Treasure Tales, Hawaii

It is the winter you know and when you are cold and surrounded by snow and ice, thinking about a nice warm place to treasure hunt can make the day a whole lot better. There may not be too many people interested in this one but for the travelers out there, or the ones lucky enough to live there, I have a treasure story for you in the tropics. On the Big Island of Hawaii there is a huge treasure buried by pirates who were all captured and turned over to the Spanish.

In 1818 there was an Englishman named Turner (no, it’s not the guy from the Pirates of the Caribbean) who sailed a ship into Kealekeua Bay. (that would be pronounced kay-a-lay-kay-ou-a) The ship was loaded with a huge church treasure that included crosses, candlesticks, gold and silver goblets along with gold and silver coins, all belonging to the Spanish. The name of the ship that he sailed into the bay was the “Victory”. Mr. Turner and his pirate crew off loaded their treasure, which consisted of a large number of chests, boxes and kegs and carried it inland from Kealekeua Bay. Mr. Turner then set about selling the Victory to King Kamehameha but before the king could take possession of his new vessel a Spanish Man-O-War sailed into the bay and told the king that the vessel had been stolen.

Apparently Mr. Turner and his crew borrowed the ship in Buenos Aires and raided several churches along the coast of Chile before arriving at the Big Island of Hawaii. King Kamehameha, being just a little miffed that he had been sold a stolen ship, had his minions round up Mr. Turner and the other pirates and promptly turned them over to the Spanish.

It is said the treasure was taken inland on the north side of Kealekeua Bay and buried in the hills or hidden away in one of the many caves in the hills. There have not been any reports of this treasure ever being found. Arggggg!!

Treasure Tales, Oklahoma

A valley leading into the Wichita Mountains on the northwest side known as Cutthroat Gap is one of those places you could set up camp in and just stay for months chasing down treasure stories. Cutthroat Gap gets its name from an Indian massacre that occurred in 1833. The Osage Indians attacked a Kiowa Indian village located in the valley while most of the Kiowa warriors were off attacking another tribe. All of the men in the Kiowa tribe that were in the village at the time were killed along with most of the 150 women and children. The Osage Indians cut the heads from the bodies and left them in a row of kettles throughout the village. I’m sure you can guess why the valley is now known as Cutthroat Gap.

Steve Wilson, in his book “Oklahoma Treasures and Treasure Tales” covered some information about Cutthroat Gap but for those of you that don’t have his book here are a few of the stories about this intriguing place.

Besides the Indian massacre that took place you also have the story of the Missouri traders that were returning home from Santa Fe in 1833 with $10,000 in silver coins. The Kiowa Indians attacked the traders and most of the traders were killed but the ones that survived buried the majority of the coins in the sand in Cutthroat Gap. The Indians had found a few loose coins on the ground and once they discovered the value of the coins the Kiowas returned to the site of the attack where they searched for and apparently found some of these coins. It is said that during heavy rains a few silver coins occasionally get washed up where they can be seen on the ground.

You also have the story of the payroll of $96,000 in gold coins headed for Fort Sill that never made it. Seven outlaws committed this robbery several miles from the Charley Crossing stage station. The outlaws headed for the Wichita Mountains after the robbery. Soldiers from Fort Sill found the outlaws camped in Cutthroat Gap and as happened in those days, got into a gunfight with the group. Five of the outlaws were killed and two escaped with the gold. They rode west to a creek crossing thought to be about four miles south of Cold Springs, on the lower part of Otter Creek. The sacks of gold were buried on the west side of the creek and the two outlaws continued on with their escape. The old crossing was thought to be known as the Navajo Trail and the gold is supposed to be close to this location.

In 1925 four men from Texas came to the area of Cold Springs with a map. They were seeking an old crossing, which they found, but they never found any gold.

Not far from Cutthroat Gap you have a Jesse James treasure in the amount of $180,000. This was said to have been the proceeds from a robbery at Dodge City. This treasure is supposed to be hidden in a sealed cave with several clues leading to it. I believe if this treasure is still out there it will be located on the refuge now somewhere around Mount Pinchot and out of reach of most treasure hunters.

There is a story of another robbery that occurred in Lawton, Oklahoma in the early 1900s. The outlaws who committed this robbery also fled to the area of Cutthroat Gap where they stashed their ill-gotten gains. They continued to run from the law and apparently never got back to claim their treasure.

A “bandit queen” was supposed to have hidden out in Cutthroat Gap. The story doesn’t say who the bandit queen was but it may have been Belle Star, she was known to have been in the Wichita Mountains area. The bandit queen had a cabin north of Squaw Mountain and west of Mount Pinchot. It is thought she buried some of her plunder around where her cabin was.

There is supposed to be an abandoned and sealed gold mine just north of Cutthroat Gap. It could be that this mine, or even another spot is rich with gold ore. In 1976 a prospector find a piece of quartz north of Cutthroat Gap, just outside of the refuge line that assayed at 40% gold. This would be well worth finding at today’s gold prices.

This should wet your whistle a little as far as treasure stories go. I will endeavor to post some others, even some for different states other than Oklahoma in the future.

