Extremely Disappointed

For those of you that read this blog regularly or who know me personally you know that I’m not a big believer in the KGC mega-millions myths nor do I believe Jesse James was in control of part or all of the KGC.

With the disclaimers out of the way I can’t in good faith just sit by and not say anything about the show that aired on the History Channel about Jesse James on the evening of 9 November 2009. My problems with this show don’t even take into account anything said about the KGC.

I have lost all my faith in the History Channel as there wasn’t very much verifiable information or in my opinion, truthful information in this show. The one outstanding truth during the whole show was stated by Mr. Pastore himself when he said he didn’t know how to interpret the signs. This is true, he does not!

In case you think I am just being a spoil sport, I do know what I speak of. I had the unpleasant misfortune of working with Mr. Pastore on this same treasure site several years ago. He, in my opinion, is not someone you would want to work a site with. My own connection to Mr. Pastore was quickly severed by myself in just a couple of months because of the way he worked.

It is my opinion that the treasure they did “find” was planted before hand. Please watch this carefully and take note at how clean the coins are and especially how clean the jar is when it comes out of the ground. Anyone that has ever dug a jar or coin out of the ground will recognize this to be suspicious. Please keep in mind this is strictly my opinion and I have no proof that this is what occurred. I would ask that anyone that is tempted to contact Mr. Pastore for information or help with a treasure site be very cautious in doing so.

I could go on and on for days about the misconceptions brought about by this show but I don’t want to dwell on something needlessly.

I apologize to the readers if this article is not what you expected. As I said, I could not in good faith let this go by without a warning to others based on my opinions.

For the Die Hard KGC Folks

If you are one of the true believers in the KGC and Jesse James' involement in the group then you may want to tune in to your TV tomorrow night (Monday, 9 November 2009)

From the history Channel, http://www.history.com/shows.do?action=detail&episodeId=502912

"By the time Jesse James was killed in 1882, he'd stolen over a million and a half dollars according to some estimates--gold, coins and cash that could be worth over $50 million today. History often paints James as a clever outlaw who stole money to finance a lavish criminal lifestyle, a man whose sixteen year long crime spree came to a dramatic halt in 1882 when a fellow gang member betrayed him and shot him dead in the back of the head. But now, a treasure hunt may reveal a totally new story. Was Jesse really stealing for himself, or was he actually secreting away large sums of wealth, in order to finance one of the most clandestine secret societies in American history? Follow a team of treasure hunters searching for where he stashed his riches... and a new truth about Jesse James. Their discoveries may not only re-write the history of why Jesse stole, it could also raise new questions about his death."

This is sure to bring about some new (and old) questions and fire up all of the KGC mega-million myths. Could be fun!

Thank you Homer for the link.

A Colorado Treasure Hunt

As treasure hunters we have all had those times where a family member or friend and even the occasional on looker has told us we are nuts for doing what we do. It takes a special kind of mentality to be a treasure hunter and to stick with it. This story is about a man who is sticking to his guns and following his beliefs. Something we should all admire.

I would like to thank our buddy Homer for sending this to me.

Once upon a time there was a man and his daughter from Amarillo, Texas. OK, OK, here’s the story.

It does involve and man and his daughter and they are from Amarillo. Gary Smith has been looking for a treasure he believes to be worth “close to a billion dollars”. The treasure is said to be over 200 years old and was originally left behind by the Spanish, then found by the French and then lost again.

As the story goes, the Spanish found a rich gold mine in the mountains of Colorado only to leave it behind for some reason. According to Gary Smith the French were on an expedition from New Orleans that started in 1799 and they found the old Spanish mine. According to Mr. Smith the mine is supposedly called “ la mina perdida de la ventana”.

According to the information in the article this is supposed to roughly translate to “the lost mine”. I didn’t try to translate the phrase but it seems odd to me that the Spanish would name their mine the lost mine. If they new where it was and were working it then it wouldn’t be lost would it?

Anyway, Mr. Smith says the frogs found the mine during the expedition and in the process made new markers to take them back to it. The French markers are what Mr. Smith and his daughter are currently following. They say they have found at over 40 different markers that are leading them on the trail to their final destination, the lost mine. As far as I can tell the mine is supposed to be a rich mine and not have any pre-mined gold stacked in it but the story didn’t give all of the details.

According to Mr. Smith’s daughter Emily, some of the markers are shaped like turtles and they refer to them as “turtle rocks”. Imagine that!

