Six Mile Canyon and “Big Jack” Davis

The best way I can describe how it felt was like a heavy, wet, statically charged blanket rushing over, falling on, in and through me. At the time it not only frightened me, it left me instantly sick to my stomach and depressed.

After searching the Internet and asking a few locals about what they knew about Six-Mile Canyon’s history, I’ve heard only one story that fits in with what happened to me. That’s about Andrew Jackson “Big Jack” Davis, who owned a stable in Gold Hill, where business was good – but where being a bandit was better.

Captured after holding up a train near Verdi and jailed for five-years, he gained his released early because he didn’t participate in an escape from the Nevada State Prison, where 29 inmates busted out. That breakout remains the largest in Western history.

Shortly before being killed during a stage hold-up, “Big Jack” is said to have buried several thousand dollars in gold coins in Six-Mile Canyon.  As the website ‘Legends of America’ writes, “… legends abounds that the treasure is protected by the ghost of Jack Davis who appears as a…screaming phantom to scare the hunters away.”

Then there’s this from the magazine ‘Cowboys and Indians,’ August 2012 issue: “Among the legends chronicled…is that of Big Jack Davis…Shot in the back while robbing a stagecoach, Davis still protects his earthly treasures as the ‘Bandit Ghoul of Six Mile Canyon.’”  This story appears in ‘Haunted Old West: Phantom Cowboys, Spirit-Filled Saloons, Mystical Mine Camps, and Spectral Indians,’ by Matthew P. Mayo.

So go ahead – laugh, chalk it up to aliens, hysteria or sun-stroke – others are. Besides, I’m starting to find some humor in it myself.