no period of history has been romanticized like the Old West and
enshrined in 19th century dime novels and later in the movies of John Wayne and
Clint Westwood but it wasn't just fiction. There really worked gangs of
notorious outlaws, there really were tales a revenge ending in shootouts it
was an era of great change of society encroaching on the untamed wilderness
and even of Mexicans so it should be no surprise there are many mysteries of the
Old West from famous outlaws who disappeared without a trace to great
treasures generations have hunted for here attend unsolved Old West mysteries
one of the most interesting yet least well-known figures of the Old West was
Doc Noss a self-taught foot doctor he traveled around in search of
adventure befriending cowboys and gunslingers one day he and his wife were
exploring a remote mountain range in New Mexico when they discovered a mysterious
cave venturing into the cave and through several hundred feet of tunnel he
discovered a treasure trove before him lay colonial-era gold coins and
artifacts historical documents and sixteen thousand gold bars. Days later
they returned ready to excavate the great treasure but Noss was not a wise
man and when he attempted to widen the tunnel using dynamite it caused the
ceiling to collapse permanently sealing off the cave. Doc Noss would spend the
rest of his life raising money to fund new efforts to retrieve that treasure
investors poured millions into the effort enriching Noss in the process but
his life of befriending shady figures came back to bite him as he was
eventually murdered by one of his own investors in the decades that followed
the story became legendary and treasure hunters continued to search for his gold
none of them have found even a single gold bar but countless people still believe in the treasure
there was once a Frenchman living in what at the time was called Utah Territory
by all accounts he was an upstanding member of the
community working as the local gravedigger but when it was found out he
had been grave robbing people were outraged angry mobs wanted to lynch him
on the street so to keep him safe until his trial police decided to exile him to
a small island on the Great Salt Lake for six weeks he was to live alone on
that island entirely isolated from the outside world but when authorities
returned to the island he was nowhere to be found
immediate speculation was that he somehow escaped either by a homemade
boat or by swimming to shore but as time went on these theories seems less
plausible not only was it a long way to shore
no sign of the man was seen again and so his fate has been a
mystery ever since
1800 Texas was an especially violent place American outlaws Mexican bandits
and Comanche Raiders made its frontiers dangerous for all one Mexican bandit
was especially notorious for stealing horses he would do so during sandstorms
as to cover his tracks but according to legend he one day accidentally left a
trail allowing a group of Texas Rangers to follow after him as a warning to
other bandits that cut off his head tied his headless corpse to a horse
and left it to wander off into the desert his killers headed home believing
they would never again need worry about him but it was not long before strange
rumors began to emerge across the state stories told of a Headless Horseman
terrorizing settlers holding his own severed head its eyes glew
brightly as he galloped towards his victims murdering anyone slower than his
horse not even bullets could slow him down nor seem to damage him at all and
ever since legends of this Headless Horseman have endured
Bill Longley was known as the man hanged three times one of the most violent gun fighters of the Old West
he spent his time roaming post-civil war Texas killing anyone who
got in his way he claimed to have killed 32 people which is a lot more than I
have according to legend he was captured by a lynch mob one night who decided to
hang him as he was left hanging by a rope the mob rode off on horseback
shooting into the air. But then a stray bullet cut the rope saving his life
years later he was apprehended in Louisiana and sentenced to death again
he escaped death, the hangman accidentally using the wrong length of rope but this
time his executioner's realized their mistake and simply hanged him again bill
Bill Longley was dead however one day his father came forward claiming his death
had been faked it was said he escaped from prison days before leaving guards
to panic and kill someone else in his place he did have a history of breaking
out of jail and as time went on more people claims to encounter him
could he really have escaped justice or was his father just a crazy old man
among the figures who shaped this era of history was Pancho Villa - a Mexican
revolutionary known for bravery and charisma one of the Mexican revolutions
great leaders he had enemies on either side of a border and in 1923 he was
assassinated three years later cemetery workers
discovered a bizarre theft the grave of Pancho Villa had been desecrated his
