8 of the Most Bizarre Unsolved Mysteries in Texas

eight of the most bizarre unsolved mysteries in Texas Texas is a mysterious place Texas is home to ancient people who drool on cave walls Precambrian reptiles that predated the dinosaurs are still being excavated Spanish missions with tragic history dot the landscape and believe it or not pirates once roamed the shores of the Texas Gulf Coast though there are legends of the chupacabra or various ghosts most of that is simply hearsay why dwell on the supernatural when there are so many fascinating true stories in the Lone Star State here are eight true Texas mysteries to entice your imagination one the Caddo and mounts the Caddo selected this site for a permanent settlement about 8800 the alluvial prairie possessed ideal qualities for the establishment of a village and ceremonial center good sandy loam soil for agriculture abundant natural food resources in the surrounding forests and a permanent water source of Springs that flowed into the nearby Natchez River from here the Caddo dominated life in the region for approximately 500 years they drew local native groups into economic and social dependence through trade and a sophisticated ceremonial political system they traded with other native groups in Central Texas and as far away as present-day Illinois and Florida Catamount sphere of influence was only a small portion of the broader Caddo cultural domain encompassing northeast Texas Northwest Louisiana Western Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma the Caddo culture in turn had trade connections and perhaps religious and political ties with similar cultures farther east in the Mississippi Valley and beyond the settlement at Caddo mounds flourished until the 13th century when the site was abandoned most archaeologists agree that the elite ruling class left Caddo mounds after the loss of their regional influence as outlined Hamlet's and trade groups became self-sufficient and grew less dependent on the cultural center and religious and political matters there is no evidence that war played a major role at Catamount either in the maintenance of local influence or as a cause of abandonment the Caddo culture that remained in the area was similar to the earlier culture in many ways but lacked much of its sophisticated ceremonialism and material wealth the his and Aikido groups continued to live through the 1830s in their traditional East Texas homeland in the niches and Angelina river valleys but by the early 1840s while Caddo groups had moved to the Brazos River area to remove themselves from anglo-american repressive measures and colonization efforts they remained there until the US government placed them on the Brazos Indian Reservation in 1855 and then in 1859 lucano about 1,050 people were removed to the Ouachita River in Indian Territory now western Oklahoma the Caddo continued to live in western Oklahoma primarily near the Caddo Nation headquarters outside Binger Oklahoma did you know at their peak Kaah ad 1100 the Caddo were the most highly developed prehistoric culture known within the present state of Texas many of the exquisite artifacts unearthed by archaeologists at Caddo mounds bear a striking resemblance to artifacts discovered as far away as Illinois and Florida the raw materials for some of these artifacts originated in distant places such as shale from the eastern Gulf Coast and copper from the Great Lakes region all acquired through the broad trade network of the mound builders Texas takes its name from the Caddo word penis which means friend to Karen Silkwood death forty years later Karen Silkwood death remains a mystery on the evening of November 13 1974 the body of chemical technician and labor union activist Silkwood was found in her wrecked vehicle off the road in Crescent Oklahoma the car had struck a covert killing Silkwood on the impact to the police it seemed like an open-and-shut case of falling asleep at the wheel but those close to Silkwood knew she had been fighting against a large nuclear facility for its unsafe practices and she might have paid for it with her life born in Longview Texas On February 19 1946 silk woods early days were inconspicuous in 1965 she married William meadows with whom she had three children in 1972 she left meadows and moved to Oklahoma City she was hired at the kerr-mcgee simmer on fuel fabrication site plant in Crescent where she made plutonium pellets for nuclear reactor fuel rods shortly after beginning her job she met her boyfriend co-worker drew Stevens Stevens who expressed concerns over safety issues at the plant convinced Silkwood to join the oil chemical and atomic workers union three months into her employment the Union staged a strike for better wages and safer working conditions and while the strike eventually subsided it lit a fire inside Karen to push for greater accountability in July 1974 Silkwood discovered she had been contaminated with plutonium as the only person in the lab who tested positive she had suspicions that her contamination was no accident the chilling episode intensified Silk Woods activism against Kerr McGee's safety standards soon she was elected to her unions bargaining committee the first a woman to deucey part of silk woods