With this blog we are continuing our exploration of the rumors and myths and maybe truths around buried treasures in and around Austin.
I will provide a link at the end of this to the other blogs that I wrote about caves in and around Austin. But notice in this version the loot is taken Southwest of Austin, not Northwest. Toward Westlake which is next to Oak Hill. Note he mentions gold and silver not just gold. Note the treasury is so small there is 6-feet between the vault and window.
Jeanine Plumer
In this article written by Rowland Nethaway. With the Austin American Statesman on Sunday, July 25th, 1971 B. 1. Titled The Bandit Cave Clings to Its Secrets.
”Bells rang furiously and drums rattled the long roll, and the Austin citizens, brave unto death for their money, grabbed their firearms and ran up the hill towards the Capitol building
A band of about 40 Desperados, led by a notorious Captain Rabb, was making a furious sledgehammer and cold chisel onslaught upon five large iron safes in the state treasury.
The gigantic blows upon the iron resounded through the streets of Austin. Rabb and his pickets well posted but fell back before the mob, which proved him a most worthless soldier, but one of his party, too far gone on whiskey, remained fast like a most worthless maniac, clutching the doubloons and the bright, Fascinating 20s. He had his pockets full, his hat full. He was cramming the gold in his boots and in his drawers when the leading files of citizens fired up on him through the windows, not 6 feet away, putting three bullets through his greedy body.
He lived several hours but would confess nothing and died like a stoic. He was, however, well known by the Austin citizens, who recognized him as one of Rabb’s company, and a most desperate and determined man.
Two of the banded horsemen grabbed a blanket heaped full of silver and not drilled in the proper manner to preserve balance, slowly had the blanket pulled from their grass, scattering the shiny dollars along the escape road for a mile.”
That was a newspaper account of the June 11th, 1865 robbery of the Texas state treasury.
Austin had no police force during the big breakup following the close of the Civil War, and by the time Confederate General Joe Shelby and Captain George R Freeman took control of the situation, the Desperados had already escaped across the river southwest of town.
The money, about $15,000 to $17,000 in gold and silver coin, was never recovered.
”When I was a boy, there were still treasure hunters all over our property looking for Treasury money,” said Jerry Dellana, judge of the Travis County Court at Law #1. (died about 30-years after this article)
In those days, Judge Dellana’s father owned about 17,000 acres southwest of Austin. The city of Rollingwood now rests on part of the Dellana property. The treasure hunters had good reason to be looking on the Dellana land. Located nearly a mile back from the cliffs of the Colorado River is Bandit Cave.
The skeletons of children, adults and extinct animals have been removed from The Cave. Relics of Indians and bandits have also been removed from The Cave. ”When my dad was a boy, he told me, the cave was open all the way to the river”, Judge Dellana said. ”One man was so convinced that the Treasury gold was buried in or near The Cave that he spent years digging gigantic holes in search for the loot”, Judge Dellana said. ”By the time my brothers and I started exploring The Cave, he said. Silt had blocked off several of the passageways.”
In 1950, Mrs Lillian Mosher Kreider, a custom hat designer, moved from. Maine to Austin heard about The Cave and bought it. Mrs Crider of 1627 Barton Springs Road, (Juiceland in 2025) said that ”more than a cattle truck of clothes, jewelry, bones and relics have been removed from The Cave”.
”An Indian burial ground and the bones of an extinct Great Bear were also discovered in The Cave.
A portion of a human skeleton is still buried, covered in silt. The skull of an Indian child, about 10 years old, was carbon dated by University of Texas professors”, she said, and found to be predated the discovery of America by 1000 years. In the early days of Austin, Mrs Crider said, ”The Cave was used as a hideout for local bandits. Many early settlers and travelers forwarded the Colorado River at Deep Eddy and were soon robbed after crossing. Because the bandits consistently alluded capture,” she said, ”they became known as Ghost Rider’s. (this is where the fiction begins. Mrs Crider was from Maine and a businessperson her intention was to attract tourists to the cave. This is what the internet keeps repeating,)
Mrs Crider also. Look, discovered a small bell near a lookout vantage point cut into the side of the old cave entrance.
She believes the bandits used the bell to sound the alarm when a posse passed close by. In 1952 the only entrance to The Cave was a shoulder width hole which dropped down into a large room. Missus Crider then had a walk in entrance constructed and opened The Cave for tours. She directed tourist to the Rollingwood cave from her souvenir gift shop in front of her house on Barton Springs Road. Before it was closed to the public about 10 years ago, Missus Crider said, more than a million persons from across the nation toured Banded Cave (very unlikely). The cave was closed, she said, because of an illness in the family.
Several new rooms were discovered when The Cave was being readied for tourists.
Mrs Crider believes, however, the major portion of The Cave, perhaps as large as Carlsbad Caverns, is yet to be discovered. Because The Cave is on private property, and because it can be dangerous to amateur explorers, Rollingwood Police Chief Bill Thomas said he keeps on the lookout for persons breaking into The Cave. Mrs Crider believes The Cave still holds many undiscovered relics and secrets. One of the secrets could even be the location of the unrecovered Treasury loot.
Jeanine Plumer
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