Mysterious Underworlds in the American West (Part I)
Egyptian caves and lost Lemurians…
Now everyone knows—or at least they ought to by now—that the American West is a place of stunning vistas, of gigantic glacier-sculpted mountains like the Sierras and the San Juans, of chromatic sandstone mesas and plateaus, of desolate deserts and flat plains, and of big, open skies and prodigious monsoonal thunderstorms, complete with jagged lightning bolts and sweeping virga.
With all that natural beauty and geologic grandeur, it probably makes sense that few really pay much attention to what’s going on below all this dramatic and beautiful scenery…few besides the prospectors, that is, the seekers after precious metals and ores and oil.
But every once in a while, a strange rumor makes its way out of the rugged wilderness of the American West, and staggers into the light of “civilization” back east. This rumor is almost always a very tall and very fantastic tale bearing tidings of something peculiar found in a previously undiscovered system of caverns and underground chambers, far off the beaten path. And, since the American West is weird and wild and all that, you can be damned sure that this isn’t just some lonely cave with an artifact or two, or maybe the odd pygmy mummy.
No, sir…not in the West that I know. These rumors whisper of things that any respectable person can scarcely credit—things like cave systems containing the treasures of antediluvian civilizations from the Old World, some sort of Egypto-Tibetan amalgamation, perhaps, something like the half-fabulous “Civilization One,” the forgotten granddaddy of all subsequent human civilizations. Or maybe the last redoubt of the prehistoric Lemurians, the heritors of man’s first great civilization on a long-lost continent of the Pacific, lingering somewhere beneath a volcano in the Cascades. Or…well, perhaps something in a more sinister note, a civilization of malevolent beings maybe, hidden away beneath the mesas of Arizona, and with no good intentions for we hapless folk of the upperworld.
It’s not as if the idea hasn’t figured in the literature of the fantastic often enough. The science-fiction writer John Martin Leahy, for instance, wrote about a lost world beneath Mt. Rainier in his rather forgettable novel Drome.1 Much more memorable was H. P. Lovecraft’s little-known short novel The Mound,2 wherein a deserter from Coronado’s expedition discovers a whole series of lost worlds and lost civilizations beneath Oklahoma. Of course, being a Lovecraft story, horror piles on top of horror, the Great Old Ones make an appearance, and the narrator meets a suitably grisly end…to put it mildly.
But what if…? What if there is some grain of truth in these strange tales…some kernel of veracity in these accounts of subterranean worlds and forgotten civilizations lurking beneath the deserts and plateaus and mountains of the American West? Well…I wonder, that’s all, and if I speculate a little overmuch, I do apologize, but sometimes I just can’t help it.
So I’ve gathered three interesting stories, and my aim is to set them out for you here in plain English, and to let you make up your own mind. Are they true? Are they hoaxes? Damned if I know. All I guarantee is that there’s nothing boring about ’em…
Kinkaid’s Cavern, and the Mystery of the Grand Canyon
On April 5th, 1909, the readers of the Arizona Gazette were confronted by this rather startling headline: “Explorations in Grand Canyon—Mysteries of Immense High Cavern Being Brought to Light—Jordan is Enthused—Remarkable Finds Indicate Ancient People Migrated From Orient.”
The article continues:
“The latest news of the progress of the explorations of what is now regarded by scientists as not only the oldest archeological discovery in the United States, but one of the most valuable in the world, which was mentioned some time ago in the Gazette, was brought to the city yesterday by G.E. Kinkaid, the explorer who found the great underground citadel of the Grand Canyon during a trip from Green River, Wyoming, down the Colorado, in a wooden boat, to Yuma, several months ago.
“According to the story related to the Gazette by Mr. Kinkaid, the archeologists of the Smithsonian Institute,3 which is financing the expeditions, have made discoveries which almost conclusively prove that the race which inhabited this mysterious cavern, hewn in solid rock by human hands, was of oriental origin, possibly from Egypt, tracing back to Ramses. If their theories are borne out by the translation of the tablets engraved with hieroglyphics, the mystery of the prehistoric peoples of North America, their ancient arts, who they were and whence they came, will be solved. Egypt and the Nile, and Arizona and the Colorado will be linked by a historical chain running back to ages which staggers the wildest fancy of the fictionist.”
Curiouser and curiouser.
