In 1906 Coal Miners Encountered Lizard People in the Nevada Caves

The Monument to Greed: Dry Camp Number Three, 1906

The grim account of Dry Camp Number Three is a scathing indictment of human hubris and the shameful lengths to which men will go for a copper-stained dollar. In the winter of 1906, a small coal crew, led by the utterly despicable company manager Briggs, delved into a Nevada ridge, not for honest labor, but for a fast, exploitative fortune. Briggs, a man who refused to soil his expensive scarf with coal dust, embodies the corporate cowardice that defines this tragedy, smiling about being “rich in a year” while never setting foot in the danger he sent others into. His first act of unforgivable arrogance was the callous dismissal of a Shoshonyi elder’s warning to leave the ancient rooms in the hill alone, an act of cultural disrespect and greed that sealed the fate of his crew.

The Folly of Intrusion and Concealment

The crew’s descent was not a discovery, but a blatant act of trespass. When their picks broke through into a dark, stale void, they found not a natural formation, but a subterranean space already claimed by a non-human intelligence. The signs were undeniable: a central pillar of pale stone covered in complex, foreign carvings; a trail of crisp, non-hoof, non-boot depressions that suggested recent movement; and a discarded strip of matter described as “skin.” But the apex of their foolishness came in the deepest chamber: a carved trough containing an unmistakable smear of red residue. The sight of fresh blood should have sent Briggs running, yet his only concern was profit. He immediately swore his men to secrecy, concealing the horror from the rest of the camp to prevent a walkout, prioritizing a potential storage room over the lives of the men under his control. This self-serving hypocrisy is the core evil of the entire affair.

The Breakdown of Man and the Cost of Discovery

The inevitable backlash began with the slow, terrifying rhythm of the two-tap churring, a sound that moved from the depths of the ridge to directly beneath their temporary homes. The deliberate, measured progression of the tapping, like a patient hammer preparing to strike, broke the men’s sanity with cruel efficiency. The negative impact on the crew was instantaneous and severe: the boy Sparrow wasted away from nerves, the elder Connelly turned to the bottle, and the experienced Alvarez was paralyzed with fear. The most tragic, and utterly futile, consequence was the fate of the Ward brothers. Eli died a terrifying, unseen death, collapsing in a fit of pure terror. His brother, Thomas, was so broken by the intrusion’s price that he made a desperate, suicidal stand by Eli’s corpse, refusing to abandon him to the encroaching horror.

Evasion and the Erasing of History

The final confrontation reveals the creatures—tall, pale-green, dry-skinned beings with long limbs and curved black claws—to be not frenzied monsters, but deliberate, territorial dwellers. They attacked not in a blind rage, but with precise, cold efficiency, striking Briggs with three clean cuts and herding the survivors away, a chilling display of organized violence. The wounded Briggs, dying from poisoned tissue—a physical manifestation of the curse of his greed—crawled away only to perish feverishly in the next settlement, robbed of any final dignity. The final, contemptible act of this mining company tragedy is the complete erasure of evidence. When lawmen finally rode out, they found the mine sealed by a collapse, the camp empty, and not a single body—not Eli, not Thomas, not even Briggs. The government declared the mine closed, and the truth, the memory of the men lost to a creature from the pre-human deep, was conveniently swept away, leaving the survivors—Connelly, Alvarez, and the narrator—to live out their days plagued by the trauma of what they saw and what they were forced to leave behind.