responsibilities entailed her investigating the health and safety regulations at the company what she uncovered shot her Silkwood found numerous health violations including faulty equipment improper sample storage and worker contamination silk woods aggressiveness alienated some of her co-workers who feared her investigation jeopardized their job security soon her peers and supervisors resented the whistleblower to help ease her troubles a doctor prescribed Silkwood guala ludes a sedative in September in 1974 Karen flew to the okano headquarters in Washington to discuss health code violations she observed at the plant at their meeting they examined in detail the deadly effects of plutonium on humans a risk kerr-mcgee never disclosed to its employees in fact according to silk woods research the nuclear facility had been tampering with quality control data to hide hairline cracks in the fuel rods union officials enlisted Silkwood to find conclusive proof of the tampering she took up the challenge jotting down notes and smuggling out damning company documents her investigation concluded that the Kerr Magee plant had manual factored faulty fuel rods falsified product inspection records and risked employee safety in addition more than 40 pounds of its plutonium remained unaccounted for the Union planned to go to New York Times journalist David Burnham with their information and exposed kerr-mcgee Silkwood meanwhile had her own disturbing discovery to make after performing a routine self check on November 5th 1974 she found that her body contained almost 400 times the legal limit of plutonium the plan demanded she perform a decontamination process and send her home for further testing over the next two days she continued to test positive for increasingly higher levels of plutonium since she was restricted from working in the lab during her contamination kerr-mcgee accused Silkwood of poisoning herself she agreed to have her home inspected the home contained high levels of radiation and had to be decontaminated believing the company was trying to kill her Silkwood became frantic fearing for her safety union officials set up a meeting with her and burn him before Silkwood could tell her story to the journalist however kerr-mcgee doctors and officials from the Atomic Energy Commission demanded that she her boyfriend and roomate be examined at the Center for Nuclear Research in Los Alamos in a despite the danger she continued her investigation on November 13th following a union meeting at the hub cafe in Crescent she drove to Oklahoma City to meet with Burnham and Steve wodka a national official from her Union witnesses testified that Silkwood possessed a binder filled with evidence at the cafe which she later took with her on the way to her meeting many knew she plans to finally blow the whistle on Kerr McGee the night of her fatal crash none of the documents were found in the car after the accident police concluded Silkwood fell asleep at the wheel while under the influence of qala Lutz however family and friends believed she was killed by Kerr McGee and that the company stole the evidence related to the plants unsafe practices private investigations concluded that silk woods injuries suggested she was awake during the accident skid marks matching her car were on the road showing that she may have tried to regain control of the car after being hit by another vehicle the car's rear bumper also had new dents months after her death government reports verified many of Silkwood findings at kerr-mcgee they also noted that Silkwood could not have poisoned herself because the plutonium came from a restricted area within the facility in 1976 Silk Woods father and her children filed a civil lawsuit against kerr-mcgee for negligence due to the amount of plutonium in her system at the time of her death the jury found kerr-mcgee guilty and awarded silk woods estate 10.5 million dollars in punitive damages kerr-mcgee appealed eventually settling out of court for 1.38 million dollars out of court for three old Rip the miracle horny toad gather round to hear the tale of el ripp the lizard who beat death well at least once after being entombed in stone for 31 years I'll rip emerged alive and somewhat groggy briefly becoming the most beloved horned lizard in Texas today the body of all ripp can be found under glass at the Eastland County Courthouse but the story of his miraculous recovery has been marveled about for nearly nine decades the Texas horned lizard the state's official reptile is a devilish looking little critter that could once be found all over the Lone Star State commonly known as horny toads they are covered in severe looking spikes and look like miniature dragons these prickly lizards have come to be a beloved Texas icon in a 2007 story in the Matagorda advocate Texas Senator John Cornyn described their mystique saying the horny toad seems to reflect the land itself rugged fearsome spiny tough and wondrously friendly all at the same time so of course when officials in Eastland County looked for something iconic to place in the keystone of their very first courthouse this creature came to mind Native American legend said that horned toads could hibernate for up to 100 years says Cecil Funderburk