Smugglers Cave and the Forgotten Last General
Posted: Fri Apr 12, 2013 1:15 pm
We did a hike out to Smugglers Cave, Elliott Mine and Moon Valley a while back, http://www.in-the-desert.com/smugglerscave.html and in the course of trying to find out more about the cave, I came across the one and only Desert Magazine article on it, January, 1940, page 38: http://www.dezertmagazine.com/mine/1940DM01/index/html In the article, author Sam Bryan mentions a border bandit named Tirso de la Toba.
A lot of what is written about Smuggler's Cave, even at sites like the BLM, are not supported by historical sources, so I went and tried to find out more about this bandit. Thing is, I couldn't. There were no articles, no books, no mention of the guy anywhere. I ended up doing a major, dare I admit, obsessive search for who and what Turso, Terso Tirso, Tirzo de la Toba was. And I wrote it up: http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewart ... horID=3199
I haven't finished my research, and this is a rough draft. If anyone should know anyone that might have relatives, ancestors or knowledge of Tirzo de la Toba, Ambrosio Ruiz, Juan Rios of El Cajon, or any information about Smugglers Cave, I'd greatly appreciate it.
All Help Greatly Appreciated.
Space Cowboy
A lot of what is written about Smuggler's Cave, even at sites like the BLM, are not supported by historical sources, so I went and tried to find out more about this bandit. Thing is, I couldn't. There were no articles, no books, no mention of the guy anywhere. I ended up doing a major, dare I admit, obsessive search for who and what Turso, Terso Tirso, Tirzo de la Toba was. And I wrote it up: http://www.authorsden.com/visit/viewart ... horID=3199
I haven't finished my research, and this is a rough draft. If anyone should know anyone that might have relatives, ancestors or knowledge of Tirzo de la Toba, Ambrosio Ruiz, Juan Rios of El Cajon, or any information about Smugglers Cave, I'd greatly appreciate it.
All Help Greatly Appreciated.
Space Cowboy