The Liberty Gazette
February 22, 2022
Ely Air Lines
By Mike Ely and Linda Street-Ely
Mike: The weather-beaten and twisted tail of the old air force plane stands out of the water-rutted hillside. Its mangled and broken wings are mashed into the ground next to it. There are no engines to be found. It rests in a lonely rock-strewn canyon south of Las Vegas, Nevada. So, what’s the story?
“It was a movie prop,” says Kevin Smith of Henderson, Nevada. “Kevin Costner blew it up in a scene for the movie, ‘3,000 miles from Graceland.’”
The producer of the movie gave the plane to Tony Whirly, owner of the Techatticup mine near Nelson, Nevada, after they finished filming the scene there. Tony stuck a pole in the hillside, slid the fuselage down on it, laid out the wings, and voila, another piece of intrigue was added to the history of Eldorado Canyon.
Tony used to run canoe trips from the base of Boulder (Hoover) Dam down the Colorado River to Nelson’s Landing. The landing is at the end of long, curving Eldorado Canyon. He always wanted to buy a place in Nelson. After a flashflood careened down the canyon and wiped out a lot of properties, one elderly woman decided she’d had enough of remote living and offered hers for sale. She turned down Tony’s offer to buy one acre because she had 46 acres to sell but sweetened the deal when she told him there was a gold mine on the property. He just had to find the entrance which was covered in mud.
Tony found the entrance just three days short of escrow closing. It took a while to muck it out, but finally he and his family gained access to miles of mining tunnels. They have partially restored parts of the mine and offer adventure tours. The have built buildings reflecting the old mine spirit, have a zipline, old cars, ore carts, and more. It’s one of the more popular stops with tour companies in Las Vegas.
The area is ripe with history. Indians approached prospectors in the mid-1800s with a soft, grayish metal saying, “techatticup.” The old sourdoughs asked where they found it. “Techatticup” means “give me food,” but the miners didn’t understand. When the Indians showed them where it was, they named their claim “Techatticup.”
The mine operated on and off from 1861 to 1942. It closed during WWI, and the water tables rose, so it became difficult to drain it and make it a profitable endeavor after that. Claim-jumping, murder, and robberies all add to the flavor of the area. The gold ingots were shipped down river on steamboats but often were robbed. Thieves would escape across the desert with saddlebags full of ingots. One mine owner, tired of the thefts, cast a large gold ball weighing 200 pounds, too big to be stolen, and rolled it aboard the boat.
Filmmakers have made movies and music videos at Techatticup mine where snakes, scorpions, and coyote roam, and myths and old stories of gold miners, thieves, and a plane crash are told.
ElyAirLines.blogspot.com
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