That’s quite an opener, but as the article proceeds, things only get more interesting, and the story grows wilder with each paragraph. We are told that the Smithsonian has assembled a team of archaeologists to explore most thoroughly a cavern that is “nearly a mile underground, about 1480 feet below the surface,” and which consists of a mammoth chamber with many passageways radiating from it like the spokes of a wheel. Several hundred rooms were explored so far, and strange artifacts were discovered—weapons of war and copper instruments that still retain their sharpness, and are hard as steel, indicating thereby “the high state of civilization reached by these strange people.”
We’re given an idea of how the explorer, Mr. Kinkaid, discovered the cavern. While drifting down the Colorado in his wooden boat, “looking for mineral,” Kinkaid discerned stains or discolorations on the eastern wall of the Canyon, about 2,000 feet above the river bed. This, we’re told, was about forty-two miles up the river from El Tovar Crystal canyon.
Kinkaid climbed up to the discolorations in the sedimentary formations, evidently suspecting—or hoping for—the presence of precious minerals; instead, he beheld the entrance to the cave, which was hidden by a shelf of rock from the river below. The explorer instantly discerned the importance of the find: chisel marks on the inside walls of the entrance, and steps leading down from the cave to what was apparently the level of the river when it was inhabited, indicated beyond any doubt that a human civilization of no mean sophistication was involved.
Kinkaid explored the passage a little, discovering a crypt that contained mummies. He relates that he stood one of them up, and photographed it by flashlight; he also recovered several relics and artifacts, which he carried with him to Yuma, and thence shipped to the Smithsonian in Washington.
The intrepid explorer goes on to relate his other remarkable discoveries in the cavern. For instance, the many passageways expertly hewn out of the living rock. Or a “shrine,” in which he found a great statue of this people’s god—“sitting cross-legged, with a lotus flower or lily in each hand.” The idol, Kinkaid swears, had an oriental cast of features, and almost resembled the Buddha, which led the archaeological team to suggest a connection to the “ancient people of Tibet.”
It gets better. Other, smaller images were discovered surrounding this Buddha-like idol, some apparently representing gods of good and evil, and even—in a brilliant bit of local color—two images of large Saguaro cactus, “one on each side of the dais on which the god squats.” These images were evidently hewn of marble; furthermore, Kinkaid discovered copper tools that had been hardened through some mysterious alchemical process, undoubtedly indicating a high level of technical proficiency, and an advanced technology forever lost to us.
There were also plenty of hieroglyphics inscribed all about the place, as well as on the artifacts; Kinkaid mentions that “similar hieroglyphics have been found in southern Arizona,” but they were not presumably of Egyptian type, since he says the Smithsonian hasn’t yet the key to their decipherment—an odd thing to say if they were indeed Egyptian hieroglyphics, which had been known and deciphered for nearly a century by that time.
In any case, Kinkaid goes on to speculate that some 50,000 people may have inhabited the caverns, thousands of years ago, and that they were the representatives of a civilization that had surely reached a high stage of development. He cites a professor S. A. Jordan of the Smithsonian as being extremely excited about the discovery, and predicting that it will prove to be decisive in rewriting the human story.
One final odd thing in the article is Kinkaid’s mention of a mysterious, unventilated chamber that he and his team refused to enter, for when they approached it they were struck by a “deadly, snaky smell.”
“No sounds are heard, but it smells snaky just the same. The whole underground installation gives one of shaky nerves the creeps. The gloom is like a weight on one’s shoulders, and our flashlights and candles only make the darkness blacker. Imagination can revel in conjectures and ungodly daydreams back through the ages that have elapsed till the mind reels dizzily in space.”
Now Lovecraft would have had a field day with that strange and inexplicable description—especially with his stories of Yig, “the great father of serpents,” a kind of snake-god that was supposed to be worshipped by the prehistoric civilizations of the American West, including the weird race that dwelt in the lightless world beneath Oklahoma.
So…what happened with this discovery? Were the inscriptions ever translated? Were the artifacts recovered and curated? Rumors circulate that the National Park Service has closed off all caves in the Grand Canyon to public access, and that the Smithsonian Institution has scrubbed its records and archives of any mention of Mr. G. E. Kinkaid, and Professor S. A. Jordan, in a monstrous, century-old attempt to memory-hole the discovery of a highly-advanced and sophisticated civilization predating any known in the Americas.
