Saturday, March 22, 2008

Oklahoma Treasure Tales

Here are a couple of more tales for those of you in Oklahoma. As before, some of these may be redundant as Steve Wilson covered many in his book but the information I am using is coming from sources other than his book.

South of Oklahoma City about five miles is a creek called Lost Creek. For those of you that try looking for this one the creek is really lost as only the local residents know it as Lost Creek. The creek is located just to the east of a main road and the land this treasure sits on is privately owned.

The treasure originated from a pack train of 40 mules being led by a group of Mexicans. The mules were loaded with gold bars and as almost every story of the time goes, the group was attacked by Indians. The attack occurred while the group was at a spring along the trail they were following. In an effort to hide the gold before making a hasty retreat the Mexicans dumped the gold bars into a deep pool formed by the spring. Unfortunately most of the Mexicans didn’t make it any farther than the gold did and it is said that the bodies of both man and mule littered the creek bottom where the attack occurred.

The spring where the gold bars were dumped is today located in an area that would be the east branch of Lost Creek.

I can tell you that at one time there was an old barn that was on the property that had either fallen down or been torn down and a previous land owner had used the spot near the creek, probably where the pool was, as a dumping ground for all things metal. Be prepared for some pretty serious metal detector hits, maybe a one really good one and a bunch of junk ones. The landowner 25 years ago was a nice enough fellow and didn’t have any problem with people looking around.

In the east part of Ellis County, Oklahoma is the rumor of a large Spanish treasure that was left behind during a, you guessed it, Indian attack. There was supposed to be a large Spanish caravan with several mules carrying that precious yellow metal we all want to find. The caravan was attacked somewhere near Vici, OK in a narrow canyon. It is unclear if the Spanish had time to actually hide this treasure before being killed or if the Indians hid the treasure after they massacred the Spaniards. Legend has it that all of the Spaniards were killed so this treasure story probably originated from one of the Indians that was at the attack or one of their ancestors.

There was a group of settlers during 1900 that found a bunch of exposed human bones in a long narrow canyon near some sand dunes. These bones were found in an area near Vici. Later, in 1912 after a hard rain, several old Spanish coins were found in an area just west of Vici, Oklahoma. These two incidences are probably connected.

Happy hunting!

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