Hidden in Plain Sight

We have all seen treasure maps, or at least photos of maps. Some of them have been carved, others have been redrawn by someone and in a few cases we have seen original maps. In the case of maps on mediums that can be carried around such as leather, cloth or metal, they need to be looked at just as closely as any carved map.

This article is meant to deal with outlaw maps but some of the information can translate to other types of maps as well. I have posted a photo of part of an original treasure map I have. Sorry, but I’m still working this one so part is all you’re going to get. This particular map was made on oilcloth and this is from a scan I made of the map. Keep in mind the map is more than 120 years old and is in pretty bad shape so the scan isn’t perfect but it depicts the map as it actually is.

This particular map has lines on it made in red and blue ink. This photo shows just a few of the red lines. If you look closely you can see in the lines what could be a W or an upside M or even a V. To the right of that you can also see the number 3. These letters/numbers are hidden in the line. When you look at the map in it’s entirety the red line seems to form a topographical area and the letters/numbers just seem to be part of the line, and you would think the topography.

That would be where you would be wrong. There are a few of these hidden symbols in this map and since they occur repeatedly, they are something that needs to be looked at separate from the topographical lines. Another thing that should be mentioned is that the occurrence of letters and numbers could mean that all of these hidden symbols are numbers. Outlaws weren’t beyond using a Roman numeral or two every now and then.

Portions of the red topographical lines in this map also form the shape of an animal. This animal shape is a clue as to the name of the location where the map is to be used. This particular map was seen in its entirety at the last treasure hunters get together in Medicine Park, OK.

Clues can be hidden in many ways in a map and you have to be careful not to overlook something just because it looks like something else. Deception was part of the way they kept their hidden treasures hidden but one of the most common things to use was misdirection. They will have you looking at one thing and completely missing the clues you need. This of course will also get you to over think certain things, which will have the same affect.

Outlaws were smarter than what most people give them credit for, well, some of them were. I know when I started treasure hunting I never thought that an old outlaw would be able to outsmart me and I have been proven wrong about that on several occasions!

This is just a short article to get your mind wrapped around the way things could be done and how you should be thinking. Later on I will try to post a map in its entirety to show how much misdirection there can be in just one map.

You need to think logically and be methodical in your quest for treasure. It beats wondering around in circles every time!

The Tale of Two States, Treasure Tales that is.

Once upon a time in a place far, far away……….

OK, so it’s not actually that far away and for some of you it may be right in your own back yard. It is from a long, long time ago. I have a tale of treasure for those of you along the Illinois and Kentucky borders. This one tale actually could lead you to several tales as this spot was frequented by at least two conterfeiters, a pirate, ARRGGGG! (I just can’t help myself) and a few outlaws. This article is about one of the couterfeiters that made this place his home.

The place? Cave-In-Rock, Illinois. Yea, the name seems pretty simple but what do you expect, it was found and named by a frenchy back in 1739. I guess he didn’t have much of an imagination. Cave-In-Rock is an actual town but the main feature is a cave with an opening that is 55 feet wide! Cave-In-Rock sits just inside the Illinois border on the Ohio River.

The cave itself was one of the homes of an infamous counterfeiter known as John Duff, real name, John Mc Elduff. Mr. Duff, as he was commonly known, had been a scout during the Revolutionary war and chose to make his living as a counterfeiter. He mined his own silver and lead and couterfeited coins. I guess now I have your attention since any coins from the 1700’s would last a very long time.

It is said that John Duff hid a large cache of gold and silver coins, both genuine and counterfeit before his untimely death. He was killed by three or four indians who were hired to kill him by the commandant of the nearby Fort Massac. He died in 1799 leaving behind his wife who apparantly didn’t have any idea where the money was hidden.

There have been conflicting reports as to exactly where he died and how many places he called home. Accordng to a newspaper report he was killed at his home at Battery Park on the Illinois side of the Ohio River or you can believe what was written in the History of Union County, Kentucky where it says he died on the other side of the river at what is now Caseyville, Kentucky. It is known that he lived in or very near the cave at Cave-In-Rock at one time and he mined his lead and silver along the Saline River. There were three places known as “Duff’s Fort”, one at Cave-In-Rock, one in a house in Caseyville, Kentucky which later became the old Christian Chruch and the third was at Island Ripple on the Saline River.

Stories from long ago say that a nephew of John Duff came to the area of the Tradewater River to look for his uncles hidden money but was unable to locate it. The treasure was supposed to be in a “secret” cave at the mouth of the river but the area at the mouth of the Tradewater River is littered with caves and the nephew couldn’t find the right one.

Too bad he didn’t have a metal detector, that might have made it a lot easier to look for!

