Tiburcio Vasquez’s hideout loot

Los Angeles County history; the man and the hideout are documented, the caches are lore

Vasquez Rocks rise near Agua Dulce in the Sierra Pelona of northern Los Angeles County, between Santa Clarita and Palmdale, about 40 miles north of downtown Los Angeles: great tilted slabs and hogback ridges of sandstone, laid down in alluvial fans some 25 million years ago and heaved up along the faults of the San Andreas system. Long before any bandit, this was the Tataviam village of Mapipinga, and the park is on the National Register for its prehistoric sites.

The name belongs to Tiburcio Vásquez, born in Monterey in 1835 to a landed Californio family. In 1854 he was at the fandango where a Monterey constable was killed, and he fled and became an outlaw, later claiming his crimes were retribution for the way the incoming Americans treated Mexican Californians. He rustled horses, served two terms in San Quentin, and by 1870 led a gang that robbed stores and stages up and down the state, leaving his victims bound and face down in the dust. In 1873 his band took $2,200 from Snyder's Store at Tres Pinos, where three men were killed, and that December they sacked the town of Kingston. The reward on his head climbed to $8,000 alive.

Southern California was where he hid. Riding over the Tejon Pass with his most trusted men, he holed up at Littlerock Creek and Elizabeth Lake, robbed a Cerro Gordo silver stage at Coyote Holes and another stage near present-day Acton, and lay low for about two months among these rocks. Their shallow caves, deep crevices and overhangs made a maze no posse could easily thread, and the tallest, 150 feet high, made a lookout. The outcrops were already called Vásquez Rocks before he died, and the lore that some of his takings still lie cached in them has never been backed by a find.

He was caught on 14 May 1874 at the adobe of Greek George Caralambo, near present-day West Hollywood, betrayed after an affair with a girl of the family. Crowds visited his cell, women brought flowers, and he sold photographs of himself to pay for his defence. Convicted of murder for the Tres Pinos raid, he was hanged at San Jose on 19 March 1875, at 39. Many Mexican Americans remember him as a folk hero.

Los Angeles County acquired the rocks a parcel at a time, starting with a donated 40 acres in 1971, and the park now has an interpretive centre and a stretch of the Pacific Crest Trail. It is also one of Hollywood's favourite backdrops; the original Star Trek used its main formation as an alien world in four episodes, and fans have called it Kirk's Rock ever since.