Ben Crowell remembers the Great Caddo Lake Pearl Rush of 1874 well. Ben would fall in love for the first time that summer during one of the last great rushes of the nineteenth century, a rush that could not have come at a better time for the riverboat community of Port Caddo.

Just a few months earlier the town had been dying. The railroads that were cutting across the country made the riverboat meaningless, and those same railroads didn’t stop anywhere near Port Caddo. By the end of the summer, the pearl rush was over, and the mystery about who killed Judd Kelso, a local riverboat owner, had begun.

It took Ben forty years to solve the mystery, and when he did, the proof came for him alone to witness. He is the only living soul who knows what happened that September night in 1874.