Genuine or counterfeit, coins mented in the 1700’s would still be a cache worth finding.
If you choose to do some more research on this treasure be sure to look into a second counterfeiter who spent some time at Cave-In-Rock named Philip Alston who learned the counterfeiting trade from John Duff. The Sturdivant outlaw gang and another outlaw named Logan Belt frequented the area also along with the Pirate Samuel Mason, ARGGGGG! See, it’s just natural!

Independence Day

We would like to wish everyone a safe and happy 4th of July!

Deep Seeking Detectors

Everybody is looking for that one detector that will solve all of our problems and find treasure, no matter where it is or how deep it is. The truth of the matter is no such animal exists. Metal detectors are like any other tool; there is usually a specific tool for a specific job. When it comes to deep seeking metal detectors this is almost always the case.

If you are cache hunting you need to have a good two-box detector. Several companies make these including Whites, Fisher, Discovery, and Garrett. Personally, when it comes to a two-box unit I prefer a dedicated machine and not an add-on like the Garrett. The dedicated machines seem to get better depth and are easier to work with.

Everybody has heard the hype about a two-box unit picking up an object fifteen feet in the ground. This is possible but only under ideal conditions, which rarely exist in the field and the object you are looking for would have to be the size of a car. I don’t recall any stories about Jesse James filling the trunk of a car with gold and burying it so this won’t do you much good. It’s been my experience that a good two-box detector will give you somewhere between four and six feet in depth in the field. This is good for the outlaw cache hunters in the crowd because most outlaw caches will rarely be more than four feet deep. You can find most two-box detectors starting at a price around $600 new. You can find them used for one to two hundred less if you look around.

For the Spanish cache hunters out there you may need something that has a little more reach. A good pulse induction unit with a 40-inch coil is another choice for looking for the bigger caches. A pulse induction unit will work better in highly mineralized soil than a two-box and will generally get more depth. Field experience says a pulse induction unit will pick up a small object, lets say something the size of an iron pot or teakettle, at six feet with very little problems. It would be my opinion that if you are looking for something the size of a car battery or bigger then you will probably get between 5 and 10 feet in depth with a pulse induction unit, depending on the soil and terrain. Some of the manufactures of these units will claim depths up to thirty feet but I haven’t heard of any recoveries at that depth using a pulse unit, junk or treasure. The bad part about the pulse induction units is the cost. Unless you are smart enough to build your own (which leaves me out) then you’re probably going to have to shell out at least two or three grand to get a good one.

As with the two-box units, there are several manufactures of pulse induction units. If you are interested in looking into a PI unit Bob Fitzgerald at http://treasurenow.com/ has two different PI units he sells that are less expensive than others but don’t have a lot of the bells and whistles either. You will want to look over his descriptions closely because the least expensive unit comes with the wire for the coil but you have to buy your own PVC pipe and make the actual coil to put the wire in. He also seems to exaggerate the depths some but you can at least see the difference in the cheaper models as compared to the more expensive ones. His prices start around $700.00. Kellyco Electronics sells a few different PI units also but their prices start around $4,000.00. Ouch!

You need to remember when using a two-box or PI unit that the coils need to stay parallel with the terrain you are searching or you will get false signals. A lot of flase signals will make for a really long day.

For those of you that have more money than you know what to do with you can look into an electromagnet induction unit. These sell for around $16,000 but are very handy for finding underground tunnels or sealed caves. For us normal folks that can’t afford to buy one of these until we hit that big one, they can be rented, some for as little as $50.00 a day.

Two of these units that I have been researching are the Geonics EM31 (http://www.geophysicsrentals.com/geonics_em31.htm) and the GSSI Profiler (http://www.geophysical.com/Profiler.htm). Both of these machines work on the same principals. They work along the same lines as the older resistivity machines however you don’t have to stick any probes in the ground. They measure the resistivity of the soil from one point to another showing different colors for the different amounts of resistivity in your survey. In other words, if you are walking a grid across solid ground your picture will stay about the same. If you cross over a void within the ground the air in the void is less resistive to signals therefore the signal will travel through the void faster, giving a different reading at the machine in the form of different colors and shapes on the screen. This of course is a very simplified explanation of how they work but it should give you the right idea. These machines are routinely used for ground water surveys, archeological investigations and geological assessments. The drawback for the amateur treasure hunter in using these machines has always been the cost involved. Now that there are companies that will rent the machines it has made it possible for others to get full use of today’s technology.

The EM31 can be rented for about $50.00 per day and the Profiler goes for about $800.00 per week. The Profiler is the newest machine and includes a wireless PDA that gives you a real time color picture of what you are seeing. The EM31 requires a laptop computer to be carried around at the same time to see real time results or you can do your scan and then go to a computer and download the results. I’m more of a real time kind of guy, no reason to make two trips when one will do!

