Annual meeting

Just a quick note to remind everybody that this years get together is just a short two weeks away. I'll be bringing a few things for some show and tell, as well as a number of autographed and rare books that I will have for sale. Everyone is welcome to bring their items as well. This is going to be a great get together. Hope to see you there.

http://www.duncanok.org/accomodations.asp

http://www.blogoklahoma.us/Marker.asp?id=613

http://www.onthechisholmtrail.com/

http://www.marlow.k12.ok.us/marlowvideo.htm

The meeting will start around 10:00am and will be at the Opera House located at 127 W Main St. in Marlow Oklahoma. Just look for the Mercantile Building on main street. You can't miss it. From Hwy 81 go east one block on Main Street. Since you guys are treasure hunters I'm going on faith that you will be able to find Marlow on the map. Clear the calendar and program the Tom Toms.

Lunch will be just across the street at Giuseppe's. They have some really good Italian food. It's always a treat when I get the chance to dine there. Marlow and Duncan which is just a few miles south offer some interesting sites to see.

The Caballo Mountains of New Mexico

If you live near or around Sierra County, New Mexico you have no doubt heard of the Caballo Mountains and the many, many treasures that are supposed to be there.

For those of you not familiar with the Caballo Mountains I suggest you do a little reading in your spare time, especially if you are planning on taking a trip. The stories about lost treasure and mines are almost too numerous to count.

One such story relates that in 1925 several old documents were found in the rafters of Fort Seldon. Some of these documents were maps showing the locations of several Spanish treasure caches hidden in the Caballo Mountains. Someone was lucky enough to follow one of these maps to a deep cave where they located several gold bars. Two of the gold bars were removed from the cave as proof of the find.

Unfortunately for the finder, this turned out to be bad luck. The man who located the cave disappeared a short time later but his jacket was found, covered in blood and full of bullet holes.
The maps that were found in the fort indicated there were seven caches located on the west side of the Caballo Mountains, four more caches on the east side and an unknown number of caches on the south side. The story didn’t related how many were supposed to be on the south side, just “some”.

In the 1930’s another lucky man supposedly found a Spanish treasure cache in the Caballo Mountains only this one contained silver bars. The man who found the cache refused to give any specific information about where the cache was located, you can’t really blame him can you? He did produce a single silver bar to prove his story though.

Also in the 1930’s a man stumbled upon a cave in the Caballos that contained a full suit of Spanish armor. That in itself would be worth a fortune today!
In the 1940’s a cache of silver tableware was dug up and a cache of $16,000 in coins were found, both in the Caballo Mountains.

In 1944 two deer hunters were in the south end of the Caballo Mountain range, specifically Burbank Canyon, when they found a tunnel opening that led into several caverns inside the mountain. As they searched the underground rooms they came across one that contained “hundreds of skeletons and stacks of gold bars, pack saddles, racks of ancient long guns, armor and other items”. Apparently finding the skeletons was too much for the hunters as they got scared and ran screaming like little girls from the tunnel. OK, I just through in that last part, I don’t really know that they were screaming like little girls. They did say that were “terrified” and left the tunnels immediately, covering the opening with a large slab of sandstone when they left, running and screaming like little girls!

As you can guess, this tunnel has been searched for repeatedly but no one has reported ever finding it again.

I guess I need to start deer hunting again!

Hidden Information

When you are working with maps, carved or otherwise there will be some hidden information in the symbols, especially with outlaw maps. I know, a lot of the symbols are hard to make sense of so having “hidden” information can be even more confusing.

When you are looking at maps and trying to figure out symbols and information you should try to keep it logical and sometimes sneaky. Almost everybody has a sneaky side and you should employ that knowledge when looking at maps.

I have posted a photo of part of a map that contains “hidden” information. When you look at this carving the information isn’t really hidden, it’s very obvious but it is designed to be hidden to the casual observer. The T.S. has dots or drill holes by each letter but there is also a third dot or drill hole above the T. The average person would see this and assume it was someone’s initials and ignore the third dot. The three dots are indicating that you are looking for a triangle. I say “indicating” because in this case there was a triangle but in other cases the dots could be a number for a distance or the number of holes you are to find.

