Pegleg Smith Monument

A pile of rocks beside a dirt road on the eastern edge of the valley, marking nothing in particular. The hand-painted sign asks visitors to add ten stones to the pile, and the cairn is now over thirty feet across.

The Pegleg Smith Liars Contest, held here on the first Saturday of April since the 1940s, is one of the better small-town traditions in the American West: locals and visitors take turns at the microphone telling outrageous lies, and a panel of judges picks a winner. Otherwise the spot is worth maybe ten minutes — a quick stop on the way to or from Fonts Point.

things to do sight
A story
Thomas Long "Pegleg" Smith was a one-legged trapper, horse thief and serial fabulist who claimed in the 1850s to have found three black-coated gold nuggets at a hilltop somewhere in this desert. He never produced the gold, never returned to the spot, and almost certainly invented the story to get a free meal in San Francisco saloons. The monument asks you to add a rock to the pile each visit — and on the first Saturday of April every year, locals gather here for a lying contest where the best tall tale wins a small cash prize.

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