RESEARCH

Research, research, research. That’s all you here anybody that does a lot of treasure hunting talk about. That’s because research will save you valuable time and money in the long run by proving or disproving the existence of what you are looking for. It will also help you find locations, find information about what you might find at a location and possibly even how to read the clues that are at different locations.

Everybody understands the fundamentals of research but doing in depth research will give you a better understanding of history, the real history, and make you a better treasure hunter. Information that can prove useful to the treasure hunter can be found in a myriad of places including the local library, county courthouses, historical societies, museums and the internet just to name a few. In this article I will endeavor to explain what you might find in some of these places but by no means will this be an in depth accounting of the type of places you can get useful information.

We all understand going to our local library to research the person or group that we think left behind the treasure we are looking for but one thing you might try is doing research at the local library near where you are going to hunt. If you aren’t hunting near your hometown then the information in the closest library to where you are hunting could be invaluable. Libraries carry information about the local area that you won’t find anywhere else. You will also be amazed at what type of information the library employees have at the tip of their tongues. I once located a cave known to have been used by Jesse and Frank James just by asking the librarian about books that dealt with the local caves and rock formations.

On the subject of libraries and books, I would suggest that you look for a series of books called the “Historical Atlas of “. I have a few of these for states that I hunt in a lot and they are a very good source of information. The Historical Atlas of Oklahoma for instance shows the locations of all of the different tribes that were in Oklahoma, it shows the location of all of the forts and tells you when they existed, it gives information about the different explorers that were in the state, cattle trails, claims made by the Spanish, French and British, land openings, county information, battles, etc. This is all in a simple format that makes it easy to go right to the piece of information you want.

County courthouses can be an untold wealth of information. The county appraiser (or assessor) will have land ownership records going back to the beginning of the county giving you the names and locations of the property owners. They will have a map of the county, usually hanging on the wall, that shows the county and how the personal property is divided and who currently owns what. This is great for identifying landowners who may not live on the property you want to search. The cartographer’s office will have up to date aerial photos of the entire county and these will be actual aerial photos and not satellite photos so there will be more detail in them. You can also obtain copies of the old county maps from the courthouse and get information about floods or major disasters that may affect how you look for your treasure.

Okie Treasure Hunter has said before that you should look at the BLM, Bureau of Land Management, records. This again is a wealth of information, having old maps of areas that will give you the old names of the creeks and rivers in the event they have changed. These maps can show you how a creek or river may have changed course over time that may affect where you look for that treasure. Most of this is free from their web site.

The state historical society is a great place for finding information. They too have the old maps and sometimes even old photos of areas that may be of interest. You can read the old newspapers and look at the different books that may have history about the state or county. Most states and some counties will have a series of books entitled the “Chronicles” of this or that. These will have good information in them and they are usually broken down by area or dates. I would also look for books written specifically about the state or county at the historical societies. There are books that were published, some even by the state, that aren’t in print anymore but can give you leads to treasure sites. In searching through some old books in a state historical society I ran across a book that had been published by the state that showed pictures and gave the general location of several different petroglyph sites. The writers of the book had correctly identified most of the petroglyphs as being made by American Indians however………… there were several that were definitely treasure related and by getting copies of the pages out of this book I now had leads to treasure sites I never knew existed.

Some counties have their own historical societies or a museum that keeps historical information about the area. Don’t forget to look for these places also.

One of the biggest boons to research has been computers and the Internet. If I had had a computer and the internet thirty years ago, I would have started banging my head on my desk a lot sooner than I did but; I also would have been able to search the Internet. Using the Internet anyone with minimal computer skills such as myself can disprove most of the so-called information in Jesse James was One of His Names in about twenty minutes. You can also get access to old maps and books and even sites like this blog.

Research is definitely a topic that can’t be covered in just one post. I will try to revisit this topic later with even more places to find information that can be useful to the modern day treasure hunter.

Livestock Brands

Many times while searching in the field you may come across carvings that look like they are treasure related. Countless hours can be spent researching and working these carvings without any results. This could be due to the fact that the carving was nothing more than a livestock brand some bored cowboy carved into rock or sandstone. The area in which I live was used for grazing by Texas ranchers during the 19th century. I have seen their brands used to mark the sections of land they claimed for grazing. This was a free grazing area with few fences up until the time it was opened for settlement. Oklahoma and Texas both had a number of cattle trails crossing through the states as well.

To get an idea of what I'm talking about I would recommend you visit any number of websites that picture livestock brands from the 1800's. There are a few books that cover this subject as well. I'll include a link that shows some of the brands from a county in Texas. I hope that this small hint will save you time out in the field. http://www.rootsweb.com/~txpresid/brands.html

METAL DETECTORS, some basics

Everybody wants to find that big treasure, some of us will settle for the small ones, but to find almost any of them you have to have the right knowledge and the right equipment.

When you get past reading all of the symbols and get to the point of where you think there should be something buried, it’s always nice to get a signal from a detector letting you know there’s something there. Unless you just like digging holes and moving boulders, you will own at least one metal detector and if you’re like most, you will own two or more. Knowing how to use your detector to maximize it’s signal is one of the most important things you can do. Having the right detector for the job will make a big difference also.