executive director of the Eastman Chamber of Commerce the placement of old Ripon the cornerstone of the courthouse seems to be a test of that theory in 1897 Eastland County was finishing work on its 3rd courthouse by adding a marble Keystone to the edifice there was a cavity in the stone where things could be placed as a sort of time capsule according to the Texas Parks and Wildlife magazine Eastland County Clerk Ernest he would suggested placing a horny toad in the block to explore the legend to commemorate the final step in completing the new county seat onlookers came to watch the ceremony and listen to musical performances wood even produced a horny toad his son had captured the reptiles name was blinky however wood wasn't sure if blinky ever got placed in the keystone objections to putting anything alive in through the stone came up he was quoted as saying in a later story in the Woodville republican I went away to play in the band and do not know if the frog was placed in the stone despite the ethical issues about entombing a live animal it seems like the assembled locals overcame their reservations and according to all accounts the living horny toad was placed in the Keystone along with some other assorted memorabilia like a Bible and some coins then the stone was bricked into the wall fast-forward 31 years to 1928 Eastland was getting ready to demolish its Old Courthouse and replace it with a new art deco-inspired building and it was time to crack open the old Keystone to find out what sort of treasures had been left back in 1897 word about the lizard had spread and over 1,000 onlookers arrived to see if the rumors were true using a pick a construction worker pried open the stone and sure enough multiple witnesses said that they saw a horny toad presumably blinky lying inside looking quite understandably dead finally someone reached in and took the little body out of the stone the lizard slowly lurched back to life much to the astonishment of the gathered east landers the Lazarus lizard became an instant celebrity and was soon renamed all rip after rip van winkle after recovering for a few weeks Paul rip was given a new home in a fishbowl in the window of a shop visitors from around the world including President Calvin Coolidge came to see the famous animal as he happily chow down on harvester ants but not everyone was convinced while horned lizards hibernate during the winter months their average lifespan is around five years making the story of all rip seem more than a little suspect most skeptics figured that one of the locals officiating the event slipped in a live lizard to make a good story for the massive crowd however in the 1928 article in the Woodville Republican County judge a local Reverend and even the man who pulled him out of the stone insisted that there was no way the toad could have been tampered with but even in the face of massive skepticism all rips popularity continued until the day he died of pneumonia in 1929 less than a year after his rebirth the popularity of the horny toad waned somewhat but claims of fraud did not after his death all rips body was taxidermy and placed in a little glass topped coffin and put on display in the Eastland County Courthouse in 1973 Paul ripp was kidnapped from the courthouse and later found at the local fairgrounds with a note that claimed to be from one of the original perpetrators of the resurrection hoax it called for the other conspirators to reveal themselves although no one stepped forward the coffin was returned to the courthouse but suspicion persists to this day that the reptile inside is a replacement tower if based on the condition of the little body due to the entombment of old rib accounts tell of the horned toad spikes being warned down from attempts to escape from the cornerstone says Funderburk the body currently on display has horns and spikes that appear to be in pretty good shape the motive for such a crime has not been determined original horny toad or not all rip is still a celebrity in Eastland and the surrounding area where his story is taken as gospel ask the folks around Eastland what they think and the majority believe it is a true fact says Funderburk a few believe it's a publicity stunt me I believe in addition to acting as a sort of mascot for the area his name also adorns a number of local businesses the legend of all rippers remembered and reinforced every February 18th when local officials invite children and guests to the courthouse to recite the all repose which has them pledged that they will continue to keep the story of all ripp alive this way the lizard that couldn't die never will for Sam bass treasure Texas has more buried treasure than any other state with 229 sites within the state's borders the total value an estimated 340 million dollars and much of this treasure lies under the rugged Oaks and rocky landscape of the Texas Hill Country there are many stories behind this area some that have been told for generations and many that may remain secrets taken to the grave by the original treasure owners the search for buried hill country treasure begins at its edge in the community of Round Rock here outlaw Sam bass hid from the law until a final shootouts with the Texas Rangers