The depths that both of these machines will “see” are measured in meters with the minimum being three meters and the maximum around eight meters in ideal conditions. Ideal conditions aren’t what you would think. In speaking with a techie at one of the companies I was told that working in granite mountains would give me about the same depth as working on the flatlands of Kansas. Apparently these machines don’t like pockets of clay any more than they like large buried granite boulders. Of the two machines the Profiler is the lightest and easiest to use. Of course, it’s also the most expensive one. The Profiler weighs less than ten pounds compared to the almost twenty pounds of the EM31. The Profiler is only six feet long compared to the sixteen feet of the EM31.

There are other machines available to individuals such as ground penetrating radar and seismic machines that work something like sonar but in most cases treasure hunters aren’t looking for the kinds of things these machines will find or they won’t work in the areas we are looking in. Didn’t anybody bury anything on flat open ground that you can just drive up to? That would be nice, wouldn’t it?

Happy hunting!

A "Simple" Outlaw Symbol Interpreted

When it comes to interpreting symbols it can be a pretty daunting task sometimes but every once in a while you come across that one symbol that is simple. So simple in fact, that you think it can’t really be that simple so you try twenty other things first. Then, after you stop kicking yourself in the butt for wasting so much time and messing with your own mind, you actually try the simple interpretation and bingo, there you have it.

The outlaw symbol in the photo posted with this article was one such symbol. The rock is about two feet long and a foot wide and was found at the edge of a ridgeline about half way up the side of a hill. The rock was wedged between two others, laying face up so you could see the carving but the other two stones kept it from going anywhere. If you were standing at the location of the stone and took two steps forward you would have stepped off the side of the hill and on your way through a twenty foot drop.

If instead, you stood at the rock and turned to the left you would see that the ridgeline you were standing next to was the exact shape of the J. It went straight along the side of the hill for about 50 feet and then curved to the left and wrapped around the hill. The dot on this carving represented the location of the next clue. I might also add that the rock the J was carved on is shaped like the hill the rock sits on and was orientated to match the hill. The next clue, another rock buried upright in the ground to be used as a pointer, was found just after the curve of the ridgeline started and about half way between the ridgeline and the base of the hill. Once you knew where to look the next clue was pretty obvious, it was the only rock sticking out of the ground like it had been “planted”.

Of course the next clue took you back towards where you originally started from which was near the base of the hill below the ridgeline where the rock with the J and the dot on it was. There’s nothing like having an outlaw run you around in circles!

Finding Your Own Treasure Leads

Finding leads to buried, hidden or sunken treasure can be as simple as reading this blog or buying a book or two. Finding really good leads to a lost treasure usually takes more time and diligence. Not that the leads on this wonderful blog aren’t good leads, it’s just that we haven’t done all of the research and gotten all of the answers. If we did that with every lead you would be reading more about treasures that have been found instead of treasures you can look for.

I don’t do much searching for treasure underwater so I will skip telling you about how to get leads for those treasures. I will mention that studying information about some sunken treasures will give you some insight into some land based treasures. There’s nothing like a good pirate story to get your mind going. Arggggg!

Most caches of treasure won’t be written about in a way that mentions treasure. If you want to look for the small and maybe medium sized caches you should spend some time in your local library or historical society reading over the old newspapers, especially those before 1935. Once you start reading you can look for the articles about robberies. These articles can give you the where and when and sometimes even the who, not to mention an amount of what you might be looking for. You should look for articles about miners or prospectors if you live in or near an old mining area. Articles about the natural or even untimely deaths of prospectors and miners can give you leads about where a cache of gold may be. If a successful prospector or miner died and didn’t have any relatives there could be a good chance that whatever gold he had was left in the ground near his claim. Even if they did have relatives there is a good chance the miner/prospector hid what he had without telling the relatives where it was hidden. The newspaper article will give you a name and a search through the old claim files would give you an exact location.

If you aren’t lucky enough to live in or near a mining area you can look for articles about successful ranchers or store owners that may have died unexpectedly and didn’t have any family around. Maybe you will find a story about the local hermit that was found expired at his homestead. Hermits are notorious for not trusting banks or people for that matter and the local hermit may have stashed some money around his homestead. Another thing you can search for is the old stage stops or even the old creek or river crossings along the stage route. These were great places for someone to accidentally drop something or even intentionally hide something they didn’t want to lose. Remember, it doesn’t take much gold or silver these days to make something worth finding.

If you like to hunt for more “recent” caches you should concentrate on the newspapers from 1933 to 1950. Why these years you ask? For those of you that don’t know your history to well the private ownership of gold in the United States was banned on 5 April 1933 and all citizens were required to turn in their gold to dear old Uncle Sam. You just got to love Uncle Sam! This ban on the private ownership of gold only allowed citizens to own $100 or less of gold except for rare coins with special collectors value. The ban stayed in effect until 1974 when we were “given back” our right to have gold.

