Bowers Cave, circa 1962. Unidentified "explorers."
On May 2, 1884, brothers McCoy and Everette Pyle stumbled upon Bowers Cave in the Hasley hills behind Castaic.
Inside they found a treasure trove of native American artifacts, believed to have been deposited there by Tataviam Indians.
Among the "loot" were flicker feathers and four sun sticks, used in religious ceremonies. Nothing so important
had ever been found in connection with the Tataviam — and nothing since.
Most of the
artifacts were sent to the Peabody Museum of American Ethnology at Harvard University, although the
Peabody traded one of the sun sticks to a museum in Australia in the 1950s (traded for what, we don't know).
Bowers Cave is on private property along the northeastern border of the Chiquita Canyon Landfill.