Another piece of hidden information in this carving is in the T itself. If you look at the vertical lines on each end of the top horizontal line you will see that one is perpendicular to the T and the other is slanted out and away from the T. These two lines also indicate that there is a triangle, showing a straight side and a slanted side. This would tell you that the three drill holes are a picture of what you are looking for, three individual points that make a triangle. If you look closely at the line that is slanted out away from the T you will notice that the carved line is hollowed out on the inside of the carving. This hollowing out is showing you the down hill side of the line. This information helps you know that the carving needs to be reversed based on the terrain around the area.

The third piece of hidden information in this carving is the fact that the T.S. was carved at a slant. It doesn’t show the slant very well in this photo because I took the photo at a slant so I could see the T.S. straight. The slant of the T.S. tells you how the triangle is laid out compared to the location of where the carving of the T.S. is.

The final hidden clue in this carving is the fact that it was meant to be looked at in reverse. Once you reversed the carving and looked at the slant and the “legs” on the T it gave you the layout of the triangle that is depicted by the three drill holes.

All of this information is very obvious if you are looking for it but the carving was designed to seem like something else than a map if looked at by somebody who isn’t suspicious enough to recognize the sneaky ways of an outlaw.

Memorial Day

We would like to wish everyone and and their families a safe holiday.

Modern day treasure found in Ohio

This information comes to us from one of our faithful readers. Thanks again Homer!

Have you ever wanted to search for sunken treasure but didn’t really want to go to the ocean? This article is about one of the many ways that treasures become lost treasures that could be found one day.

In Columbus, Ohio a home robbery took place during December 2007 that netted the lucky, or maybe not so lucky, bandits a treasure of gold, jewelry and other items valued at two million dollars!

Why were the thieves unlucky? Well to start with, they were thieves and although they got away for awhile they apparently weren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer because they were caught and convicted, six of them in total. Another reason why they weren’t so unlucky? The gold and jewels that they stole were apparently rare enough that they couldn’t sell them without someone knowing where they came from since there was a big media blitz about the robbery and the stolen items, giving the thieves more publicity than they bargained for.

This would have to suck for the home owners since the media prominently displayed their name and told everyone that the two million dollars of stuff was uninsured! I think the jury is still out on why the home owners had two million dollars of gold and jewelry that was uninsured. They may not have been any smarter than the thieves.

OK, back to the treasure. After about a year and a half one of the thieves finally gave up some information about where some of the ill-gotten loot was. According to the thief, several of them got scared because of the media attention and realized they wouldn’t be able to sell a lot of the things they stole. Being the brain trust that they are, they tossed a lot of the jewelry in the Scioto River.

Police divers began searching the river, at an undisclosed spot, two days ago and have already recovered $22,000 dollars worth of valuables including a Rolex watch valued at $16,000. The police said the Rolex was still running, I guess you get something for your sixteen thousand dollars!

The police say they are still searching for an additional $800,000 worth of property that was taken during the robbery and that they have no clue where to look. Do you think someone would get suspicious if you were walking around in the river with a metal detector?

Treasure is everywhere. Maybe in 100 years some lucky future treasure hunter will stumble upon the hiding spot of some of this present day treasure. Just think about how much treasure from the past like this is still out there somewhere for one of us to find.

Have you checked the batteries in your detector lately?

Clues with double meanings

On some trails that you work you will find a clue (or two) that might have a double meaning. The meanings can be anything because it depends on who made the clue and what information they were trying to impart. I guess I should point out that you can run into clues that may have more than just two meanings and might give you several pieces of information.

In the case of two of the photos I have posted with this article this clue was meant to be an eye catcher and give information about the “hole”. Besides being an eye catcher this clue showed a miniature of what I was looking for and gave the direction to travel to find the hole.

