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!