William Theodore Huston Lubbe, a “brilliant scholar” and engineering graduate of Cornell University, was said to be no one’s fool.
News Item: “Cost overruns, rains hit watershed dam remake.”
According to the story in this past Sunday’s Times-Colonist, the dam replacement is on Lubbe Lake and is one of three reservoirs in the Goldstream (Greater Victoria) Watershed.
Lubbe Lake. Not a particularly appealing or exciting name, you might think — until you know the story behind the colourful pioneer for whom it’s named.
William Theodore Huston Lubbe’s story, at least that part of it that’s of interest to local historians, actually began in the California gold fields in 1856. That’s when the “Rattlesnake” Dick Barter gang (Dick, the “Pirate of the Placers”, was Canadian, by the way) robbed a Wells Fargo mule train of $80,000 in gold bullion.
The holdup went off like clock-work. While Dick and Cyrus Skinner were stealing mules to exchange for those bearing the Wells Fargo brand, the gang, led by Cyrus’s brother George, struck the 20 guards without warning. As a contemporary newspaper account explained, “The demeanour of the robbers was so fierce and the attack so sudden that the men with the train could not resist.” Within minutes, the gang had tied the escort to trees and driven the mules down the trail for unloading. This done, they dragged $80,000 in bullion to their camp to await the imminent arrival of Dick, Cyrus and the new stock.
But Dick and Cyrus had been caught stealing the mules!
When it became apparent that they weren’t coming, but a posse most certainly would be, George split the loot. Each man was able to carry $10,000; the remaining $40,000, George hid somewhere in the towering rocks. His men knew only that “he was gone a long time.”
But a six-man posse, knowing they operated out of Folsom, had immediately pinned the robbery on Dick’s gang. The parties rode right into each other. Each opened fire, the lawmen’s first salvo riddling George Skinner who took the secret of the missing $40,000 with him to the grave.
All this is recorded fact and a long way from Vancouver Island’s 1864 gold rush Leechtown where, inexplicably, legends have placed the missing bullion, just 18 inches deep.
The robbery, as noted, occurred before Leechtown even existed.
How, then, did it become legend that Barter escaped with the loot to distant Vancouver Island? Unfortunately, the record yields few clues on this point. But that $40,000 in gold is buried in Leechtown, even today, is widely accepted as fact.
Which brings us to William Lubbe of Victoria who spent 40 years, until his death in 1953, seeking the will-o’-wisp. And William Theodore Huston Lubbe was said to be no one’s fool. A “brilliant scholar” and engineering graduate of Cornell University, he’d moved to Leechtown after being severely wounded in the First World War. In 1945 he told Victoria writer James K. Nesbitt: “I first heard the stories of the Leechtown treasure when I was a small boy, in the ‘90’s. A frequent visitor at our house was the late William Ralph. Sometimes my father would ask him how things were going with him and what he had been doing lately. If old Ralph was reticent about talking it meant only one thing — that he had been out to Leechtown, again, treasure hunting, and was not quite sure that he would not be laughed at for chasing wild geese, as some people of that day regarded all treasure hunting expeditions.
“Ralph, a professional engineer, with a magnificent Dominion Government transit, was thought to stand a very good chance of finding it, if it was still there.
“Whereas Ralph was always very reluctant to talk about this treasure, Captain Martin [his assistant] was very loquacious and it was from him that I got the story and the supposed location of the treasure. Where Ralph got [his information] God only knows,” Lubbe continued. “The gold dust [sic] was supposed to be buried in a knee-high leather boot, covered with an inverted frying pan, 18 inches below ground surface. All perfectly reasonable, as the robber could have buried it under the earth floor of his tent, without attracting notice.”
The weakest point of the legend is the fabled escape of Rattlesnake Dick to Leechtown with $40,000. Another glaring inconsistency is the reference to the loot as being gold dust.
At any rate, the story continues, Dick arrived in Leechtown, intending to salt a claim and cash in the gold in small amounts over a prolonged period, thus creating the illusion he was just an honest — and lucky — prospector. Only the unwelcome arrival of a U.S. marshal, who’d somehow trailed him, spoiled his plan. Exit our outlaw to “Folsom or San Quentin.” It wasn’t long behind bars until Dick was wheezing his last, prompting “a deathbed statement to the warden as to the exact location of the treasure”.
Which inspired that official, with two companions, to hurry northward. According to the legend, they left Leechtown a week later with three heavily-laden pack-horses and without their tools. Did they find the gold?
Lubbe thought not. “And I know Ralph did not get it, because my father was co-executor of Ralph’s will and the affairs of the estate showed no sudden burst of prosperity. Old Man Martin did not get it either,” he said. And, for all of his years of searching, Lubbe experienced no better luck.
Not the smallest loop-hole in this story is that of Dick Barter’s demise in gaol. Prison gates were but revolving doors to Dick. Almost immediately after their arrest, he and Cyrus Skinner had bade farewell to the Auburn jail. Cyrus was later retaken but Dick got safely away. Recruiting four new men, he returned to haunt the gold fields and over the next two years the new gang blitzed the territory in a succession of well-planned raids. Best haul of this period was $26,000, also never recovered. Several times Dick was captured, but always he escaped, to become notable for breaking out of “every jail in Placer and Nevada Counties”.
Finally, in June 1859, three years after the ill-fated gold robbery that inspires Leechtown’s strange legend, Rattlesnake Dick Barter died, in the best outlaw tradition, with his boots on.
Authorities had been informed that he’d been seen near Auburn. Three deputies who charged in pursuit overtook Dick and an unidentified companion less than a mile from town. In the ensuing gunfight, one deputy was killed, another badly wounded. But both surviving lawmen were sure that, when the outlaws had galloped out of range, Barter leaned in the saddle. Blood on the gravel confirmed that he’d been hit. Early the next morning, a stagecoach driver found a bullet-ridden body beside the road. It was Dick Barter who, badly wounded, had turned his gun on himself.
As late as the 1960s, when queried on the subject of the missing $40,000, the California State Library replied, “…So far as anyone knows, the gold on Trinity Mountain has never been discovered.”
All of which would seem to effectively quash any possibility of its being buried in far-off Leechtown. And yet treasure hunters continue to be tempted by W.T.H. Lubbe’s scant clues: “It was buried 150 yards, or feet, or 250 yards, or feet, northwest from the northwest corner of the largest house in Leechtown.”
This creates yet another problem: no one remembers which was larger, the gold commissioner’s office or the 12-room Mount Arrarat Hotel. Today, none of Leechtown’s original buildings survive and only the site of the commissioner’s office is known because a large stone cairn, erected by the B.C. Historical Society, marks the spot, not 20 feet from the road.
Because Leechtown now lies within the Greater Victoria Watershed it’s no longer accessible to the general public despite its proximity to the nearby Galloping Goose Trail. Nevertheless, because it’s an active placer mining area (after more than a century, fine gold is still being recovered) it’s open to registered claim owners.
As for the missing gold, who knows? But now you know how Lubbe Lake got its name.