I am sure, actually, I would bet big money on it, that there were a lot of people that buried or hid what gold they had just to keep from having to give it to the government. I know I would have. This brings us back to the old newspapers and looking for those stories of the hermits and reading the obituaries. Most of these stories will probably never mention anything about hidden money or treasure but they will probably tell about the “condition” of the person who died. Whether they had money or heirs, whether they were frugal or were known to spend a lot of money and even where they lived or what type of home they lived in. All of this information can be tremendous in looking for a previously unknown treasure.

When doing this type of research you have to learn to read between the lines and follow up any story you find with some additional research at the county courthouse in the county that the story took place in. Land ownership records should go back to the time when the county was formed. You may even be able to find old town plats that show you were a business or home was. These will be especially useful if you are looking in the area of an old ghost town.

I will say that I have worked on a treasure like this before, one that was put down in the 30's and it turned out the landowner hid his treasure and then marked it just like an outlaw would. This made me think he was probably an outlaw himself in earlier times because the map was pretty elaborate and didn’t appear to be the first one he ever made. I would also guess that the gold that was hidden was something he probably had gotten from a robbery or two.

This is just a couple of ways to find your own treasure leads. Remember, if it were easy everybody would be doing it! Remember to think outside of the box when it comes to research.

Buried treasure is everywhere; you just have to know how and where to look for it.

2nd Annual Treasure Hunters Get Together

I would like to start this article off by thanking 2late2dig and his lovely wife for hosting all of us treasure hunters in their neck of the woods. As usual, they took very good care of everyone, even going to the extreme of renting out a large, air conditioned lodge to hold the meeting in. I know this was greatly appreciated by others and myself since it was 90 degrees outside and felt even worse due to the ever present, almost stifling Oklahoma humidity. There were several door prizes on hand including some very good books and even an 1889 silver dollar.

For those of you that couldn’t make it, you missed a good meeting. We had 18 people at this one including a couple of those KGC guys. Oh lighten up, it’s a joke! These were a couple of nice guys with a good sense of humor. They gave as good as they got and all had a good time. One of their group couldn't make it this time because of health reasons and he was missed. Hopefully next time everyone can be there.

There was lots of information shared and learned by everybody. It seemed everyone had something to share and didn’t mind sharing it. Just the way a get together should be. 2Late had an actual clean copy of the copper map that was found in the teakettle by Joe Hunter back in the 30’s. There is a really big difference between the actual map and the published version so this was a treat for more than one treasure hunter. There were several photos of a few different treasure sites showing carvings and markers (outlaw and Spanish), an original Jesse James map and Ray was very gracious to bring the actual watch that was in the teakettle with the copper map and other items when Joe Hunter found it. This is a true piece of history and a once in a lifetime thing to see and handle this watch. History buffs and treasure hunters alike should get goose bumps holding something that was actually put in the ground for safe keeping by Frank and Jesse James. The watch is in pristine shape. Thank you Ray!

If you came to this meeting hungry you undoubtedly left full. The lunch at the Plantation Restaurant in Medicine Park was a good meal with the portions big enough to feed the hungriest appetite!

If a prize was going to be given for the most miles traveled to attend the get together then it would have gone to “Mr. Hawaii”. Yea, I didn’t believe it at first either but he actually came all the way from Honolulu to be at the meeting. Of course he was going to spend a few days at a treasure site he has in Oklahoma too. A really nice treasure site I might add! Mr. Hawaii and his partner were kind enough to share several photos from their site with any one that was interested. I don’t want to say where this site is but if you are familiar with Oklahoma treasure stories this would make your mouth water. I would like to personally thank Mr. Hawaii for his input on one of my treasure sites, the information was something I never thought of and will be put to use the next time I’m on the site. I would have also taken your flight back to Hawaii for you if you wanted to stay in Oklahoma a little longer! It wouldn't have been a problem, really!

As I mentioned earlier there were several door prizes given away. One of these prizes was an 1889 silver dollar. Before lunch Mr. Hawaii had told one of the female attendees that if he won the silver dollar he would give it to her. When the drawing was held after lunch he actually won the silver dollar and true to his word, he immediately gave it to the woman he had promised it to. Now that’s a man you want to treasure hunt with!

Thanks to all who attended and thanks again to 2late and his wife for hosting the get together and supplying all of the drinks and prizes.

I intentionally didn’t use very many real names in this article because I wasn’t sure who would or wouldn’t want their name published on the blog. You know how us treasure hunters are! I have posted a few photos though of some of the folks who attended. All of the books on the table were door prizes that were given away. Hopefully everyone will make it back to the next meeting and enjoy themselves and learn.

See you next year if not before.