Both of these photos are of the same clue, just at a little different angle and distance and different time of the day. You can see how the drill hole made a large black dot in the side of this ravine. This made it very easy to find the drill hole as long as you had some idea the clue was supposed to be there. There was a clue about 65 feet before this one telling you to look for something along the side of the ravine. The drill hole was drilled into the north east side of the hill so that it would make a shadow “dot” through most of the day.

This drill hole is three and one half inches in diameter and sixteen and one half inches deep. The actual hole that this pointed to was sixteen and one half FEET deep. By traveling the direction that would take you into the drill hole you went over the top of the ravine and into a second ravine and the money hole was in that ravine directly opposite of where the drill hole was. The drill hole was on the northeast side of a ravine and the actual money hole was on the southwest side. Had you continued through the second ravine you would have walked over the hole. Just in case you were wondering, there was a third marker on the edge of the second ravine that said there was a hole and pointed directly to where the hole was.

The third photograph shows that clue. This was very small and on the edge of the ravine in a rock that was protruding from the edge of the ravine. The small drill hole (approximately one inch in diameter) in this particular case says there is a “hole” and if you followed the right side of the V cut in this rock it pointed directly at the money hole. If you followed the line the only place you could go was into the side of the ravine where the money hole was. There was nothing to indicate that you should climb up or out of the ravine. The money hole was approximately 12 feet from this clue.

Keep in mind that clues can and in most cases will be different from one site to another. Even if you have the same clue at two sites they may need to be interpreted differently. Hopefully this article won’t confuse anyone (too much).

This information is just meant to show you how things have worked for me and what you might consider when you are on your own site. Keep it simple, keep it logical and think in pictures, not words.

California Faith Healer

When it comes to states with the most lost treasure stories California has to be one of the biggest out there. There are literally thousands of stories and I’m sure there are even thousands more of unknown treasures too.

This article is for a friend of mine in California who seems to need something to do with his metal detector. If he ever gets time away from playing music and chasing the women he might go take a look at this!

Sometime around the turn of the century, 1900 that is, a faith healer appeared near Placerville, California and began selling his wares. Apparently he was pretty good at what he did or the people around Placerville at the time weren’t too bright because the faith healer amassed a huge fortune in paper money, gold coins and silver coins which he buried all around his property. The faith healer kept a herd of goats on his property and because of this he became known as the “Goat Doctor of El Dorado County”.

The goat doctor stayed busy for many years and it is estimated that he buried a minimum of $750,000 on his property. This estimate I might add is the FACE VALUE of what was buried. The gold and silver coins that are buried on the property are known to have dates on them starting in the 1800’s and going into the 1930’s.

How do they know what the dates on the coins are? You’re going to love this.

In 1979 the new owner of the property was doing some demolition work with a bulldozer and uncovered a “huge hoard of silver coins and bills”. When he started collecting the coins off of the ground there were so many that he filled three 5 gallon gas cans with coins!

Other construction workers that were there stopped working and began searching the old home that was being torn down. Three more caches were found, all in small pots. One was in what was left of the fire place and the other two were in the ground around the outside of the home. They also found $1,700 dollars of silver coins just scattered across the top of the ground from another cache they had hit with the dozer and didn’t see until they stopped working.

Some “professional treasure hunters” came along in 1980 and received permission to search the property for other caches. These men located an old rotted cloth sack buried at the base of a lone pine tree. The sack contained $7,000 face value of coins ranging from Indian head pennies to silver dollars. The dates on the coins were from the 1800’s on into the 1930’s.

In 1981 ten thousand dollars in silver coins was found buried in several coffee cans on the property and in that same year a metal boxed was discovered buried that contained $5,000 in paper money. I guess this is a silly question but how did the “professional treasure hunters” miss several coffee cans filled with coins and a metal box?

In 1982 the construction workers that had found the first treasures in 1979 came forward and said a couple of other construction workers had located a small man made “vault” that was approximately 4 feet by 4 feet in size. The vault contained an additional $20,000 in gold coins. This again is the face value and not the numismatic value.