on July 19th 1878 bass was in Round Rock making plans for a bank robbery before he died however many say that he hid much of the loot from his train stagecoach and bank robbery somewhere in the area one of the most common tales is of a loot hid in an old tree by the outlaw the legend began several years after bass death when Maps leading to the alleged treasure appeared the location was said to be in a hollow tree on what is now the Sam bass road about two miles west of Round Rock a tree similar to the one described on the map was spotted by treasure hunters and chopped down only to come up empty optimistic treasure seekers still wonder could earlier searchers have chopped down the wrong tree the Sam Bass legends are not the only treasure filled stories flying around Williamson County one treasure story dates back to an ancient Spanish document regarding an old Spanish mine located somewhere near Burnett according to an Austin American story in the early 1920s a packed train of burros carrying 40 jack loads of silver was pursued by a band of Comanche Indians and the men in charge of the pack train buried the silver near where the town of Leander is now located no one's found the Spanish silver cache but some treasure seekers in this area have struck gold or gemstones as the case may be in 1925 w e Snavely of Taylor who had hunted treasure for sixty years found a ruby Arrowhead weighing fifteen K rods along with many other gemstones heading west back into the heart of the hill country lie a number of treasure sites long horn caverns outside Burnett is said to be the home of more than one treasure trove one tale involves who else but Sam Bass who allegedly used the cavern as a hideout following nearby robberies today the main opening of the cave is called the Sam Bass entrance no bash treasure has been found but even today parts of the 11-mile cavern are still being explored another long horn cavern tale involves the search for treasure supposedly buried on Woods ranch near Burnett after years of searching one of the treasure hunters went to seek the advice of a palmist whose cryptic recommendation was to dig under the footprint there was speculation that this footprint might be a foot shaped impression on the ceiling of one of the Longhorn cavern rooms the crew dug below this formation only to find the container shaped hole below the surface where there had once been a metal container and possibly a treasure there was only a rust lined hole moving west to Lana we are once again on the trail of Sam bass allegedly the robber hid canvas sacks marked us and filled with gold in a cave on packsaddle Mountain some say the treasure was found by a Mexican laborer hired by a local rancher to cut fence posts on packsaddle Mountain according to one version of the story the rancher went to look for the laborer when he failed to return to the ranch all the rancher found was a cave and a piece of canvas sack with us imprinted on it another version of the story says the gold still lies hidden somewhere in the mountain packsaddle Mountain is also the home of the Blanco mine named for a Spaniard who found the location long ago according to J Frank da B's book Coronado's children the mine was rediscovered in the 1800s by Allah no settler named Laurie more while hunting Lhari more discovered the old mine with its contents of lead and a high percentage of silver in 1860 Laurie more took a last trip to the mine with a man named Jim Rowland the two men hauled out several hundred pounds of the metal shaping it into bullets Lori Moore who was leaving the country declared that he would hide the mine so well that no other person would ever find it supposedly he diverted a gully directly into the mine filling it with silt Roland carved his initials on a large stone marking the entrance to the mine then covered it with earth where it remains today lono County is home to other buried treasure sites including $60,000 in gold and silver coins buried by Sam Bass near the community of case tool in the western part of the county bass buried the loot on a creek bed marking the spot with Iraq and a fork of a tree the trail of Sam bass continues to near the state capital where he allegedly buried thirty thousand dollars in the community of McNeil no treasure was ever recovered and today there is little remaining of the original McNeil located in the northern part of Travis County near Round Rock the biggest treasure of all some say three million dollars dollars worth he is said to be buried in Austin according to one source this money part of the Mexican payroll in 1836 was stolen by the paymaster a general and seven privates the men took the looting year where shoal creek empties into the Colorado greed set in however two of the privates murdered their co-conspirators before long one of the privates had killed the other the remaining outlawry turned to Mexico then found he was unable to come to Texas again he made a map of the site showing that it was buried five feet underground close to an oak tree with two eagle wings carved on it another source claims that the treasure was nowhere close to three million dollars actually only about eighty thousand dollars in gold coins the story changes instead of a Mexican payroll