Fool's Gold: The Myth of Tiburcio Vasquez

 

 

Tiburcio Vasquez committed an impressive resume of crimes, but he would have needed several lifetimes to have stolen—and buried—all of the gold he is said to have had. His story, like that of all legends, has taken on a life of its own. This is the famous portrait taken of Vasquez while he was in prison in San Jose awaiting trial for the final time. Vasquez is said to have paid for his legal fees with money made selling autographed prints of the photo, but his popularity couldn’t save him from the hangman’s rope. Image courtesy of Bancroft Library, Berkeley University

Many of us who grew up here heard stories about how the famous highwayman Tiburcio Vasquez hid out in the Santa Monica Mountains and buried his ill-gotten gold in a canyon or a beach cave. He's especially associated with Topanga, but Calabasas and Malibu have stories about him, too—although, so does half of California! I'm one of those children who dreamed of finding that treasure, so when I had the opportunity to to research the legend of Tiburcio Vasquez for the Topanga New Times I seized it! It's a fascinating story, even if it doesn't lead to buried gold. 

 

Here's an excerpt:

 

 

 

 

 

 

This image from Topanga school teacher Theresa Sletton’s 1913 photo album has a hand-written caption that says “hideout of horse thief, one of several local locations associated with Vasquez.” The ruined building became a tourist destination for early motorists and was described as one of Vasquez’ hideouts in numerous descriptions of the sights of Topanga. While it may have sheltered horse thieves, it never housed Tibercio Vasquez, California’s most legendary highwayman. It is extremely unlikely that Vasquez ever came anywhere near the canon, but that hasn’t stopped him from taking up residence in Topangans' imagination. How did he become associated with the canyon? That’s a tall tale of its own. Photo courtesy Ernest Marquez Collection, Huntington Library, San Marino, CA

“And still of a winter’s night, they say, 

when the wind is in the trees,

When the moon is a ghostly galleon 

tossed upon cloudy seas,   

When the road is a ribbon of moonlight 

over the purple moor,   

A highwayman comes riding—

Riding—riding—

A highwayman comes riding, 

up to the old inn-door.

—Alfred Noyes, “The Highwayman”

 

I was one of the children who grew up hearing about our own highwaymen. Desperados who rustled cattle in the Santa Monica Mountains or hid there after robbing stagecoaches; bandits who buried treasure in sea caves and hid it in secret places in the canyons and never returned for it. The man responsible for most of those legends was California’s own favorite legendary highwayman, Tiburcio Vasquez, who is said to have buried gold in Topanga Canyon.

When the coast route through Malibu opened to the public in 1928, newspaper accounts spoke of “Eerie tales of smugglers, pirates and bad men.” In the early years of the twentieth century there were stories of mountain men paying for their goods in town with Spanish gold or raw gold nuggets. Treasure hunters made headlines seeking gold said to be buried by Vasquez. They would surely find it along the beach between Malibu and Santa Monica, or hidden in a Topanga cave, or buried beneath a Calabasas oak tree, or buried deep among the distinctive stones of the Santa Susana Pass. They hunted, and dug, and theorized, and sometimes even lost their lives in the process, but no treasure was ever found.

When Las Tunas Road was paved in 1915, the Los Angeles Evening Express headline read: “Trail Used by Bandit Will Be Obliterated By Las Tunas Road.” The news item states that, “according to a well defined legend of [Topanga] canyon, Vasquez, a horse thief who is claimed to have made the juncture of Topanga and Garapatos canyons his headquarters, at one time used the trail going through the Trejila [sic] ranch into Las Tunas for cattle rustling. 

Vasquez wouldn’t have appreciated being described as a horse thief. He regarded himself as a gentleman highwayman, like the character in Alfred Noyes’ poem—a sort of Californio RobinHood, who stole from the invading Americans. His crimes did include stealing horses—and cattle—but he also held up stagecoaches, and ransacked stores. On one occasion, he and his gang ransacked an entire town. Vasquez had a reputation for not shooting, provided his victims cooperated—he would leave them face-down in the dust with their hands bound behind them. He went to his death maintaining that he never actually killed anyone himself, but he did shoot a man, and he committed so many other crimes that a jury had no qualms about sentencing him to death...

 To read the rest of the story, click here.