Thoughts 23 May 2006 05:33 pm
Bill Belknap and clay heads
This is what happens when folks get bored.
In the late 1940’s Bill Belknap, who lived in Boulder City, and was a fairly famous photographer, got bored, so he got together with a friend and decided to play a joke on someone. it’s strange how nobody I’ve spoken to can remember which friend helped him, or who was the intended victim.
But anyway, they made some small heads out of clay and hid them in a cave.
The object was to sucker a friend into bragging about the find to all comers, and then enjoy a good laugh, at his expense.
The only problem turned out to be the local rockhounds, who found them first and immediately ran to the newspaper, the Boulder City News published an article about the great find and how important it was.
Of course the first real archiologist to see them knew they were fakes and of course the paper swore that they’d been conned by the rockhounds and so on.
I never did find out how anyone discovered who did it, but Boulder City was a very small town and people will talk.
I inherited 7 of the heads and I have no idea if there were any more, but evey time I look at them, I wonder if maybe, there isn’t just one, on exhibit as the real deal in some museum someplace.
