Spanish Silver Mines

Over two hundred years ago seven Spaniards who were working a silver mine, after crudely smelting and stamping it, secreted their vast wealth in a cave about a mile from the smelters. After a while, they began fighting among themselves and finally there was only one survivor, Pedro Diego.

Diego realized that he could not carry on the operation alone so he took into partnership two Irishmen named Higgins and McCabe. Diego disappeared not too long after the formation of the partnership; the Irishmen, heavily loaded with silver, arrived in Boston several years later. They boasted that 2,000 men could not carry the silver from whence their current wealth had come. The Irishmen however, did not return to the Ozarks, preferring to live a life of ease in Boston.

Years later, in 1873, a Vermont farmer, Watson Johnson, sold his land and bought from one of Higgins’ descendants the meager details of the mysterious mine and cave. Johnson located the mine but was found dead at the mouth of it the day after he entered it. No one has ever located the treasure cave, supposedly a mile or so away. It is believed to be about eighteen miles south of Galena, Missouri.