It is thought that several other small caches may have secretly been removed by people sneaking onto the property after a story about the treasures being found hit the papers in the 1980’s.

How’s that for verification that treasure is there! If the estimates of how much was buried on the property are true, then there is a lot more out there just waiting for somebody with a metal detector to come along and recover it. The last information I had indicated the land owner will still let people treasure hunt on the property providing the get permission first.

So put down that guitar and get to swinging a detector! You can bring the girl with you. :-)

Will the real William Quantrill please stand up?

As with a lot of the famous or infamous people from the Civil War, mostly the notorious ones, they never really died when history says they did. At least that’s what we are led to believe by some people.

There have been many stories about William Quantrill and his raiders. The most notable stories would be the ones about the raid on Lawrence, KS and the ones that say he didn’t die and lived on, somewhere.

This article falls into the category of both sort of. William Quantrill didn’t die but instead, moved to Canada and lived out his life in obscurity as a drunk and a caretaker for some commercial property. That is until his story hit the papers and he was beaten to death by a mysterious man. Some stories say that this man was a Union soldier taking his revenge because of the Lawrence, KS raid. Other stories say the man who killed him was related to one of Quantrill’s men and took offense when this man said he was the real William Quantrill.

In 1907 the New York Times and several other papers across the nation printed an article about a man going by the name of John Sharpe. Mr. Sharpe was living in Quatsino Sound in British Columbia, Canada and had been telling people he was really William Quantrill. Yes, THE William Clarke Quantrill. According to Sharpe, or Quantrill if you care to believe, he had ridden out of Kentucky (where he was supposed to have died) and went to Chile for a while. He left Chile for Texas and became a cattle rancher there. After spending some time in Texas he moved on to Oregon where he drove cattle over the mountains and from Oregon he moved to British Columbia in 1897 where he remained until he died from complications of being severely beaten.

A timber merchant in British Columbia by the name of J.E. Duffy said he recognized Mr. Sharpe as being the real Quantrill. J. E. Duffy stated he had been a member of the Michigan troop of men that had “cut up Quantrill’s force” and had seen William Quantrill in person. Mr. Sharpe apparently chose not to deny these claims as he had been telling others in Quatsino Sound that he was indeed, William Quantrill. Mr. Sharpe or Quantrill had been working as a watchman/caretaker for the West Vancouver Coal Company when the story came out. I should mention that Mr. Sharpe did most of his talking about being Quantrill after having several drinks! It is said that when he bought his “devil’s brew”, he did so several cases at a time. He also didn’t quite live out his life in total obscurity while in Canada. He was arrested at least once and spent a few months in the local jail for aiding a felon.

Once the story about a man claiming to be Quantrill hit the papers two men, one identified as U.S. Senator Isaac Bingham and the other his friend, John M. Edmunson took it upon themselves to travel to Canada where Mr. Edmunson beat Mr. Sharpe severely after the two had been drinking for several hours. A witness to the men drinking said that the two consumed “two bottles of rum and brandy, and then they drank a bottle of whiskey. “ My question would be; how the hell did these two even stand up, much less fight? At the time it was determined by the local constable that no crime had been committed since Mr. Sharpe was still alive when Mr. Edmunson left him and Mr. Sharpe was agitated at the constable and refused to talk about the fight. Mr. Edmunson boarded a steamer headed for Victoria just a day after the beating. The seventy year old Mr. Sharpe died from his injuries several days later, unable to eat because of some of his injuries.

Several people were interviewed back in 1907 and said that they remember John Sharpe showing them a set of Colt revolvers with the initials of W.C.Q. engraved on the handles. Although several people had seen these revolvers, they weren’t found among Mr. Sharpe’s personal belongings after his death. The constable investigating the death did find several letters from William Quantrill’s mother in Ohio among the personal effects. The constable stated in his report that “on examination, I found them of no importance” and they have since been lost to history.

John Sharpe is buried in the Port Hardy Cemetery in Canada.