that substitutes Confederate money in the hands of soldiers who were afraid the capital would be overrun toward the end of the civil war according to the rising star record may 12 1927 the treasure was purloined by workers on April 13th 1927 working on the banks of shoal creek a crew of eight men worked on a 40-foot tunnel for over eight months when questioned they replied that they were working on the foundation for a new bridge and later the foundation of a fine house a guard was kept on the tunnel at night house five Frenchy McCormick's undying love McCormack Frenchie 1852 - 1941 Frenchie mcCormick a subject of Texas folklore whose real name was probably Elizabeth McGraw was born about 1852 in the vicinity of Baton Rouge Louisiana she refused to disclose any information on her background intending that no one would ever know who she was but was well educated and apparently of Irish descent as a teenager she ran away from home to perform on the burlesque stage in Street Louie and in the dance halls and saloons of Dodge City according to tradition a cowboy gave her the nickname Frenchie because of her Louisiana background and ability to speak French around 1880 she met Mickey mcCormick an Irish gambler and livery stable operator from Tascosa Texas at the gaming tables in Moby tee Mickey claimed that he always won when Frenchy was beside him and she accompanied him to Tascosa this town was in its heyday as the cowboy capital of the Panhandle and their friend she became the reigning belle she dealt Monte in the gambling rooms that Mickey operated behind a saloon and entertained the colorful personalities who passed through she and Mickey were married in 1881 after the railroad bypassed discussin in 1887 the town declined steadily and the mechanics lost their business they continued to live in a small adobe house on a task as a creek and their devotion to each other acquired an aura of romantic legend Mickey died in 1912 and was buried in the Casa Mero Romero cemetery half a mile east of the cabin Tascosa was deserted when V Hill became the county seat in 1915 but Frenchy refused to leave her husband's grave site she lived alone in the ghost town for 27 years without electricity or running steadfastly insisting that the town would come back someday with her health failing and her house crumbling into ruin she allowed herself to be removed to Channing in 1939 on the condition that she be brought back to join her husband after death she died on January 12th 1941 and was buried beside Mickey in Tascosa Frenchy McCormack was romanticized in the Panhandle as the last of the girls of the Golden West years later the residents of Cal Farley's Boys Ranch which took over the old town site erected a headstone for her grave 6 the Marfa lights the Marfa lights mysterious glowing orbs that appear in the desert outside the West Texas town of Marfa have mystified people for generations according to eyewitnesses the Marfa lights appear to be roughly the size of basketballs and are varyingly described as white blue yellow red or other colors reportedly the Marfa lights hover merge twinkle split into two flicker float up into the air or dart quickly across Michell flat the area east of Marfa where they're most commonly reported there seems to be no way to predict when the lights will appear they're seen in various weather conditions but only a dozen or so nights a year and nobody knows for sure what they are or if they really even exist at all the Native Americans of the area thought the Marfa lights were fallen stars the Houston Chronicle reports the first mention of the lights comes from 1883 when cowhand Robert read Ellison claims to have seen flickering lights one evening while driving a herd of cattle near Mitchell flat he assumed the lights were from Apache campfires Ellison was told by area settlers that they often saw the lights too but upon investigation they found no ashes or other evidence of a campfire according to the Texas State Historical Association during World War two pilots from nearby Midland Army Airfield tried to locate the source of the mysterious lights but were unable to discover anything lovers of the paranormal have attributed the Marfa lights to everything from space aliens to the wandering ghosts of Spanish Cong two doors academics to have tried to offer a scientific explanation for the enigmatic lights a group of physics students from the University of Texas at Dallas concluded that headlights from vehicles on nearby US Highway 67 could explain at least some of the reported sightings of the Marfa lights and other possible explanation is the refraction of light caused by layers of air at different temperatures this optical illusion sometimes called a superior Mirage or a fata morgana according to skeptoid comm occurs when a layer of calm warm air rests above a layer of cooler air a fata morgana is sometimes seen in the ocean causing a ship to appear to float above the horizon the temperature gradients needed to produce this optical effect are common in the West Texas desert still others speculate the Marfa lights may be caused by the same gases that create the glowing lights associated with swamp gas phosphine pH 3 and methane ch4 under certain conditions these gases