Day Trips

by Gerald E. McLeod

Nobody knows where the bones go. photograph by Gerald E. McLeod

Dead Man's Hole on a ridge above the Colorado River and Marble Falls tells few tales. A recently erected historical marker might be the only headstone that 17 bodies will ever receive. Of the 17 skeletal remains found in the dark cave, only three were identified.

"We don't know who they were," says Ona Lou Roper, matriarch of the Roper Ranch, where the pit is located. "And the bones disappeared from the county courthouse."

The cave, first discovered by white men in 1821, lies on a rocky hilltop a couple of miles as the crow flies from south bank of the canyon cut by the river through the granite and limestone. Entomologist Ferdinand Lueders came across it while he was studying night-flying insects. Around the time of the Civil War, the site gained notoriety as a dumping place for the bodies of Union sympathizers.

Everybody assumes that two of the sets of bones belonged to settler Adolph Hoppe and pro-Union Judge John R. Scott, the first county judge of Burnet County. The two left Bertram on horseback headed for Mexico to join the Union forces or escape the Confederate sympathizers in Burnet when they were set upon by "robbers." Scott's widow identified the jaw bone and teeth of her husband from the pile of bones brought up from the hole. The bones disappeared before the families could claim the remains.

"The Hoppe family never did find out what happened to their father," Mrs. Roper says. A third skeleton was believed to be Ben McKeever, a local rancher who had a conflict with a local Freedman and soon disappeared.

After the War Between the States, carpetbaggers who took over the county government often disappeared in the night. Rumors around the sparsely settled area supposed that the missing officials might have slipped and fallen into Dead Man's Hole. An oak tree that once stood over the cave was said to have rope burns on its limbs caused by hangings.

The Texas Speleological Society platted the hole in 1968. Cavers measured the mouth of the hole at seven feet. It drops about 155 feet, where it splits into two arms; one extending straight back for about 15 feet and the other sloping downward at a 45-degree angle for about 30 feet.

The limestone hills in the area are honeycombed with pits and fissures, but few of them have the history of Dead Man's Hole. Many of the area's caves harbor bat colonies, but about the only thing to come out of this one was a strong gas. Mrs. Roper says in the summer a sour gas fills the pit. "When it gets hot you can't go down there," she says.

For years, her family has allowed qualified spelunkers to explore the hole. She has a guest book filled with signatures of those brave enough to visit the cave crickets and albino daddy longleg spiders who live there. A lot of old-timers around Marble Falls claim to have descended into the damp darkness when they were kids. "Me go down in the hole?" Mrs. Roper repeats the question. "Heavens no, I'm not crazy."

Her late husband's family bought the property in the 1920s and have been running cattle and goats since. At one time they had a rickety old fence around the hole to keep the goats from falling in, but it didn't discourage some modern-day dumping. One spelunker found a wallet that had been emptied of most of its contents except for a driver's license that had expired five years earlier.

Mrs. Roper decided to give six acres around the hole to the county to use as a park and erect a historical marker. Mrs. Roper helped pay for marker, fencing, and a survey. "Its quite a historic place," she says. Before they passed, her husband and son were history enthusiasts. "I thought they would enjoy it."

The hanging tree over Dead Man's Hole is gone, and a bulldozer has cleared most of the brush from the area, leaving a field of parched limestone rocks. The mouth of the cave has been sealed to prevent any unauthorized entry. At the end of the boulder-lined parking lot and walkway, under the scrawny shade of a stand of young trees, sits the granite historical marker like a headstone for 14 unknown souls.

From Austin, the small park is just before you get to the big hill descending into Marble Falls, a short drive across some beautiful ranch land on County Road 401 after a right turn off US281. If you pass CR401 and come to RR2147 East (not West, which is by the Lake Marble Falls bridge), take RR2147 and go to CR401. The historical marker is about a half mile southwest from the intersection of CR401 and RR2147.

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Coming up this weekend...

Chisholm Trail Round-Up in Lockhart harkens back to the day when the town was a staging point for cattle drives up the Chisholm Trail with fun in City Park, June 10-13. 512/398-2818.

Book Fair at the Wimberley Village Library sells new and used books to benefit the library, June 12, 9am-5pm, and June 13, 2-5 along with an ice cream social. 512/847-2188.

Bob Marley and Caribbean festivals take over the beaches in Galveston with music, arts & crafts, and food, June 12-13.409/763-4311 or http://www.galvestontourism.com.

George Bush Gallery opens June 11 at the Nimitz Museum and Historical Center in Fredericksburg as one part of a national museum which will include the Center for Pacific War Studies. The 23,000-square-foot gallery tells the story of President Bush's WWII service and other servicemen in new exhibits. 830/997-4379 or http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us.

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Coming up ...

Scissor-Tail Celebration at Rancho Richey Refuge near Belmont honors the bug-eating bird with a two-night camp-out on the banks of the Guadalupe River, June 18-20. 383-8989 or http://www.io.com/~zow.

Bearing Witness: Contemporary Works by African-American Women Artists at the Museum of Fine Art of Houston, 1001 Bissonnet, features works by 25 outstanding artists ranging from Haitian paintings to photographic essays, June 20-Aug. 15.713/639-7300.

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420th in a Series. Collect them all.