Chapter 3

In my travels, I've visited over a hundred different Ghost Towns and even 'discovered' two or three that had faded from active memory. Carcosa was a very lost and nearly forgotten early mining town that I learned of only by accident while reading an old book on early Nevada mining towns. It mentioned Carcosa briefly as a place to be avoided at all costs but it offered no other description or explanation of where the town could be found. This excited my curiosity to no bounds.

It took me two years of research to track down anyone else who had ever even vaguely heard of this old mining town, but in the end I lucked out and hit the jackpot by finding a very elderly and nearly retired professor of Folklore at the State University that had an old almost unreadable 3rd generation carbon copy of a former friend's and classmates thesis that included a location, description and very dubious history of the town. The professor died shortly after giving me his only copy of that paper. Some years later I learned that portions of this thesis had been reprinted (with innumerable inaccuracies) later in the 1960's for an ill-regarded minor book publisher that catered to kooks and fringe elements. In years of trying and searching rare bookstores all over the country, I've only since found a single copy of the pamphlet, so it is a very rare work indeed.

Excited at my discovery, I made my first visit to Carcosa with the entire family stuffed into our SUV. A big mistake on a great many counts. First, no one appreciated my idea of a fun family vacation. Secondly, the circuitous route needed to get there was nearly impossible for our family SUV to manage. The roads were terrible and we had a flat on the way out. I had a spare but a second car problem could have been fatal in that remote wilderness.

Still, something about this remote site drew me, and since then I've been a frequent visitor to the old Ghost Town. In fact this soon became my primary 'disposal area' for bodies, guns, and other unwanted things, after The Boss bought me a rugged four wheel drive Toyota Land Cruiser that could handle the demanding journey. It was remote and the only other inhabitants were equally ornery miners who all acted like they had secrets to hide as well. The innumerable old mine shafts and pits were perfect for hiding unwanted things and people that needed to stay lost and forgotten ... forever.

I could describe Carcosa at great length, but for a succinct explanation here is the site description that I recently wrote for the Nevada Ghost Towns historical website. For many years I kept my 'discovery' of this site secret, but the location was gaining notoriety in other ways so in the end I needed to stand up and shout out my discovery. Ah, vanity!

Carcosa - Lost high up in the mountains southeast of Pinoche and Caliente, near Hali Lake. It's a tough location to reach at close to 10,000 feet of elevation and requires a robust and well-maintained 4WD vehicle to get to even under ideal circumstances.

Classification: Not Recommended — Both the Nevada Historical Association and NevadaGhostTowns.com strongly discourage casual visitors to this ghost town due to the difficulty of reaching the site in the remotest part of the dangerous Death's Head Mountains, and the dangers of the literally thousands of unmarked mine shaft holes in the ground all over this area. Rescue services for lost or trapped would-be explorers are not possible and it goes without saying the entire area is without cell phone service. No gasoline or auto service is available for over sixty road travel miles and the water at nearby Hali Lake is considered extremely poisonous and unsafe for drinking due to severely high levels of metal toxins and arsenic runoff from generations of mining and ore processing in the area.

Accordingly, Nevada Ghost Towns advises all but the most experienced and well equipped explorers to give these ruins a miss, especially during the extremes of the summer and winter months and under no circumstances should camping be done in this area.

History: The origin of the town name is uncertain but it was probably given by the earliest Spanish and Mexican settlers and has remained in use ever since. Later in the early 20th century this area was commonly called the "Death's Head Mines" as hundreds of miners died of silicosis from working the poisonous ore in the mines and even more from cave-ins working the treacherously narrow views of ore in the unstable rock.

The district, first prospected by the Spanish in the 1820's, has large but erratic deposits of mica, copper and silver, but the discovery of gold in 1842 gave rise quickly to a small mining town. Between 1843 and 1858, Mexican miners allegedly removed more than one million dollars in gold from these harsh and unforgiving mountains.

In 1864 Mormons attacked and killed most of the miners and took over the mines, creating a Mormon polygamist colony. The town had a population of about 600 when Brigham Young recalled the Mormons to Utah in 1871. The town was resettled by immigrant miners around 1880 and boomed bigger than ever with a peak population of over 2000. However, finding new ore deposits were hit or miss, mostly miss. By 1900 there were fewer than 100 permanent residents. The town revived again in 1905 and population grew back to 450 before it peaked in 1910.

New extremely rich silver veins were discovered in 1916 in the Death's Head Mine area and another small rush developed. Some of the richest ore ever found in Nevada, valued at $100,000 per ton of unrefined rock, came from Death's Head, but at a terrible cost in human life. The veins, however rich, were also fairly small. A constant battle to find new veins went on but by 1920, no more new significant strikes had been made and the town started its final decline.

During the early 1920s the Celestial Metals Reduction Company opened a large milling center near Hali Lake for the local mines because of plentiful water there and installed a narrow gauge railroad that ran for nearly 40 miles up into the Death's Head Mountains and into many of the nearby canyons. Little of the town was rebuilt after a major fire in 1926 and the population fell to less than 200 people once again, this time to stay. Since 1940, only occasional leasers have worked the mines and the unused railroad spur was finally officially abandoned in 1947. Today the current population is less than ten.

Less than five years ago, not even a dozen people in the entire state knew that Carcosa existed, or where it was, let alone how to find it. It's still not on any maps, but the growth of the Internet and the recent systematic cataloging of many of the old abandoned mining towns by the Nevada Park Service has increased the interest in remote places like Carcosa over tenfold in recent years.