can ignite when they contact oxygen this glowing phenomenon sometimes called willow the wisp news fad to E or fuels fire has been observed around the world especially in marshy areas where the decay of organic matter can create pockets of phosphine and methane though the Marfa lights are nowhere near a marsh there are significant reserves of oil natural gas and other petroleum hydrocarbons in the area which could include methane and quantities capable of producing an effect similar to that created by swamp gas retired aerospace engineer James bundle chanced upon the Marfa lights while visiting the viewing platform constructed east of Marfa by the Texas state highway department I just got lucky Bunnel told The Chronicle the lights are rare but I got one of the really good displays Bunnel believes the Marfa lights are the result of the igneous rock under mitchell flat that creates a piezoelectric charge that is electricity produced under pressure by solid matter such as minerals crystals or ceramics Carl Stephan an engineering professor at Texas State University has considered bungles hypothesis but hasn't endorsed it it may be geological activity that creates electrical activity but it's all speculation at this point Stefan told The Chronicle there are no proven facts 7o desecrators the other day I was watching an episode of the meteorite man it was the one in which they went to try their luck at the Odessa crater in Texas it was a good show but the guys had a tough time of it untold numbers of meteorite hunters & collectors who had worked at site before have turned the ground over so much they've picked that place clean over the years it's barely recognizable as an impact structure anymore Jeff and Steve work that site every which way but loose and they still came up empty-handed almost it wasn't until they gave up looking packed up their gear and started driving away disappointed that the meteorite men found anything on their way out of the area in the gravel of the road they spotted meteorite fragments laying right there in plain sight so they stopped took out their metal detectors and started digging fragments after giving up on a day of frustration they made a pretty good haul right there in the gravel of the road and they left the area with some really nice Odessa irons and then as happy as can be they just drove away richer by a few nice meteorite fragments as a matter of fact a few thousand dollars worth and a good episode for their show but in the significance of where they found those fragments they also drove away from what may be the single most important clue of their careers you see when those dirt roads and that oil field were graded they hauled in aggregate to elevate the surface a few inches for better drainage that aggregate did not come from inside the crater it came from a location about 20 miles away the mystery there was since the dump truck that brought in that thin layer of aggregate got its load from a quarry miles away how did all those Odessa irons get into that load of aggregate for the roadbed the answer his dad Odessa crater was not alone in the world according to Google Earth it is only one of many thousands in a vast cluster event scan in the area of southeast New Mexico and West Texas carefully from an eye height of about five kilometers and you quickly see that scattered among the oil fields there are too many craters like the Odessa structure to count in the image you see below the white lines are dirt roads about seven or eight meters wide and each of the clearings that show up as little rectangles of a half an acre or so are the location of an oil well pump I have heard that most geologists agree that the Odessa event was about sixty thousand years ago I don't believe that for a minute I want to see proof I've also heard estimates as young as twenty thousand years until I see some radiometric data I am working from the postulate that they are much younger than that less than thirteen thousand years old as a matter of fact and they are all the same age give or take a few seconds the meteorite hunters & collectors want to keep the locations where they find meteorites a secret so their collections retain their rarity and value besides if you have found a location where you can sometimes turn up a few thousand dollars there is no incentive to tell the world where your pot o gold is if a collector has a lot of money invested in Odesa meteorites then the news that the crater has thousands of sisters in a vast crater field and was part of a giant cluster event Odessa irons are probably much more common than we thought may not be good financial news but the impact researchers want to catalog every impact structure so we can do inaccurate impact the threat assessment the fact that the Odessa object may have been only one of thousands in a huge cluster changes everything when you were trying to do threat assessment and to come up with survival and mitigation strategies there would be no way to turn the cluster of fragments such as that aside and we are beginning to realize that there is nothing to indicate impact storms like that are rare the one that hit the Southwest a few thousand years ago may have been the worst in 65 million years but smaller ones that