Gary Smith has been looking for this treasure for 28 years now and his daughter joined the hunt about eight years ago. It appears that the Smiths may actually be on to something. In 2006 the National Forest Service and the Colorado Department of Agriculture issued a treasure trove permit to the Smiths so they could make a recovery should they find the end of their trail. This would bring up the question of what is actually in the mine. If they are looking for a mine to take raw gold out of then you think they would have been issued a mining permit but instead it was a treasure trove permit. That would indicate to me that there may be some gold already mined sitting there waiting for the Smiths to recover.

Here is the link to the original story. http://myhighplains.com/content/fulltext/?cid=89991
There is a short video with the story that you might want to watch. The story also says that there will be a follow up video showing some of the markers they have found.

This has been one of those weeks and I haven’t had time to follow up on this so you wil have to do some looking on your own if you are interested.

If anyone finds any additional video of the clues please leave a comment on the blog with a link for everyone to see.

Happy Hunting!

Scotch on the Rocks, a treasure found

Are you tired of looking for precious metals and getting rich? Do you long for an adventure that will take you to places rarely explored but offer a challenge and a reward?

Well pack your bags and a heavy coat and head off to Antarctica. In 1907 an explorer named Sir Ernest Shackleton made an expedition into the frozen wasteland in an attempt to make it to the South Pole. Being that they didn’t have things like “hot hands” and other chemical heaters to take along back then they took the next best thing, alcohol! That’s right, hooch. Besides using the occasional shot to warm the insides they also apparently used it as a way of combating the long artic nights. Sir Shackleton’s drink of choice was Mackinley’s scotch and he took a whopping 25 cases of the stuff on his expedition to keep himself and his men warm.

I couldn’t find any information that indicated how much of the 25 cases were consumed during the expedition but there were several crates left behind. Two of those cases were found in 2006 but they haven’t been able to recover them yet.

Cape Royds is located along the coast of Antarctica. The temperatures there can get to minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit and as you can image, is not inhabited by anyone. On this miserable little chunk of volcanic rock sit’s a shack that has been there for over a century. I don’t know who the person was or what possessed them to crawl into the small space under the floor of this shack but when they did they discovered two cases of Shackleton’s scotch. It was frozen solid to the ground and could not be taken out.

It has taken three years but they now think they have a plan and the technology to thaw the ground around the hooch so that it can be recovered. I would think a couple of good heaters or a plasma cutter would do the trick but I guess that is too simple for the big brains to figure out. The recovery expedition is set for January which is the summertime in the Antarctic.

Now for the bad news. You knew there had to be a catch didn’t you? According to an international treaty, once the scotch is recovered it can’t be taken out of Antarctica because of “conservation“ reasons. The ignorance of the bureaucracy never ceases to amaze me.

So if you go looking for the rest of the scotch left behind by Sir Ernest Shackleton and you are lucky enough to find it, I guess you’ll just have to drink it there. You could call it recycling couldn’t you?

Montezuma's Head in Arizona

Gold, gold and more gold, that’s all I have to say. Arizona is one of those states that has gold just about everywhere there is a hill or mountain and if there hasn’t been any gold found in an area then there is bound to be a rumor about a lost mine or hidden treasure.

One of the hot spots in Arizona is a mountain known as Montezuma’s Head in the Estrella Mountains. For anybody who has read anything about the Aztec’s you will immediately get the connection to gold.

It is thought that when Cortez decided he would conquer the indigenous people of the area now known as Mexico these people, the Aztecs, took a large store of gold north from Mexico City to an unknown location where they hid this massive amount of gold in a cave. And when I say massive, I mean massive. Rumors abound that the Aztec’s moved TONS of gold and hid it. One of the rumors floating around Arizona says that the cave in question is located on or very near Montezuma’s Head.

If finding and moving tons of gold just sounds like too much work then you could look for a smaller cache of gold coins and jewelry said to be worth about $75,000 in today’s prices. This cache is known as the Lost Treasure of Telegraph Pass and is also supposed to be near Montezuma’s Head. It was hidden in 1870. The story says the treasure was placed into an iron pot and buried “in a level campsite with a small butte” not far from Telegraph Pass in the south end of the Estrella Mountains “below Montezuma’s Head”.