Apparently Mr. Sharpe never mentioned anything about any huge depositories of money left behind by a certain secret group so you KGC guys shouldn‘t get your hopes up. Was he really William Quantrill? I will leave that to you to decide. Personally, I’m just wondering why these guys didn’t die from alcohol poisoning.

I would like to thank my friend Paul from British Columbia for the initial information on this story and for pointing me in the right direction for more.

More from Comanche, Oklahoma

Besides the Spanish settlement, the arrastra and the possibility of a ton or so of gold and silver being hidden near Comanche, Oklahoma there are other possibilities of treasure to be found in the area.

Around the area of Comanche and Comanche Lake there have been several things found over the years. A solid silver statue was found “in a washout in Lost Canyon”. The statue apparently became known as the “Silver Doll”.

A little while later several silver bells were discovered in Lost Canyon also. Is it just me, because if the canyon is “lost” then how did they know where they were when they found the silver bells? Lost Canyon is supposed to be located about three miles east of Comanche Lake.

Also found in the area around Comanche was a small box containing Spanish coins. This box was accidentally plowed up by a farmer working his field one day. There were several “lead wedges” reportedly found about one mile southeast of Comanche Lake.

I have recently been told by one of our readers, a man in a position to know, that there were some lead plates found in the area around Comanche, Oklahoma. The plates had etchings or carvings on them telling about 424 Moffat gold ingots. I’m not sure if the lead plates and the lead wedges are the same thing but it would probably be worth investigating.

Another one of our readers supplied some additional information about the markings to the Spanish gold. Apparently the man that owned that land got tired of treasure hunters sneaking onto his property looking for the treasure so he bulldozed all of the carvings away. I guess it’s just me but I think I would have found a different way of keeping people away, maybe like digging up the treasure myself!

Maybe one of these days I can get permission to post a photo of one of the lead plates.

With all of this stuff being found around Comanche and Comanche Lake, it begs the question, what else could be out there? Are there other clues that no one has found or reported? Are the gold Moffat ingots mentioned on the lead plates hidden around Comanche? Could there be more boxes of Spanish coins buried in the prairie? How come we’re not all moving to Comanche, Oklahoma??

Did I mention how close Comanche was to Marlow? See you all June 13th!

Spanish Gold and Silver in Oklahoma

In Stephens County, Oklahoma near the town of Comanche lies a large cache of Spanish Gold and silver bars. For those of you that have read Oklahoma Treasures and Treasure Tales by Steve Wilson this won’t be new but for those of you that haven’t………..

Near the town of Comanche in Oklahoma is Mud Creek. Somewhere on Mud Creek there is said to be buried “14 jack loads” of Spanish gold and silver bars. I think we established several months ago that a jack load is somewhere between 135 and 150 pounds. That would mean that on the low side, you are talking about over 1800 pounds of precious metal languishing in the ground somewhere. With gold at over $900 per ounce, you’re talking about one hell of a retirement party!

Back in the early 1900’s there were signs to the treasure that could still be seen. These signs included carvings of a snake, a half moon and a turtle. We all know what a turtle means when you’re hunting Spanish treasure right? It means TREASURE is near! Other markings in the area were the carved letters of MINA, EMA and VWC. There was also a carved cross found.
These symbols and others were carved into trees and rocks in the area around Mud Creek. I’m sure that most of the trees the carvings were on are gone now but I would think (or hope) that some of the rock carvings would still be around. The letters and the cross were all carved into rock but they were well worn back in the 1970’s.

In 1905 there were two “Mexicans” that showed up in Comanche who said they were looking for the “14 jack loads of gold” but they apparently didn’t find anything and left empty handed.
Stories from “old Indians” in the area say that the Spanish had a settlement near Comanche and soldiers from the settlement would leave on occasion with several empty wagons and return with the wagons full, leaving deep ruts in the ground when they returned. A normal person could attribute some of these trips to bringing ordinary supplies to the settlement however, there could probably be one or more of these wagon trains that had something else in them. Something that required a smelter.

