The Rock Pens

		Quote:			Posted by goldnboy
	I was also thinking could these rock pens been used as a defencive position.

The primary purpose for the pens would be to keep the mules and horses from running off or being chased off while you're fighting off whoever is chasing you.   However, only a fool would NOT use them as defensive breastworks and as a way to avoid getting shot while moving from one spot to another as needed during the fight.

    The key point, though, still comes back to how much time did they have to construct the rock walls between the time they arrived at the spot they chose to make their stand and the time whoever was chasing them arrived on the scene.  (and how high/substantial could they make those pens).   If they chose their location well, we're talking short lengths of wall connecting to boulders  or across shallow ravines.   The more height they can build on the walls, the better---both from the standpoint of penning in the mules and horses and from the standpoint of being able to use them for cover during the fire--fight.
     The ideal defensive position, especially if the land is pretty level, would be a small dry wash (not a box canyon) about 7 or 8 feet deep that they could wall off at both ends with 3 or 4 foot high walls running from bank to bank---in other words, basically a section of World War I trench.  Ideally there would also be some large boulders along the "banks" of the wash that they can hide behind as they fire at someone trying to flank them and NO hills or boulders in the area that high enough that someone could get on them and shoot down at them.

      Absent that type of feature or if there are hills near any location they could construct that type of pen, it gets more complicated and more time consuming to build a defensive line.

BA

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		Quote:			Posted by homefire
	Something wrong here! If they knew they was being pursued, why would they build the pens when most any other mule skinner would just tie the critters to a Long Line? Stashing the goodies in a natural hide and skedaddling makes more sense. Just a Thought!

Homefire, according to the story the reason they built the pens was so the mules and horses could run loose in the pens making it impossible to tell where they had buried the loot:

		Quote:			Posted by seldom
	buried the loot in one enclosure and repeatedly ran their mules over the site to cover the signs of digging.

The fact that it gives them an excellent defensive position is a benefit (and one that can not be discounted).  

Even without taking into account the fact that Seldom can't find any hint of any such raid every taken place (and I can concede that such a raid could have taken place without getting recorded anywhere---unlikely but possible), the more I work the logic of this story the more likely it is that it is pure bunk.

For the story to have a chance of being true, the folks chasing the raiders either had to have lost the fight and left or they would have had to have been Indians.   If the "posse" won, they would have recovered the loot because they would have dug up the pens since that would have been the most logical place to bury the stash even if they couldn't see evidence of it.   Indians might have been happy with all the livestock, but it is unlikely they would have left anyone alive....so scratch the raiders losing the fight.

If the raiders won the fight and had the kind of defensive fortification that rock pens implies then there should have been more than one survivor.   Even if we go with the minimum speculated number of raiders (12 to 15) there should have been at least 4 or 5 survivors......(even if they were facing a "posse" of 45 to 60---assuming roughly equal quality of weapons and skill levels on both sides, unless they really sucked when it came to picking a place to defend, in which we're back to the probability of no survivors and the "posse" winning).    Granted most of the survivors could have been very seriously wounded and could have died shortly after the fight was over, but logic really doesn't support the story.     And the more "bandits" you involve (i.e. the more you add to the likelihood of them being able to pull off the initial raid), the more the story falls apart because of no supporting documentation and too many surviving bandits.   There's a reason why absent airstrikes attacks of fortified emplacements historically turn into sieges that end only when the defenders runs out of food, ammunition, or water or are betrayed from within...and food would not have been a problem here.


Oh, and if it did go down pretty much as the story says, then my bet is some of the"posse" came back later and dug up the pens.

BA

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Still kicking this horse to see if it can get up...

Some interesting stuff (at least to me  ) It appears (as I suspected) rock fences have been used quite a lot in the general area for a long time.

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A group of men dug into a formation of rocks shaped like a bell in the 1990s. The site is not far from Baird, Texas. (Michael Ingram) September 1998, A. Lee used a front end loader to dig into the center of a bell or arch shaped formation of rocks on his property near Star, Texas. Lee said, the formation was beautiful and looked manmade. When younger, he and some of the other boys rode their bicycles on it. Thereis a rock fence on the Lee ranch, its purpose is unknown. The Lee’s purchased the property in 1944. (A. Lee; personal observations by the author)

Mason County Tx has more miles of stone fence than any other according to a local artist who sculpts from the stones from fences located on his property. Most of these stone fences seem to have been constructed by european immigrants. Word is that 10 feet per day is average construction time. That means a 10 x 10 would take 4 days time give or take.

Wonder if any groups of immigrants homesteaded in that area before that timeframe? Just a thought.

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" Personally, I don't think so since the accounts say the bandits built the rock pens, not that they used or modified existing structures."

I can't argue with your reasoning BA but I also can't believe they picked up and carted rocks to make these things knowing they were pursued. Which could mean as others have pointed out it's just a legend or "pens" is a very loose term. So I just thought I'd poke an idea and see what happened.

Still without a solid lead to when and what robbery it was is troubling. Also digging around I ran across the story of Skeleton canyon and while not really the same story there were a lot of similar small details.
 

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A friend was a care taker on a disused Ranch just around the bend from Skeleton Canyon.   I stayed there for a few weeks.   God it was hot.

Can't imagine how people lived in that area before AC!  LOL!     125* in the flats.

The Border patrol Pester the hell out of you around there.   Just NO FUN.

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