The question is…why would they do this? What did the follow-up team of recovery archaeologists discover in those caverns? Was it some shocking secret that upended the whole laboriously assembled picture of human history…some secret the Smithsonian and the wider world of academia could not abide? Or was it something else…something far darker, some nameless horror, perhaps, that was discovered in that mysterious, unventilated chamber with the “deadly, snaky smell?”
For the time being, the mystery remains…
J. C. Brown and the Lost World of the Lemurians
Okay, so we’ve established that there’s something fishy going on beneath the Grand Canyon.
That’s a good start, admittedly, but we’re only just warming up. Because as it happens, there’s a lot more going on under the American West than any of us could even imagine. And that brings us to the curious case of one J. C. Brown, prospector extraordinary in the western United States, and a sort of real-life counterpart to the intrepid adventurers and gold-seekers of the old pulp magazines of the early twentieth century—magazines like Argosy, or All-Story Weekly, or even Weird Tales.
But here’s the thing: Brown was, apparently, a real-life person, though his name may very well have been an alias. In any case, it is said that he worked for the Lord Cowdray Mining Company out of London, England, and that he was engaged by this outfit to do some gold-prospecting in the rugged country of the Cascades, in northern California.
Our story opens in 1904, five years before the archaeologist-adventurer G. E. Kinkaid discovered his fabulous underground city in the Grand Canyon. Brown, as the tale goes, was prospecting in the neighborhood of Mt. Shasta, an immense stratovolcano in northern California that tops out at over 14,000 feet. While exploring in this majestic country, he stumbled upon evidence of an ancient landslide, and a little further investigation disclosed what appeared to be the mouth of a tunnel that delved deep into the mountain’s mysterious innards.
Now this is where things begin to get interesting. Brown worked away at the rock and soil to further open up this tunnel entrance, and the more he worked, the more convinced he became that the tunnel was no mere lava tube, but was in fact a product of human artifice. And upon entering the tunnel, there was no doubt left in his mind.
It led him at last into a long and narrow room, the walls of which were lined with copper (there’s that copper again—same as with the mystery race of the Grand Canyon), and were decorated with shields and other artifacts of beaten gold. Brown stumbled into further chambers, also filled with gold and copper objects…to say nothing of the bones, the human bones, which betrayed every evidence of having belonged to a race of human beings far larger in proportion than any currently alive.
I can do no better than to quote the words of Leland Lovelace, who recounts this strange tale in his book Lost Mines and Hidden Treasure:
“On some of the gold and copper plates and wall-pieces were certain drawings and hieroglyphics, repeated many times. Inferring that the designs so frequently recurring had some historic or religious significance, or formed some record, Brown fixed them in his mind, with the intention of putting them on paper when once he should be out of the wilderness.
It is not clear why Brown left this scene and took no definite action that can be traced. It may be that he wanted this mysterious treasure for himself, without reporting it to the Lord Cowdray Mining Company. Or he may have had other reasons. Possibly he found hardheaded mining men sceptical [sic] of what he had to report.
The career of Brown, for the next three decades, is shrouded in mystery, but it is known that he spent a great part of that time studying the lore of prehistoric races, touching upon those known to the Indians of the United States and Mexico as los gigantes, the giants, about whom little has been written. His investigating led him to the literature and philosophy pertaining to the lost continent of Mu, and ‘the lost race of Lemuria.’
Years of study and comparison of the hieroglyphics and pictographs found in the tunnel convinced him, by their agreement with similar antiquities found in many diverse places in the world, that these records had been written by descendants of the ancient people whose land, now known as the lost continent of Mu, inhabited by the lost race of Lemurians, had been destroyed by fire and water.”4
What is known is only this: after a lapse of thirty years, Mr. J. C. Brown reenters the light of history, at the ripe old age of 79. This time, the old prospector meant to find the lost chamber of the Lemurians, and to begin its reconnoiter and its excavation in earnest. In April of 1934, we are told, Mr. Brown appears in Stockton, California, and events begin to move with the almost fatal swiftness of an old pulp actioner.
