Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Curly Bill's Bandit Loot in Arizona


Here’s another one for you out in Arizona. This is a nice time of year to hunt treasure in Arizona!

Back in 1880 a group of Mexican bandits raided the town of Monterey, Mexico and stole just about everything the town had. They took gold and silver in coin and bar form along with the church treasure which was said to consist of gold and silver statues, religious “relics” and “other priceless items”. According to one account the take was supposed to have been worth more than a million dollars.

After raiding the town the Mexican bandits headed north into Arizona where they ran into a bit of their own bad luck. Their bad luck happened to have a name and it was Curly Bill Brocious.

Curly Bill is described in a book entitled “Helldorado” by Billy Breakenridge as “being the most deadly pistol shot of the Cowboys, able to hit running jackrabbits, shoot out candle flames without breaking the candles or lantern holders, and able to shoot quarters from between the fingers of "volunteers." When drunk, Brocius was also known for a mean sense of humor, and for such "practical jokes" as using gunfire to make a preacher "dance" during a sermon, or making Mexicans at a community dance take off their clothes and dance naked”.

Just the kind of guy you want to run into when you are carrying around a million bucks of gold and sivler, huh?

Curly Bill and his gang are said to have liberated the gold and silver from the Mexican bandits, killing them all in the process and then taking the treasure to Skeleton Creek Canyon outside of Apache, Arizona where they hid it.

Accodring to legend and as most treasure stories go, most or all of Culy Bill’s men were killed releatively soon afterward and nobody made it back to recover the treasure. Curly Bill himself was shot in May 1881 in the neck but he survived only to meet his demise on March 24th 1882 when he caught both barrels of a shotgun blast in the chest. The handler of that shotgun was none other than Wyatt Earp!

I don’t know where to start looking for this treasure other than Skeleton Creek Canyon but researching Curly Bill would be a good start. It seems he had a colorful past and is written about a lot.

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