A previous treasure hunter searching this area is said to have found an arrastra about five miles south and east of Comanche. Why would the Spanish need a rock crusher if they weren’t processing ore?

Mud Creek is more east than south of Comanche (about 9 miles east) but nothing says the Spanish would have hidden their treasure close to the settlement or even close to where the arrastra was. Oh, I might mention that there is an East and West Mud Creek along with just Mud Creek. A little more research on this story just might bring a big smile to your face. After a lot of digging of course!

Did I mention that Comanche, Oklahoma is less than 25 miles from Marlow? June 13th is right around the corner!

Outlaw Loot in Oklahoma. Really!

If it wasn’t for the outlaws we would have a lot less to look for!

Back in the late 1800’s three bandits robbed a bank in Kansas and headed south for their get-away. Their intended stopping point was Texas however they ran into a few problems along the way. Once they got close to the “foothills of the Wichita Mountains” in Oklahoma they were attacked. The story doesn’t say who attacked them but we might as well blame it on the Indians since it was Indian territory at the time.

Two of the three men were killed during the attack and the third was wounded. The wounded man buried the stolen money south of Geronimo, Oklahoma. The money was thought to be in an area about four miles west and two miles south of the town. Once the money was buried the third man headed for Texas, eventually arriving in Dallas. After arriving in Dallas the third robber was told he was going to die so, probably knowing treasure hunters some day would need something to do, he told his story about the robbery, the attack and hiding the money to a nurse that was caring for him.

Is this story true? In 1907 a skeleton with two rifles, a saddle and several spent cartridges were found in a large pasture south of Geronimo. Along with the saddle and rifles there were several silver “Indian trinkets” and two wallets found with the skeleton. The wallets even had money in them!

In 1910 a second skeleton was found just north of the first skeleton. It would seem that the robber who did make it to Texas was off just a little on where he thought he buried the loot. Both skeletons were found about six miles south and three miles west of Geronimo. This is a lot farther south than was stated in the original story. It is thought that the buried money is somewhere very near where the two skeletons were found.

For those of you coming to the get together in June, Geronimo isn’t that far from Marlow, Oklahoma.

400 Million Dollar Emerald

The information for this article was submitted to us by one of our readers. Thanks Homer!

It seems that just before Christmas of 2008 detectives from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department opened a crate outside of a warehouse to find an object they had been searching for since September.

The object, an 840 pound emerald originally discovered in Brazil, had reportedly been stolen about three months earlier. The man who reported the emerald stolen was identified as Larry Biegler. He said he had the emerald stored in a warehouse for safe keeping but that two businessmen from Idaho had taken it.

When the two men from Idaho were confronted they claimed that the emerald was used as collateral in a diamond deal that fell through and they were simply collecting on the collateral put up by Larry Biegler.

Since the emerald has been found there have been at least five different people come forward to claim ownership of the stone. According to Lt. Thomas Grubb of the Sheriff’s Department; “It seems like the more we talk to people, the more people claim to have ownership of this thing”. The story says that apparently Mr. Biegler didn’t actually own the stone but was in the process of purchasing it when he decided to use it for collateral for another deal. This sounds like some kind of government deal, huh? Everybody gets money but nobody actually owns anything.

The emerald was originally found in 2001 in an emerald mine in eastern Brazil. The mine owner kept the rock until 2005 when it was shipped to the U.S. to be sold. During that time the emerald was submerged in seawater from Hurricane Katrina while it was being stored in a warehouse in New Orleans and then shipped to another warehouse in California before the two Idaho businessmen got their hands on it.

As it stands now, the ownership of the super huge emerald is limbo, waiting for the Los Angeles court to decide who the real owner is.

The black rock weighs in at 840 pounds and has green crystal cylinders the size of your arm sticking out of it. Those arm sized emerald crystals are considered so rare that the rock was appraised at a value of 372 million dollars before it left Brazil.

Now that’s a rock I would like to find!