Do you need more incentive? There is said to be a stack of gold bars hidden in a cave somewhere on Montezuma’s Head that is worth between one and two million dollars. The gold is supposedly from the Spanish mining in the area and for whatever reason they left it behind. You know how the Spanish were, always leaving things behind!

And now for the good news, over the years, especially back in the 1960’s and 1970’s, several silver bars have been recovered from different spots around Montezuma’s Head by treasure hunters. This would seem to lend credence to the fact that there is in deed treasure buried on and around this aptly named mountain.

A word of warning, Arizona is hot during the summer!
Dry heat my …………..

Heat is heat and when it’s 115 it’s hot whether is a dry heat or not. Arizona is better suited to winter hunting when those “cold” temperatures of 60 degrees creep in.

Outlaw Loot in Devil's Canyon

It’s getting close to Halloween so a treasure story about a place called Devil’s canyon seems fitting.

This Devil’s canyon in located in the great state of Oklahoma near the present day Lake Altus.


There is more than one treasure story about this area of the state but the one I am writing about today concerns ninety pounds of gold coins.

Back in 1894 four outlaws were practicing their trade in Texas when they came upon a group of cattlemen who had just sold their herds. The cattlemen were carrying the proceeds of the sale with them when they had the misfortune of running into the four outlaws. They were quickly relieved of their money, all $35,000 of it and the outlaws headed for Oklahoma with their new fortune.

Once in Oklahoma they camped for a few days and mulled over what they were going to do with their individual shares of the gold. As fate would have it, three of the outlaws decided it would be better to have a third each of the gold instead of a fourth each so they plotted to kill the fourth outlaw. Just like on the show Survivor, things took an unexpected twist when outlaw number four figured out the others’ plan and made off with all of the loot.

Number four headed for what is known as Flat Top Mountain and hid his twice stolen gold there. It is thought he hid the gold on Flat Top Mountain but there is the possibility it was just near the mountain and not actually on it.

This fourth outlaw was later captured and sent to prison, I believe for an unrelated crime, where he died sometime in the 1920’s. Before he died he tried to explain to his relatives where he had hidden the gold. The family made several attempts to find the gold but were unsuccessful in their searching.

So to recap, there is ninety pounds of gold coins buried on or near Flat Top Mountain which is on the Side of Devil’s Canyon just a few miles from present day Lake Altus. Doing some quick math, the ninety pounds of gold at today’s prices should be worth a little over one million dollars. That sounds like it would be worth looking for!

Did I mention this may be located in a state park? Check the rules before you go!

Utah Ghost Towns, relics and gold

Are you looking for a ghost town with a few skeletons in it’s closet? Well have I got a deal for you. This one actually has real skeletons!

Summit County, Utah is the site of what once was the town of Weber Station. Located at the mouth of Echo Canyon and just two miles from the ghost town of Echo City, Weber Station has already given up a few treasures.

In 1931 when the original stage stop was dismantled they found several things hidden in the walls including relics from the 1800’s and several five dollar gold pieces. Also in 1931 an old gas station that had been built on top of where the Weber Station saloon was located was torn down so that a new building could be built. As they were digging out the foundation they discovered seven skeletons that had been there since the “glory” days.

It seems that several businesses in Weber City only existed to steal from the railroad workers coming to the area. Several people disappeared during that time never to be heard from again. I guess we know what happened to at least seven of them.

Along with the less than honest saloons, gambling tents and brothels that were taking advantage of the workers you also had an outlaw gang that used Weber Station as it’s headquarters. The Rachet Gang operated in this area during the 1800’s and stories persist that they buried some of their ill-gotten booty in the ground around the town.

If outlaws and money hidden in walls isn’t enough for you then you can go the extra mile, well actually it’s two miles, to the location of Echo City. This is also a ghost town and during it’s hay day had at least fifty buildings, mostly saloons and gambling establishments. As with Weber City, some construction was being done in the early 1900’s during which they tore down the old jail. In a stone wall of one of the jail cells they found a pair of glasses (the kind you see through, not drink from) and a cache of gold coins.

I guess the guy didn’t need his glasses or his gold which makes you wonder what happened to the person who left them behind. A strong rope comes to mind.

Although I’m not sure why, there are said to be several caches buried in and around the area of what was Echo City. I believe most of these caches are probably from the business owners who were trying to keep their own money safe from the other nefarious characters in town.

Keep in mind there should be lots of relics in these two areas. The stage coach passed through both towns and several artifacts have already been found in the past.

Good luck!