8A • COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL • NOVEMBER 7, 2018
Off beat Oregon No. 520
Central Oregon Coast’s Lost Crystal cave
By Finn J.D. John
For The Sentinel
(Note: Th is article is a re-
writing and re-researching of a
shorter column fi rst published
on March 28, 2010.)
C
entral Oregon is cave
country. Th ere may be
more caves, discovered
and undiscovered, within a
100-mile radius of Bend than
anywhere else in the country —
ranging in size from tiny, dan-
gerous lava tubelets like Th imble
Cave to mile-long subterranean
vaults like Lava River Cave.
To the dedicated cadre of spe-
lunkers who enjoy exploring
these secret underground spaces,
fi nding any previously unknown
cave is a dream.
But there’s one particular cave
— one that may actually not
exist, but probably does — for
which cave buff s have been keep-
ing their eyes peeled for more
than a century now.
Th is cave is usually called “the
Lost Crystal Cave.” And lost it is
indeed — so lost that no one re-
ally knows whether to fi le it un-
der “geology” or “folklore.”
Th ere are two basic variants
on the Lost Crystal Cave leg-
end, and dozens of sub-variants;
passed on from mouth to ear
for generations, the story has
changed and grown like a wind-
blown juniper tree. Both variants
estimate the worth of the cave, as
described, as roughly $1 million
— but it’s pretty clear that they
don’t really know, since they’ve
been using that same number for
about 50 years now.
Th e most commonly heard
version of the tale comes from
Marjorie Smith, the daughter of
a Bend shopkeeper named Nich-
olas Smith, who spent most of
the 1910s and 1920s beating the
bushes looking for it. Marjorie
was about 10 years old when it
was supposedly found, so her
recollections carry some author-
ity.
According to Marjorie, the
crystal cave was discovered by
a group of cowboys on a cattle
drive from Burns to LaPine.
Near Pine Mountain, the
drovers stopped for the night
to make camp and cook dinner.
While hunting up some wood
for a cooking fi re, the cowboys
found a cave entrance; looking
inside with a light, they gasped
and stared.
Th ey were in a room-size
cavern, and the walls and ceil-
ings were covered with thou-
sands and thousands of clear
diamond-like crystals.
Th e cowboys broke some
off for souvenirs and contin-
ued on their voyage to La Pine,
and then to Bend. When they
arrived, they told anyone who
would listen what they had
found, off ering the chunks of
crystals as proof.
Th e cowboys had places to
go, so they moved on shortly
aft er that. But Marjorie’s father,
Nicholas Smith, got curious af-
ter examining the crystals. So
he rode out south of town to try
to pick up the trail of the cattle
drive.
Th is he soon did, and by
nosing around at the places
where he found the cowboys
had camped, he found the cave.
It was everything the cowboys
had said.
But the weather was looking
ominous, and Nicholas didn’t
want to get stuck out on the
range in the snowstorm that he
thought was coming — or get
stuck sheltering in a cave with
no food while his horse shivered
outside. He broke off a few more
crystals and, noting the relevant
landmarks as best he could, hur-
ried home to Bend.
Th at spring, he returned — or
tried to. Problem was, without
the cattle trail to follow, he had
no idea where to go; and the
landmarks he’d tried to use just
weren’t helping him.
Nicholas Smith spent the next
20 years fruitlessly searching
for the cave. He found plenty of
caves during that time — little
pockets under rimrock and lava
tubes of the type the Bend area is
peppered with — but no sign of
the crystal cave.
T
he other version of the
Crystal Cave story came
from Aubrey Perry, son-in-law
of Newt Cobb, one of the men
who supposedly discovered it.
In this version, there were three
men and they were not driving
cattle; they were on their way
from Millican Ranch, where
they’d just fi nished a job shearing
sheep, heading for the old Shon-
quest Ranch near Sunriver. Th ey
stopped to camp for the night;
while gathering fi rewood one of
them found the cave entrance;
and that’s how the story comes
into circulation in Bend.
Th e trouble with this story is,
it’s geographically impossible.
Geologist Larry Chitwood told
writer Melany Tupper that the
terrain between Millican and
Sunriver is just not old enough
to support the growth of quartz
crystals the size of the samples.