devastated tens of thousands of square miles on land or generated giant impact tsunamis when they hit an ocean seemed to have been happening about 1,500 years apart for the past 20 or 30 thousand years they come out of the toward meteor stream most of them even the ones that toppled civilizations left no craters at all only burned and blasted ground and sometimes giant tsunami scars or when driven flows a flash melted stone nothing like what we thought a large impact event should do when big cluster events like that happen the meek inherit the earth that'll be the little critters hiding in holes and the adaptable ones that can eat almost anything and that don't need much of what they do eat any survivors would have be a long ways away in a deep hidey hole the climate changes would be long-term for a while again it would become in adapt or die world good impact threat assessment is a big deal if we want to know where and how deep to dig bunkers and how long we've got to get them done 8 Jean Lafitte's treasure in Louisiana whenever treasure is mentioned most assuredly the name of Jean Lafitte will work its way into the conversation Lafitte had been rumored to have buried treasure in both Louisiana and Texas occasionally a rumor of a location will again stir the desires of people to once again begin a search for his buried treasure most of the general locations are inlets of rivers and streams that empty into the Gulf of Mexico including the Sabin River that flows the border of Texas and Louisiana other sites considered to contain Lafitte Treasure Island south of New Orleans and Galveston Island in Texas besides the mysteries surrounding the locations of Lafitte's buried booty comes the mystery of the man himself even the location and date of his birth varies on the document or biography at hand most likely Jean was born in 1780 in France and immigrated to New Orleans with his mother and older brother Pierre in the early 1780s the early life of Jean Lafitte and Pierre varies as well but Jean most likely spent his youth in the wetlands and bayous south of New Orleans he was once said to know every inlet better than any other man alive Jean finally settled on a small island south of New Orleans called Barataria in Barataria Bay and set up smuggling operations Pierre who has been thought to start the smuggling operations stayed in New Orleans and set up a warehousing possibly a store on Royal Street to handle our goods in the city people in New Orleans were grateful to the Lafitte's for supplying goods otherwise prohibited by embargoes semen from oliver flock to Barataria where jean outfitted privateers and arranged for the smuggling of goods men worked the docks and hope to one day be chosen for the crew of a privateer the brothers eventually acquired three ships and armed them by capturing various ships and stripping them of their canons Jean would then return the stripped ships to their captain and crew they were known to treat captured crews with respect with the start or the war of 1812 the British Navy was large in the United States Navy was small the United States gave Lafitte letters of marque which basically gave Jean Lafitte legal as far as the US was concerned right to pirate British ships and turned the booty into the US which he did the other ships they pirated they disposed of the stolen goods in the normal manner in Barataria Jean Lafitte committed his crew and ships to the defense of New Orleans the British never had a chance against the skill and knowledge of the Lafitte ships in the bayou country south of New Orleans of course the feat was still considered a criminal and when Andrew Jackson arrived in New Orleans he made a deal with Lafitte to pardon all his men for help with a continued defense of New Orleans which he did and he and his men were praised for valor and skill in 1815 1816 Spain hired the Lafitte brothers as spies for the Mexican War of Independence and was sent to Galvez and which was part of Spanish taxes but within two weeks the rebels left the island and Lafitte set up smuggling operations there eventually the u.s. sent the USS Enterprise to remove Lafitte from the Gulf he left Galveston without a fight but left with massive amounts of treasure that was believed to have been buried to avoid capture since 1957 the city of Lake Charles Louisiana hosts an annual festival during the first two weeks of May called contraband days in honor of Lafitte the festival celebrates elephants exploits and the legend of buried treasure the festival features actors who portray Lafitte and his pirates that sail into the city's lake capture the mayor and make him walk the plank south of New Orleans in the Mississippi River Delta there is a Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve named for Jean Lafitte and seeks to illustrate the influence of the environment and history and development of a unique regional culture

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Keywords: Mitrust, Unsolved Mysteries, Bizarre, Unsolved Mysteries in Texas, Bizarre Unsolved Mysteries, Mysteries in Texas, Mysteries, 8 of the Most Bizarre, 8 bizarre unsolved mysteries

Id: RZiEP1CeMCk

Length: 37min 48sec (2268 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 28 2018