Probably this is a site that would have been better off forgotten, but it's too late for that now, sadly.

Legends and Rumors: All 'lost' ghost towns are the center of rumors and myths but Carcosa seemingly has more than its share. The local newspaper office with its complete archives burned in 1926 and even record searches at the County seat in Pioche or in Carson City have turned up relatively few facts. Carcosians, even back in their heyday, were alleged to be a superstitious lot and extremely closed mouthed among strangers.

There are no less than five different legends about 'lost treasure hordes' somewhere in the thousands of abandoned shafts. Additional stories are rife with old tales of lost mines, cursed veins of gold or silver, and bushwhackers or armed bandits that preyed upon the miners but somehow lost all of their stolen loot in the end.

The Southern Paiute Indian and Ute tribes also have many superstitions about the Death's Head Mountains and largely avoided the area entirely in the centuries before they were placed on a Reservation, considering the region taboo. In 1923, Dr. Simon Talbot of the University of Nevada collected and published a collection of old tribal stories called "The Teachings of the Western Paiute and Ute Tribes to their Sons". These were stories that he had heard recited by tribal elders on the western Reservations as instructional lessons to their children. This is a very rare book edition as only about fifty copies were ever published and it is considered virtually unobtainable today.

While none of the stories specifically name Carcosa, many odd tales obliquely tell of troubles the Indian tribes had with the early miners of this area, including the kidnapping of young tribal women and instances of human sacrifice and cannibalism. A few stories warn more pointedly of an old, lost race of people that lived hidden under the mountains even in the days before the tribes entered these lands. In those tales, brave warriors entered their deep and dark caves to trade for knowledge or riches, but most never returned or discovered that the rewards they had been given were not worth the price they had paid. The underground 'hidden' race was said to enjoy eating the flesh of men and desired native maidens to take for their wives. They were said to be wise, nearly omnipotent in knowledge, but their secrets were unfit for the ears of mortal men and always brought unhappiness or ruin to the mortal who heard them.

One particularly unsettling tale told of a young brave that lived for some time amongst this forbidden race and learned much of their secrets before returning home to his tribe, forever altered. He spoke openly of predictions for the future and revealed terrible hidden secrets from the distant and recent past. He openly now consumed human flesh (which he preferred raw) and performed and spoke openly of so many other blasphemous and wicked things that the elders soon ordered him to be driven away from the tribe with stones and arrows, to be shunned forever and never to return upon pain of death.

There are rumors that the Texas adventurer and explorer James Wylde visited the Mexican mine town in 1850, as did the famous Victorian English explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton later in 1860. Both are known to have passed through the Death's Head Mountains but it is uncertain if they visited Carcosa or not. Wylde's journals have never been found nor published. Burton's notebooks of his travel through the Nevada territory, were burned on his deathbed by his wife, along with nearly all of his other private papers.

An old Mormon oral tradition that was recorded in the 1930's says that it was Burton's oral descriptions of the riches (and peculiarities) of Carcosa that lead Brigham Young to invade this region of Nevada a few years later and seize the town. Mormon internal records of this interesting period remain locked in their vaults, inaccessible to all but the most trusted Mormon historians and have so far, have never been never openly published.

A. S. Matthews in 1953, a graduate student of History, wrote the only modern scholarly survey of the local history of this region. In his Masters Thesis, entitled "Myths, Legends and Folk-Tales of the Spanish and Mormon Settlements of Lincoln County, Nevada". During a period of over two years he interviewed nearly every 'old-timer' that could be found in the mountains and old mining towns and visited every local County or State records archive. It was an exhaustive and detailed work, but it pieced together a tale of such bizarre weirdness that his thesis advisor refused to accept the completed work and soon Matthews was expelled from the University.

In a late 1957 newspaper story in the Lincoln Country Record, they reported that all of Matthews' notes and source documents 'for his forthcoming book' were destroyed in a sudden house fire in Caliente, from which he barely escaped. Shortly after this time he allegedly disappeared into the Death's Head Mountains near Carcosa and was never seen again. A short article in early 1958 quotes the Sheriff of Lincoln County declaring Matthews as 'Missing and presumed dead'.

A portion of this original rejected thesis work was eventually published in 1964 by Golden Goblin Press, an oddball publisher of religious occult and paranormal ravings in a very sensational pulp style magazine format with a very limited pressing, and it is today also considered as a rare book. No copies of any of Matthews' later writings are known to exist.

Among the least controversial of his statements includes rumors of human sacrifice by the original Spanish and Mexican miners and their supernatural dealings with a degenerate and perverted hidden underground race of 'dark Indians' that the later Mormon settlers then tried (unsuccessfully) to exterminate. Later arriving miners and settlers renewed contact with this foul unspeakably evil carrion-eating race and willingly once again offered dark sacrifices in return for discoveries of gold and silver.

Matthews' final conclusion was that the 'Event of 1926', when the town was burned to the ground and virtually destroyed, resulted from an internal civil war between two factions of the town miners. One group seeking to return to the 'old ways of prosperity' and the other (with alleged Mormon connections) that wanted to destroy this underground evil forever. It is not clear which faction allegedly won, but the town was nearly totally destroyed as a result and never rebuilt.

This is of course an absurd tale at best and one that is utterly unaccepted by any other regional historian. Most, when questioned about the unusual mysteries of the Death's Head Mountains, can and do recite similar legends and rumors about most of the other remote mountain ranges of the American Southwest, such as Arizona's Black Mesa or Superstition Mountains, or much of northern New Mexico.