, and this valley which is now dry, parched desert, was a lush, hidden harbor of a blue-water sea which stretched from half way up those mountains to the Gulf of California, it is said that the Hav-musuvs came here in huge rowing ships. They found great caverns in the Panamint’s, and in them they built one of their cities. At that time California was the island which the Indians of that state told the Spanish it was, and which they marked so on their maps.
“Living in their hidden city, the Hav-musuvs ruled the sea with their fast-rowing-ships, trading with far-away peoples and bringing strange goods to the great quays (openings high in the cliffs) said still to exist in the caverns.
“Then as untold centuries rolled past, the climate began to change. The water in the lake went down until there was no longer a way to the sea. First the way was broken only by the southern mountains, over the tops of which goods could be carried. But as time went by, the water continued to shrink, until the day came when only a dry crust was all that remained of the great blue lake. Then the desert came, and the Fire-God began to walk across Tomesha. The Flaming-Land.
“When the Hav-musuvs could no longer use their great rowing-ships, they began to think of other means to reach the world beyond. I suppose that is how it happened. We know that they began to use flying canoes. At first they were not large, these silvery ships with wings. They moved with a slight whirring sound, and a dipping movement, like an eagle.
“The passing centuries brought other changes. Tribe after tribe swept across the land, fighting to possess it for awhile and passing like the storm of sand. In their mountain city still in the caverns, the Hav-musuvs dwelt in peace, far removed from the conflict. Sometimes they were seen at a distance in their flying ships or riding on the snowy-white animals which took them from ledge to ledge up the cliff. We have never seen these strange animals at any other place. To these people the passing centuries brought only larger and larger ships, moving always more silently.”
“Have you ever seen a Hav-musuv?” (The Navajo asked…)
“No.. but we have many stories of them. There are reasons why one does not become too curious.”
“Reasons?”
“Yes. These strange people have weapons. One is a small tube which stuns one with a prickly feeling like a rain of cactus needles. One cannot move for hours, and during this time the mysterious ones vanish up the cliffs. The other weapon is deadly. It is a long, silvery tube. When this is pointed at you, death follows immediately…”
“But tell me about these people. What do they look like and how do they dress?” (the Navajo asked).
“They are a beautiful people. Their skin is a golden tint, and a head band holds back their long dark hair. They dress always in a white fine-spun garment which wraps around them and is draped upon one shoulder. Pale sandles are worn upon their feet…”
His voice trailed away in a puff of smoke. The purple shadows rising up the wallS of the Funerals
splashed like the waves of the ghost lake.
The old man seemed to have fallen into a sort of a trance, but I had one more question.
“Has any Paiute ever spoken to a Hav-musuv, or were the Paiutes here when the great rowing-ships first appeared?”
For some moments I wondered if he had heard me. Yet as is our custom, I waited patiently for the answer. Again he went through the ritual of the smoke-breathing to the four directions, and then his soft voice continued:
“Yes. Once in the not-so-distant-past, but yet many generations before the coming of the Spanish, a Paiute chief lost his bride by sudden death. In his great and overwhelming grief, he thought of the Hav-musuvs and their long tube-of-death.
He wished to join her, so he bid farewell to his sorrowing people and set off to find the Hav-musuvs. None appeared until the chief began to climb the almost unscalable Panamints. Then one of the men in white appeared suddenly before him with a long tube, and motioned him back. The chief made signs that he wished to die, and came on. The man in white made a long singing whistle and other Hav-musuvs appeared. They spoke together in a strange tongue, and then regarded the chief thoughtfully. Finally they made signs to him, making him understand that they would take him with them.
“Many weeks after his people had mourned him for dead, the Paiute chief came back to his camp. He had been in the giant underground valley of the Hav-musuvs (a much larger and deeper caverous ‘valley’ to which they migrated from their city within the Panamints istelf), he said, where white lights which burn night and day and never go out, or need any fuel, lit an ancient city of marble beauty. There he learned the language and the history of the mysterious people, giving them in turn the language and legends of the Paiutes. He said that he would have liked to remain there forever in the peace and beauty of their life, but they bade him return and use his new knowledge for his people.”
I could not help but ask the inevitable.
“Do you believe this story of the chief?”
His eyes studied the wisps of smoke for some minutes before he answered.
“I do not know. When a man is lost in Tomesha, and the Fire-God is walking across the salt crust, strange dreams like clouds, fog through his mind. No man can breathe the hot breath of the Fire-God and long remain sane. Of course, the Paiutes have thought of this. No people knows the moods of Tomesha better than they.
“You asked me to tell you the legend of the flying ships. I have told you what the young men of the tribe do not know, for they no longer listen to the stories of the past. Now you ask me if I believe. I answer this. Turn around. Look behind you at that wall of the Panamints. How many giant caverns could open there, being hidden by the lights and shadows of the rocks? How many could open outward or inward and never be seen behind the arrow-like pinnacles before them? How many ships could swoop down like an eagle from the beyond, on summer nights when the fires of the furnace-sands have closed away the valley from the eyes of the white-man? How many Hav-musuvs could live in their eternal peace away from the noise of white-man’s guns in their unscalable stronghold? This has always been a land of mystery. Nothing can change that. Not even white-man with his flying engines, for should they come to close to the wall of the Panamints a sharp wind like the flying arrow can sheer off a wing. Tomesha hides its secrets well even in winter, but no man can pry into them when the Fire-God draws the hot veil of his breath across the passes.
“I must still answer your question with my mind in doubt, for we speak of a weird land. White-man does not yet know it as well as the Paiutes, and we have ever held it in awe. It is still the forbidden; Tomesha–Land-Of-The-Flaming-Earth.” [map id=”436″]
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