I’m about to read an article that was published in the Westlake Picayune in July of 1981 by Glenn O . Brown. It pretty much contains the same basic information we have about Bandit Cave in the Rollingwood area that is available on the internet.
The thing about the Internet is that it’s often repeated information, without much thought. The first issue to point out is that in this article and in other information I’ve seen online, they talk about The Cave being at the intersection of Pickwick St. And Riley in Rollingwood, but in reality, today those streets do not intersect anymore.
A few other reality checks when reading this article to you is that the area of Westlake that they’re talking about is referred to as the Westbank. I don’t know when Westlake or Rollingwood became the Westbank, but it seems somewhat inaccurate. The author talks about Southwest Texas State University, which is now Texas State University.
I read an article and researched an article about the Stark cave in North Northwest Austin and it too was believed to be where the gold from the treasury was hidden. Basically every cave in and around Austin has the treasury gold in it.
The word bandit cave again is a throwback to the Reconstruction Era when there was basically absolute chaos at the end of the Civil War. One added factor to the chaos was the fact that the southern currency no longer had any value. That’s scary stuff.
$17,000 of stolen gold (still valuable unlike the dollar) went missing from the Texas state treasury during the tumultuous time after the Confederacy lost the war and the Union soldiers had taken over Texas and Austin. The $17,000 worth of gold was never found, but it was also never spent.
Today it’s The Cave is on privately owned land and it is surrounded by a fence, and it is illegal to try to access it in any way.
Civil War bandits stayed in Rollingwood Cave.
Bandits cave, also known as Rolling Wood Cave or a Men’s cave. Is at the northeast corner of Riley and Pickwick streets in Rollingwood. It is surprising, yet somehow typical of the West Bank area, that a natural development of this type and size sits quietly, seldom noticed, less than 1/2 mile from bustling, high density mopac.
Bandits Cave is not known at all to some people recently arrived in Rollingwood or the West Bank. Those who have been around longer know it by reputation or from the times at Halloween when the Rollingwood Woman’s club opens it up for night visits.
Yet it seems that not many people really know much about The Cave, and that even among those who do, there is disagreement about a lot of things we’d like to determine.
In an eerie way. Information about The Cave is, like The Cave itself, there are plenty of leads, indications of further passageways and clues, but often when you get there, the relics are lost, the documents absent, the passages silted in. The trace is blurred. If a passageway is blocked off, does it in fact exist or not? Many questions will never be answered now. Southwest Texas State University at San Marcus may know quite a bit about The Cave, although we found no indication of this from UT Austin authorities or files.
There is general agreement, among documentary and human sources, the bandits around the Civil War time used the Cave as a hideout and a storage area for their loot. The bandits would rob their victims near what is now Deep Eddy, or even on the Rollingwood side of the river, or during crossings. One account tells of large quantities of stolen and rotting furniture in The Cave, so apparently houses were robbed. Still another old news story states that shortly after the Civil War, armed robbers seized perhaps 17,000, The amount was never certain, from the state treasury and fled to The Cave, and that neither they nor the funds were ever found, despite extensive investigations and explorations in The Cave and elsewhere.
The cave may run beneath the rolling wood properties. Not many years ago, a student group shoveled its way to a point under Riley Street before tiring of the exploration. A plumber once hosed a heavy stream of water into a hole off Bettis Street for 24 hours straight and all the water disappeared immediately.
Indeed, there is more agreement than disagreement that The Cave, before the extensive silting, ran all the way to the Colorado, thus providing bandits a quick entryway, and even that there may be a passage of some sort all the way under the river. Bill Russell, a noted area spelunker, believes that Bandits Cave shared, or shares, underground Rivers with Austin Caverns, which is off of Scenic Drive.
The Caves Discovery, the 20th century one, came when George B Hatley was laying out the development of rolling wood in the late 1940s and a bulldozer accidentally opened up an old entrance to The Cave. Lillian M Crider of Rollingwood bought The Cave soon thereafter, in 1950. Some people called it a Amend’s cave during that. because Krider, who now lives in Florida and Maine, was married to Doctor LL Amend, but she says that he had no interest in it. Soon after the purchase. Kreider opened up The Cave as a tourist attraction. According to an article in the American Statesman, more than a million people visited it, and a figure Crider now considers too high. She ran The Cave in connection with her tourist business, located on Barton Springs Road.
The shop on Barton Springs also served as a museum for relics and artifacts from The Cave.
Regrettably, many of them were stolen in a break in at this shop. And although some documents refer to artifacts going to. UT, museums, they can no longer be located. Maybe we looked in all the wrong places, but maybe it’s too late and this is just another case of being silted in.
Crider had pleasant experiences, after the commercial phase, in opening up The Cave to the Rollingwood Women’s club for various uses, but she had even better times from other groups who she says. Were much more fun.
Then in 1976, having long since closed The Cave and left Texas. Crider sold it to Mr and Mrs. O O Shirtlef and they still own it. She also has plans to use it commercially, but she feels certain others accounts and from her own explorations that with the passages. unstilted, it would be vast. Shirtliff hopes that not too much new attention will be given to The Cave. Curious youngsters from 8 to 80 should know that The Cave’s sole present entrance has a very heavy steel door and locks The Cave. Only The Cave’s only man-made feature of any sort.
