Early every summer, endurance riders gather near Lake Meredith for the Llano Estacado ride. The Llano Estacado ("Staked Plains") were first explored and named by Coronado in the 16th century as he searched for the Seven Cities of Gold -- Gran Quivira. Just south of the site of the ride, the plains are cut by Palo Duro Canyon where the great Comanche war chief Quannah Parker led his band against Col. Ranald MacKenzie. One of the tributaries of that strange and wonderful place is Lighthouse Canyon where a single caprock formation rises almost to level of the plains.

At the base of the Lighthouse are the remains of scrub oak and cedar stumps, cut and burned for the use of a poor Mexican family who lived there during the 1840s and '50s. The father died and was buried there by his wife who took her young son and moved to Santa Fe.

Almost 30 years later, the son, Jesus Ramon Grachias Jr., known to friends as J.R., found himself riding for Charlie Goodnight's J A Ranch and decided to return to the site of his birth and his father's grave. He did so and found the remains of his parent's jacal (hut) and slept there that night. His mother had told him of burying his father 50 feet east of the cedar stump outside the jacal. He found and respectfully marked the gravesite with a cross.

That night, J.R.'s father came to him in a dream and told him to dig 15 feet east of the stump. He woke in distress that he might have misunderstood his mother's instructions and marked the wrong site. He dug 15 feet from the stump to test the earth for disturbance. Just inches below the surface he found a metal chest, 18" by 30". With some difficulty, he got it out of the ground and broke the clasps. Inside he found silver coins all dated before 1821, the date of Mexico's independence, and the story of his father's early years.

J.R. Grachias Sr. had been a Mexican soldier in General Antonio López de Santa Anna's army in 1836 when Sam Houston defeated Santa Anna at the Battle of San Jacinto. J.R. Sr. was with the Mexican paymaster hauling 18 wagonloads of silver coins to pay the army when news of the defeat reached him. J.R. Sr. and four compadres took one wagon with five chests of silver coins and traveled north with the intent of going to Santa Fe.

J.R. Sr. was the last of these soldados to survive and arrive at Lighthouse Canyon with one of the chests, which he buried. He went on to Santa Fe where he married. He later returned to Lighthouse Canyon with his wife and young child where he died and was buried.

J.R. Jr. took the silver to a banker friend who gave him $7,600 for it -- a very nice sum in 1890. J.R. Jr. told this story to J. Frank Dobie in 1926 and concluded with the remark, "I only wish the money were not all spent now."

No one knows what happened to the other four soldados or the other four chests of silver coins. But when the riders at the Llano Estacado ride out across the plains and canyons, they will doubtless cut the trail of Coronado, Quannah Parker and the four soldados. Perhaps as they ride down off the caprock, a shod hoof will ring out, striking the corner of one of the lost chests, still buried in the wall of a canyon there. I encourage you to explore the history of the trails you ride. Send what you find and maybe you'll read it in this space someday. We ride historic trails.

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