If you're going to search of gold in Texas, first you need to know where to look. Next you need to know how to get at the stuff. And last but not least you need to remember, in the words of Mark Twain, "A gold mine is a hole in the ground with a liar at the top."

Reports of gold and silver in central Texas have been carried in books and memories for 250 years. As a journalist and historian I've read and heard these stories for more than three decades - secretive miners have shown me bars of silver the size of the largest Hershey bars and five times as thick. On one occasion a miner placed a droplet of gold in my palm the size of four dimes, stacked. It had been extracted from far too much ore. If the miner hadn't done the work himself, the labor would have cost more than the gold was worth.

One fellow told me about where there was a vein of silver three feet wide and twenty yards long. Right on the surface. Unfortunately he didn't own the land, but he was scheming. On another occasion I was told of a gold mine just north of Enchanted Rock that was closed after a gang of Mexican laborers lit out with several pounds of gold - the result of months of mining. I've also heard about a gold nugget found in Bull Head Creek, northwest of Enchanted Rock and the San Saba rancher that discovered gold while digging a well.

Then there are the ristras, granite bedrock milling stones found in and along creek beds. According to the legends these were used to crush the ore in gold mining operations. Located in San Saba, Llano, and Blanco counties, they are said to be either Spanish or Mexican in origin. One such stone is in a stream somewhere in Sandy Valley, near Click.

The stories are legion, however, for this article, I've mined a few books for salient facts. When you're writing about gold in Texas it's best to have a few folks with better credentials backing you up.

IN THE BEGINNING

In the Central Mineral Region, legends and rumors of lost mines have been circulating since ...

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