Brown has money of his own, apparently, and means, but what he wants is men—men to accompany him on his adventure into the lost world of Mt. Shasta. He first makes contact with the editor of the Stockton Record, a local rag, and discloses the story aforementioned. Apparently, his tale was convincing, and accompanied by scientific asides that increased the air of verisimilitude. The editor introduces Mr. Brown to the curator of a local museum, and things move swiftly indeed; the old prospector requires nothing but a team of doughty explorers, hale and hearty, and promises he’ll appear at the appointed hour with a yacht to convey the explorers up the river and into the country of the mighty Cascades. A local printer by the name of John C. Root, a man of occult leanings and erudition, signs on to the expedition, and over a period of six weeks Mr. Brown recounts his discoveries beneath Mt. Shasta in a series of nightly meetings in Root’s home.
Volunteers collect like flies, with some individuals so convinced of the veracity of Brown’s claims that they quit their jobs or sell off their private property, against the expected future windfall they’re certain is coming their way.
The date of the expedition’s start, June 19, 1934, finally comes…and goes. Eighty men assemble at the Stockton harbor, awaiting J. C. Brown and his yacht—but he never appears. And, all accounts agree, he was never seen again.
Was J. C. Brown a fraudster? A con artist? A flimflam man? Possibly. But then, everyone concurred that he hadn’t swindled them out of a dime; he’d never actually taken anything from them. So, if it was all an elaborate con…well, to what end? How did J. C. Brown, that grizzled old prospector, profit from his scam?
One more thing. Dr. Bob Curran, in his book Lost Lands, Forgotten Realms, appends this interesting detail: J. C. Brown had been staying at a government lodging house in Stockton, and when the police were called in to search for the missing man, they naturally decided to inspect his rooms. They found nothing of any great importance, save one strange clue, if Curran’s account is to be believed—the footprint of a giant man impressed in the soft earth beneath the window of his room.5
It’s a wild story…no doubt of that. And J. C. Brown’s full accounting of his discoveries in the secret chamber are even wilder, or so I’ve been told. He spoke of encountering a “Village” down there, eleven miles down the snaking passageways of the Lemurians, complete with buildings, streets, altars, and the remains of men that were ten feet tall. He discovered the embalmed king and queen of the lost race, and the copper-lined walls depicted in bas-relief the story of these people, with images of ancient battles and burning cities. And all the while, Brown had the eerie feeling that he wasn’t alone down there…that someone, or something, was watching him. Finally, in an echo of G. E. Kinkaid’s discovery in the Grand Canyon—with its unexplored chamber that even that courageous adventurer was too fearful to enter—Brown came to the edge of a great pit or abyss that descended even further beneath the earth. Peering into the darkness, he thought he detected a hint of movement, somewhere down there, in the unplumbed deeps…
It’s all very strange.
Brown apparently linked his discovery to the “Lemurians,” a half-fabulous race of prehistoric humans that had much currency in occult circles in the later nineteenth and earlier twentieth centuries. They first appeared in the writings of Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophists, as well as in the cosmology of Rudolf Steiner, who founded his own splinter school of occultism, known as Anthroposophy. Lemuria was said to have been a great Pacific continent, many millions of years ago, and—as the Theosophists tell it—it was here that the Third Root Race of mankind, the Lemurians, evolved and built their civilization.6
They were indeed described as being giants, and the earlier sub-races of them weren’t even very humanlike at all—if you’re so inclined, I invite you to peruse W. Scott-Elliot’s The Lost Lemuria if you want a description of a typically bizarre-looking Lemurian.7 In any case, Lemuria was eventually riven asunder by geological cataclysms, and the later races of Lemurians—who I’m told were a little more manlike, and not quite so monstrously tall as the earlier races—escaped to another island continent, one that was equally foredoomed…the lost continent of Atlantis.
But that’s another story, for another day.
In Lost Mines and Hidden Treasure, Leland Lovelace seems to conflate Lemuria with another supposed continent in the Pacific, Mu—“the Motherland of Man,” whose existence was proposed by Col. James Churchward in a series of books beginning in 1926. Mu was home to a race called the Naacals, who built an advanced civilization some 50,000 years ago; their only remaining vestige, however, was some hieroglyphic writing inscribed on ancient tablets. Maybe this was what Brown saw etched into the beaten copper on the chamber walls…the forgotten writing of the Naacals.
Intriguingly, Lovelace mentions other discoveries of giant humans in the Southwestern United States:
“The bones of a giant race of men have been found, some very recently, in California, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, Sonora, and Chihuahua. These bones indicate the stature to have been from seven to nine feet. So many giant skeletons were found in Chihuahua south of the Big Bend, Texas, that a vast plain in north Chihuahua is known as Llano de los Gigantes, Plain of the Giants. Sealed in caves away from the air, or buried deep in the earth, they have remained intact for countless years.