So could the crystals have
been something else? Ice? Opals?
Maybe, but that wouldn’t ex-
plain the sheepmen’s having
brought quartz crystals back
from their journey.
S
o, what are we left with?
Not much. But, there is
a third possibility. What if the
cowboys were actually on a drive
from somewhere other than
Burns? What if they were com-
ing into the Bend-La Pine area
from, say, Baker City or John
Day, and somehow — by acci-
dent or by design — the story got
altered?
When the original version of
this story was fi rst published in
the Redmond Spokesman, back
in 2010, I got a phone call from
a gentleman from Pendleton. I
didn’t catch his name, although
he did throw it; it was just as well,
since I know he wouldn’t have
been OK with being mentioned
by name in this article. Judging
by his voice, I would estimate
he was 75 to 85 years old. In any
case, he was mostly interested
to know more details of where I
thought the cave was. I told him
the legends I’d unearthed.
When he spoke next, he ac-
tually sounded relieved. With a
chuckle, he told me the cave was
nowhere near the places I was
talking about; it was northeast
of Bend, he said, about 150 miles
out of town.
He made it pretty clear that
that was as close as he was going
to get to revealing its location.
But it was, he told me, real; he
had been there, several times.
Now, this was 2010, and he
was calling me from a land-line
— meaning this was a long-dis-
tance phone call that he was pay-
ing for. He didn’t come off as the
kind of fellow who has nothing
better to do with his time than
phone up strangers long-dis-
tance to lie about crystal caves.
So, perhaps everyone has been
beating the bushes on the wrong
side of town for all these years?
Th at certainly could explain 100
years of failure to fi nd anything.
But there is one more possi-
bility as well. And to explain it,
I have to tell you what happened
in 2010 at the Arnold Ice Cave.
In the late 1880s and early
1900s, the Arnold Ice Cave was
a source for ice in the summer-
time for the city of Bend. Th en
aff ordable refrigeration technol-
ogy came along and made it un-
necessary, and aft er that, people
stopped going to the cave to cut
blocks of ice.
But the ice continued to grow
in the cave, and by about 1940
it had fi lled up enough of it to
block off the entrance.
In 2010, the groundwater
fl ows changed, and the cave
cleared enough for people to
start coming in again. Members
of the caver group Central Ore-
gon Grotto eagerly came to the
site and explored it, carefully
documenting all the neat old ar-
tifacts they found inside: an old
cigarette box, a rusty ax, the skull
of what appeared to be an actual
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Stoc
k up
befo
r
they e
’re
gone
!
wolf.
Th en word leaked out to the
general public. And within a few
years, all the artifacts had been
pilfered and the walls of the cave
were covered with spray-painted
graffi ti.
In the following year, 2011, a
group of bonfi re partiers with a
bag of spray-paint cans covered
Hidden Forest Cave with about
15 cans’ worth of graffi ti, cover-
ing over Native American picto-
graphs in the process.
It’s a pretty safe bet that if any
of the cave buff s who remember
the Arnold Ice Cave — or— were
to stumble across the crystal cave
today, they’d keep their mouths
shut. Th ey might even drag some
brush over the entrance before
leaving, to try and keep it hidden
a little longer.
Clean Burn Wood Pellets
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(Sources: Tupper, Melany. High
Desert Roses: Signifi cant Stories
from Central Oregon. Christmas
Valley: 1stBooks, 2003; Wood,
Patti D. “Th e Mystery of the Lost
Crystal Cave,” Little Known Tales
from Oregon History. Bend: Sun
Publishing, 1988; McGregor,
Brent. “Hidden Forest Cave,” Th e
Archaeology Channel, archaeol-
ogychannel.org; Skeels, Matt G.
“Arnold Ice Cave Pilfered,” Central
Oregon Subterranean, mattskeels.
wordpress.com)
Finn J.D. John teaches at Oregon
State University and writes about
odd tidbits of Oregon history. For
details, see www.fi nnjohn.com.
To contact him or suggest a topic:
fi nn2@offb eatoregon.com or 541-
357-2222.
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541-942-8928
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