When Jack arrived by sea from around the Horn, the Mexican-American War was over for Santa Barbara. Looking for a fast buck, Powers headed to rip-roaring San Francisco along with some of his New York rowdies, making a killing at the gambling tables and terrorizing locals with murder and robbery. When law-and-order vigilantes cracked down, Powers fled back to Santa Barbara in about 1849.
Ranchers returning from the gold fields after selling cattle there made tempting targets, and their bodies began turning up along the road. The stretch between San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara became a very dangerous route, according to the late local historian Walker A. Tompkins. Sheriff Valentine Hearne did little to intervene.
Powers and his band of bandits set up an armed camp on the outskirts of Santa Barbara, on Den’s land in San Roque Canyon, near what is now the Foothill Road bridge. Kate Den Bell, Den’s daughter, wrote later: “To Santa Barbara came the handsome, magnetic daredevil Jack Powers with his lawless ‘Band of Five’ — a mere handful, but our town surrendered without protest, and its dark, disgraceful days were begun. … Powers and his band were in complete control of Santa Barbara and its leaders.”
Twist, armed with a court order and leading a posse to oust Powers’s gang, gathered at the Aguirre Adobe in downtown Santa Barbara.
But Powers sent a small force to disrupt the group and kill sheriff Twist. One fired at county judge Charles Fernald, putting a hole in his hat, and another stabbed sheriff Twist in the back, wounding him. The posse killed two of Powers’s men and chased the rest back to the San Roque Canyon hideout. There, Powers warned posse leaders that he’d kill any man who came past an enormous sycamore tree in the 100 block of North Ontare Road, subsequently known as “Outlaw Tree.”
Rather than tackle Powers’s gunmen, the posse retreated. Hearing that a well-armed band of vigilantes was heading his way from the north, Powers decamped to the gambling dens of L.A. But things got too hot for him there, too, and in 1859 he split to Mexico.
You are looking for a micro, camouflaged to blend in to its environment. Please bring a pen or pencil to sigh the log. Jack Powers was rumored to have buried his treasure under a tree near this very spot, meaning to return and retrieve it at a later date. He never returned, and the treasure remains hidden to this day.