More Tales of Treasure Along the Oklahoma-Texas Border

As long as you are thinking about ghost towns you should do some research into a ghost town in Texas that was known as High, TX. This town, when it was a town, was located in Lamar County, TX.

Once you know where this town used to be you could look for several mason jars of gold and silver coins buried by the Hughes brothers. George and Curt Hughes owned one of the general stores in High, Texas and kept all of their money in mason jars that they buried in the back yard of their property. It seems the two brothers didn’t trust banks very much and besides that, there wasn’t a bank in High, TX at the time so they didn’t have much choice but to bury their money. George and Curt both died in the 1950’s and they apparently left more than a few of the mason jars still in the ground. They either couldn’t remember where they were or didn’t need them up to the point of their deaths. It is rumored that there are several jars still in the ground.

A check of the land ownership records at the Lamar County, TX courthouse should tell you exactly where the two brother’s land was located.

Here is another one for you in Lamar County, TX. Buried on the bank of Pine Creek near the present day town of Paris, TX is a “washtub” full of gold and silver. This is supposed to be a mix of coins and bars and was put in the ground by a group of slaves and their owner just before the Civil War. It is thought that the treasure was never recovered because the original owners didn’t make it through the Civil War alive and the heirs to the treasure moved away without being able to locate it. The only real clue to the location is that the washtub was supposed to have been buried “under a leaning tree” on the bank of Pine Creek. I think this one will take a lot of luck to find but stranger things have happened.

And if you are going to start poking around Paris, Texas (you’ll notice I was smart enough to add the state in there so nobody would be grinning about the “other” Paris) you might as well keep your eyes open for the gold and silver coins left behind by a Mexican wagon train in the 1840’s. This treasure is supposed to have been worth between $25,000 and $75,000 when it was hidden. The wagon train was headed for St. Louis, MO when they thought they were going to be attacked by a band of outlaws. (At least it wasn’t the Indians this time!) Fearing an attack the Mexicans buried the treasure on the old Spanish Road that ran along the Red River north of Paris, TX. Then they high tailed it back to Mexico. The Mexican War erupted soon after that and the original members of the wagon train all died before they could retrieve the treasure.

What? That’s not enough? Here’s a spot you can do some research on that might lead to more than one cache. If you are near Sherman, TX you can travel twelve miles northeast to a place called “Carpenter’s Bluff”. It was established in 1860 and named after a man who lived and ran a ferry at the location, taking people across the Red River. It is located on the Red River and Farm Road 120. Sometime after 1865 the spot was given the nickname of Thiefneck because of all of the outlaws that frequented the place. There was a saloon and general store there and the outlaws like to hang out and drink and buy supplies as several of the outlaws and their gangs supposedly had hideouts in the surrounding area. The good citizens of Carpenter’s Bluff got tired of the outlaws being in their town and eventually drove them out. The nickname of Thiefneck soon went by the wayside once the outlaws were gone. The town never really took off though, reaching its highest population of 120 in 1946. If the outlaws where hiding in this area then they are sure to have hidden one or more caches of money at or near where they were hiding. Some of their hideouts may have been on the opposite side of the river; depending on which direction they thought trouble would come from. The fact that this town was a river crossing also gives you the opportunity to look for items lost or hidden at the ferry crossing.