The Head of Joaquin Murrieta!

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The Head of Joaquin Murrieta has been seen throughout California, the scene of the notorious outlaw's legendary exploits. Who will spot it next -- and where?

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The discovery of gold in California resulted in the well-known explosive migration to the area.  All manner of "rough types" flooded in, overwhelming any chance of law and order in the fledgling frontier state.  As a result, rates of robbery and murder reached levels still unsurpassed to this day.

By far, the most infamous of early California's legendary outlaws was Joaquin Murrieta.

As the story has it, the notorious bandit's life of crime began when Anglos flogged Joaquin, lynched his brother, murdered his wife, and seized his land.  Swearing revenge, Murrieta vowed that his path would leave "a trail of blood."

By early 1853, Joaquin (or others claiming to be the bandit) and his gang escalated their previous crimes from common horse theft to a spree of murderous robberies of miners -- Anglo, Chinese, Californio and Mexican alike.  As the list of victims grew, so too did the reputation of Murrieta.  Before long, every far-flung murder and robbery in California was blamed on Joaquin, specifically, and Mexicans, generally. It seemed that every town between California's Gold Country and the Mexican border ironically boasted that it was the scene of either one of Murrieta's many crimes or the site of one of Joaquin's hidden treasure caches.

When a $1,000 "dead or alive" reward offered by private citizens failed to result in Joaquin's capture, California Governor Bigler authorized the formation of the California Rangers.  Soon thereafter, Captain Harry Love and his California Rangers set out in search of Murrieta's gang.

Coming across a horse thieves' camp one dawn in July 1853, the Rangers ambushed the bandits.  In the ensuing gunfight, Captain Love and his Rangers killed a man they subsequently identified as Joaquin Murrieta.  They severed the man's head from his body, intending to present the head to the Governor as evidence of their feat and to claim the reward.  However, a great deal of controversy surrounded the identity of the dead man due to the numerous and contradictory descriptions of Murrieta.  Some claimed that the real Joaquin had escaped to Mexico and was living well on his ill-gotten riches.  Consequently, the shootout's grisly memento was preserved in a jar and exhibited it throughout much of California in an effort to gain signatures for an affidavit certifying the head as that of the notorious outlaw which had so terrorized the state.

Years later, The Head of Joaquin found its way to a museum of oddities in San Francisco where it was reportedly destroyed in the 1906 earthquake and resulting fires.  Like much of the Murrieta legend, even the destruction of the head is shrouded in controversy.  Witnesses' description of the scene of devastation did not correspond to the museum's location at the time of the quake.  Moreover, as late as the 1970's, a Santa Rosa man claimed to have the head in a jar on his kitchen table!  Ultimately, under constant pressure by the health department for the improper storage of human remains, the man supposedly buried the head in an undisclosed location...and then took the secret with him to his own grave.

But if The Head of Joaquin really was lost to the mists of time...then how do you explain the mysterious head in a jar that has recently been spotted making its way from geocache to geocache throughout California?