Frank Critzer (artist’s rendering)
George Van Tassel convinced his uncle to loan thirty dollars to Frank Critzer in order to buy mining equipment — Critzer promised Van Tassel a percentage of his find. A year later Van Tassel received a letter from Critzer with crude directions: “take one of five straight roads leading into the desert to Giant Rock.”
Critzer would eventually be raided in his nearby cave by U.S. Marshals who had gotten a tip that he was a German spy, radioing cold war secrets to the commies. They pumped his cave full of numerous tear gas canisters until one of them finally ignited his dynamite. As described by Vernette Landers, the woman who the town of Landers, California would eventually be named after:
It was awful. They blew him to bits. No one found any radios. He was just a reclusive miner with a German last name, that’s all. I remember his blood had splattered against the walls of his cave and stained them. We would go back every now and then and the blood would still be there. It was just awful.
(The Last Prom, issue 3, 11)”
Links
- http://www.lucernevalley.net/giantrock/
- http://www.integratron.com/2History/History.html
- http://www.labyrinthina.com/rock.htm
