The Bandits Of Colossal Cave

The Bandits Of Colossal Cave
By: Cave Spelunking

Caves and bandits just go together! Stories abound of bandits burying their loot in caves. There's probably at least one such story that's associated with every cave in America. Some of these are just "tall tales" and are not based on any kind of substantiated fact but some of the stories are true.

Colossal Cave is a cave in Arizona near the town of Panto. Panto is a small town that lies just a few miles east of Tucson and just a few miles south of Colossal Cave. In 1884, near Panto, four men held up a train and got away with $72,000 in cash and gold. There escape route led through the Rincon Mountains and toward Colossal Cave.

The sheriff, a man by the name of Bob Leatherwood, got a posse together and went after the gang. He and his posse tracked the bandits to Colossal Cave. When the sheriff tried to go into the cave, the bandits fired several shots at him, so the sheriff decided that he could just wait them out. "The bandits," he reasoned, "would finally just get hungry enough to surrender."

So Sheriff Leatherwood and the posse waited. They waited for two weeks. Finally a deputy came riding up and told the sheriff that the four men were about 70 miles away at the Corner Saloon in Willcox. He said four bandits were throwing money around, whooping it up and telling everybody how they had fooled the sheriff and left him sitting in front of an empty cave out in the hot desert.

Sheriff Leatherwood and his posse went after the bandits. They cornered the bandits, and there was a shootout in which three of four of the bandits were killed. The robbers didn't have the money with them when they were killed. The fourth robber served 28 years in the Yuma Prison.

The sheriff and his men searched Colossal Cave. They found the hidden entrance where the bandits had escaped, but they never found the $72,000. Maybe it's still there...

Rock On & Keep Spelunking...
Cave Spelunking.