The Texas Treasure of Bob Lee

This information for this story was submitted to us by our good friend “Homer”. Thank you sir!

In 1867 a Civil War Confederate leader by the name of Bob Lee returned to his family home in Fannin County, TX near Texoma. The area around Mr. Lee’s family home was known for its dense woods and was referred to as “Big Thicket”. The heavily treed area was 30 square miles in size and had rarely been ventured into until the Civil War. Once the war started Big Thicket became a haven for outlaws and deserters.

Add to that a post war family feud between Bob Lee and his local rival Lewis Peacock and you have the makings for a very volatile land. I should mention that Bob Lee was neither an outlaw or deserter, his family just happened to live in this area. Although Bob Lee wasn’t an outlaw he did bring $30,000 in gold coins home with him when he returned from the war. I wonder how he did that if he wasn’t an outlaw? That seems a little steep for a post war retirement payout don‘t you think?

Once Mr. Lee returned to his family’s land and the feud between he and Mr. Peacock began it was only a matter of time before someone got killed. The first to go, in 1869, was Bob Lee. It seems Mr. Peacock and some of his cohorts ambushed Bob Lee one evening and tried to force him to tell where he had buried his gold. Bob Lee declined to give such information to his arch rival and took the location of the treasure with him to his grave. I should point out that there is an alternate story that says the Forth United States Calvary led by General J.J. Reynolds killed Bob Lee in the night while searching (and fighting) from house to house. In 1868 General Reynolds had issued a $1,000 reward for Bob Lee, dead or alive. Maybe he chose to collect his own bounty?

Now at this point I don’t really think it matters how Bob Lee met his demise. The important thing is that when he died, his gold was still buried. If you are a treasure hunter you already have your thinking cap on and are wondering if this story could be true. Please read on.

People have been looking for Bob Lee’s gold ever since he returned to Texas in 1867. The majority of the searching has occurred around the old Lee Farm which, by a strange coincidence, is located near the Lee Cemetery. Go figure! This would seem to be a pretty good place to be looking for the treasure because in the 1950’s a man by the name of Hoot Gibson found part of the treasure on a creek bank about 300 yards from the cemetery.

It seems “Hoot” found a crock that had been sealed and wrapped in burlap. From what I can tell from the stories the crock must have been buried in the creek bank and had gotten washed out over the years by rain, leaving it in plain site for some lucky soul to stumble upon. Inside the crock were two and a half and five dollar gold coins. And he didn’t even need a metal detector! (I hate stories like that!!) The gold coins were sold to a local resident at the time whose descendant stated that not all of Lee’s gold was in the crock. It was said that there were “thousands of dollars of gold” still out there somewhere.

Treasures hunters have been searching the area for years and have even dug into the Lee Family cemetery but to this day the only gold known to be found was the small crock stumbled upon by Hoot Gibson.

I guess it pays not to keep all of your eggs in one basket. Maybe you can be the lucky individual to find another one of Bob Lee’s caches.