Brown was not the only one to discover remains of the civilization of the vanished race in that western region. A few years ago, two prospectors, combing the southwest mountains of Nevada for signs of gold, came upon some deep caves, each one opening into another. In the far reaches of the caves, they found furniture of vast size, as if built for giants.
Also they found dishes of gold and of other bright, shining metals which they could not name, but which they surmised to be of some imperishable alloy, able to withstand the years. They described an immense table which seemed to have been set for dining.
The caves had many evidences, they said, of extreme age and of having been undisturbed for centuries. But there is no legend telling who the vanished ones were, where they came from, or for what reason they disappeared. It is permissible to believe they were a remnant of the giant race of Lemurians, but we shall probably never know with certainty. But whoever they were, if they left gold and other treasure behind, it will eventually be known and searched for.”8
Now, what I wouldn’t give to learn more about this discovery…but, alas, Lovelace seems to be the only source for this strange tale.
Anyhow, the stories of G. E. Kinkaid, and the Grand Canyon cavern, as well as J. C. Brown and the chamber of the Lemurians beneath mighty Mt. Shasta, come to their end…which is to say, as mysteriously as they began.
In the second part, we’ll take a look at another strange story of a lost world beneath the desert Southwest…a much more sinister story, this one, which doesn’t involve skeletons and mummies and the artifacts of a dead civilization at all. It is, rather, the chilling tale of a “world below,” whose inhabitants are very much alive, and who harbor no good will for we surface dwellers.
And after that, I’ll wrap things up with my own verdicts on all three of these cases, which I’m sure you’ll all be eager to hear. So, until next time, keep on the lookout for caverns with giant mummies and prehistoric artifacts, if you have a mind to go exploring in the American West.
And for God’s sake, if you do find something, don’t tell the Smithsonian Institution…
Drome, John Martin Leahy, Fantasy Publishing Corporation, Inc.: Los Angeles, California (1952).
Ghostwritten by Lovecraft for Zealia Bishop, it remained unpublished during his lifetime, finally appearing in the November 1940 number of Weird Tales.
Throughout the article, the Smithsonian Institution is referred to incorrectly as the “Smithsonian Institute.”
Lost Mines and Hidden Treasure, Leland Lovelace, The Naylor Company: San Antonio, Texas (1956), pg. 50.
Lost Lands, Forgotten Realms, Dr. Bob Curran, New Page Books: Franklin Lakes, NJ (2007), pg. 215.
For context, modern humans are said to belong to the Fifth Root Race, perhaps evolving into the Sixth; the Fourth Root Race comprised the ancient Atlanteans.
“The following is a description of a man who belonged to one of the later sub-races—probably the fifth. ‘His stature was gigantic, somewhere between twelve and fifteen feet. His skin was very dark, being of a yellowish brown colour. He had a long lower jaw, a strangely flattened face, eyes small but piercing and set curiously far apart, so that he could see sideways as well as in front, while the eye at the back of the head—on which part of the head no hair, of course, grew—enabled him to see in that direction also. He had no forehead, but there seemed to be a roll of flesh where it should have been. The head sloped backwards and upwards in a rather curious way. The arms and legs (especially the former) were longer in proportion than ours, and could not be perfectly straightened either at elbows or knees; the hands and feet were enormous, and the heels projected backwards in an ungainly way…The appearance of the man gave an unpleasant sensation, but he was not entirely uncivilised, being an average common-place specimen of his day.’” (The Lost Lemuria, W. Scott-Elliot, Theosophical Publishing Society: London (1904), pp. 23-24)
If you’re exceptionally curious about these matters, and are willing to risk a mind-blowing journey into occult weirdness, you can always consult Man: Whence, How and Whither, by Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater, which purports to be a record of clairvoyant research into the true, Theosophical prehistory of mankind. The Lemurians make an early appearance in that book…along with much else.
Op. cit, pp. 54-55.
Glad to hear it…and believe me, there’s a lot more where this came from. Just wait till you hear about the midget cultists from the Inner Earth Empire of Evil beneath the Arizona mesas…
I first heard about the Grand Canyon expedition in "Unearthing Ancient America". I was going to write a paranormal western short involving it, but ended up going with 9 foot mummies in Utah in the next chapter instead.