body decapitated and his head stolen there was no immediate suspect only
rumor while many people hated Villa, no one seemed directly linked to the crime
investigators hit an instant dead end and still today the fate of Pancho Villa's head is unknown
some said it was stolen by a renegade art dealer and sold to a
private collection in France but the most prominent rumor blamed a group of
American students at Yale University is a notorious secret society called skull and bones
also known as the Brotherhood of death they have been accused of
acquiring many stolen skulls especially of great military leaders like the
Apache chief Geronimo according to legend they paid twenty five thousand
dollars for his skull of Pancho Villa to be stolen for them and an entire century
later they still have it
From the early days of Spanish conquest in the new world rumor spread among explorers of a series of great lost cities
Tales of the seven cities of gold made it back to Europe and dozens of expeditions
organized to find them but no matter how thoroughly they searched South and Central America
no golden city was found centuries later when the Old West experienced a gold rush
rumor again circulated of these lost cities this
time telling they were in California Arizona or Colorado once more crazy
white people went all over in search of his Seven Cities of Gold
legend told they were surrounded by miles of desert in every direction
and on the journey towards them you would see countless corpses of long
dead explorers follow in the footsteps of those dead explorers and keep going
and perhaps he will discover great wealth in those lost cities that was
believed by many at for time but nothing resembling a city of God was ever found
in the Old West in remote Nevada stands El Dorado Canyon a place long known to
be rich in gold and silver for over a hundred years the mines here extracted
precious metals making many fortunes as Nevada's most successful mining area all
kinds of people which run here including criminals murder and shootouts were a
regular occurrence so for protection many dogs were kept
here but people of the Old West were cold hearted and when it came time to
leave for Canyon many dogs were simply tied down and left to die Eldorado
Canyon has been abandoned for decades but it said if you go there at night you
can still hear the ghostly howling of those long dead dogs as the howling gets
closer you will hear the sound of chains being dragged along the ground and if
you do not then run you will be torn to pieces
such is the legend of the El Dorado Canyon ghost dogs
Henry Plummer was a legendary lawman of the Old West though sheriff of a town he
led a double life being part of a gang of Outlaws using
his position as sheriff he would carefully pick his victims choosing only
to rob wagons full of gold from local mines for several years he and his gang
of Outlaws preyed on traveling wagons it was an open secret that he led the gang
but he was Sheriff and he wasn't exactly going to arrest himself eventually a
group of locals came together as vigilantes capturing and executing
Plummer but after his death none of the gold he had stolen was recovered no
matter how hard they tried no one could find it it was said he had amassed a
fortune of $200,000 worth an incredible sum for the mid 19th century according
to legend he buried for gold somewhere near a ghost town of Bannack but its
exact location was lost when Henry Plummer died
just like every other part of the world Native American folklore tells of many mythical creatures perhaps
the most interesting are Thunderbirds a giant winged creature of great
strength but European settlers never took this belief seriously not until
1890 in that year a local newspaper in Tombstone Arizona published a story
about it according to that story a Thunderbird was seen flying near the
town and shot down by locals it was larger than any bird they had seen before
initially there was no photographic evidence only the new story itself but
before long all kinds of strange images began to circulate appearing to show
the dead Beast this was not the last reported case of a
Thunderbird encounter many other communities of the Old West claimed to
witness one... probably because they were bored
perhaps the greatest of all mysteries of the Old West is the lost gold mine in
1857 two men were crossing the Sierra Nevada mountain range
according to legend they were doing so as part of a larger group but somehow
got separated now alone they stumbled upon a large deposit of strange-looking
rock on approaching the rock they discovered it was really gold enough to
make them vastly wealthy by the time they made it back to society one of them
was dead and the other seriously ill as he lay on his deathbed he revealed its
approximate location before suddenly dying though brought by tragedy this
revelation excited the doctor who immediately set out to find the gold but
strangely he was unable to find it years went by yet still he found no gold
more than a century and a half later the location of that mine remains unknown
if it even exists