Hunting Spanish treasure sometimes requires different equipment than hunting outlaw treasure because the depths can be drastically different. Most of the outlaw treasure you encounter will generally be less than four feet deep, most will be in the two to three foot range. When hunting in this range a good two-box detector is a must but for some of the more shallow caches you might get away with a good single coil detector with good ground balance circuitry. I was lucky enough to be taught a few things about some detectors by a friend of mine. His information saved me a lot of money and sweat, not having to lug around a heavy detector when a light one would do a better job.

For anyone that is interested, I would highly recommend you check into the machines made by Tesoro, especially the Tejon, the El Dorado or even the older model Bandido I or II. I don’t want this to turn into an advertisement but the Tesoros have a really good ground balancing circuit, which is why they work so well and have become one of my favorite detectors.

If you are looking for a good two-box detector then I would recommend one of the older White’s TM-808s with the separate cave mode. The Fisher Geminis are good machines however I prefer the TM-808 over the Fishers. Another good two-box is the TF-900. This is almost an exact duplicate of the White’s TM-808 but I have heard they work a little better. I have never owned one of the TF-900s but have been told they are fine machines.

Another detector I would recommend is a “magnetic locator” used by surveyors and others to locate steel and iron. The draw back to this machine is it only locates ferrous metals; which leaves out gold and silver. The plus to this machine is the depth. The manufacturer, Schonstedt Instrument Company, says in it’s literature about this product that it will find an eighteen inch long piece of ¾ inch pipe at NINE feet deep. It has been my experience in the field with one of these that this is not an exaggeration. The model I use is the GA-52Cx. These normally retail between $665 and $885 new but if you watch some of the on-line auction sites like E-Bay you can find them for $300-$400.

At this point you are probably wondering why I would even recommend one of these if all you are looking for is gold and silver. There are people who look for antique firearms and buried cannons that would find one of these machines handy, but the thing you need to remember is that outlaws buried their caches inside things such as iron tea pots and dutch ovens. If you know that you are looking for a ferrous object then you just can’t go wrong with one of these. For you metal clue enthusiasts this would be a must have. They are light, only have two controls and run off of 9 volt batteries.

Something we should all already know but may forget from time to time is always check that hole once you pull something out of it. The chance of a second cache a little deeper or a few coins that slipped out of the first one is always present.

I would also highly recommend that you detect trees for clues or even caches. I can guarantee you from personal experience that they did hide things in the trees and at the base of trees.

There are many different types of detectors out there made by almost as many different companies so choosing the right one can be a daunting task sometimes. If at all possible I would try to borrow one from someone you know or even rent one if there is a place in your area and try some different machines and see how you like them. Do your research and try to match the machine to the task you have in mind.

I told you it was just the basics!

Hoot Owl Trees

What does a TIV (tornado intercept vehicle) and treasure hunting have to do with one another? The answer would be nothing. It's just a really interesting vehicle. This is the same one used on the show "Storm Chasers" featured on the Discovery Channel.

Indian trees, hoot owl trees, and goal post trees are often referred to in the world of treasure hunting, but mother nature can make these as well. The trees I have posted pictures of were all found just a short distance from my house. All of them are natural and aren't treasure related.

I have a friend who spent some time in Georgia treasure hunting. He found a number of these old trees marking trails. The locals called them Indian Trees. These trees would occasionally lead him to springs, camping areas, and caves.

There are often scars on the bark in the area where rawhide or rope had been used to tie them down, so that they would grow in the direction of desired travel. This is one way to help differentiate between manmade and natural hoot owl trees.

Jesse James would often draw trees on his maps. There is a problem with that though. Jesse intended to return and recover his loot within a short period of time. Over a century has passed since he made these maps and most of these trees are long gone. Tornados, wildfires, wood cutters, and any number of other things have destroyed them over the years. Trees can be a very important part of treasure hunting, but make sure the trail you're following isn't due to the work of mother nature.

READING CARVED SYMBOLS

Many of you have already seen this carving because it was posted on a treasure hunting forum but I thought I would post it here and try to explain it’s meaning. Reading carved symbols is first about determining if they are treasure related and then if they are a map or a clue in a map.

Once you have determined the carving you are looking at is a map you have to decipher the symbols and find the hole(s). Pretty basic stuff, at least one would think. Carved maps are generally very close to what is buried and most, if not all of the information you need to find the hole is in the map. There are occasions that a map won’t give you all of the information because the person or group who made the carving was just giving themselves enough information to jog their own memory about where the cache is hidden. Those are a completely different story and require at least one bottle of aspirin or alcohol depending on your preference!

This particular carving had me stumped for about six months until I got lucky, yes lucky. Having a little or even a lot of good luck on your side is never a bad thing! I was looking at a satellite photo of the area where this carving goes and it just popped out at me. Now mind you, I had looked at that same photo for months but I was trying to make it harder than it actually was so I never saw what was right there in front of my eyes.

This carving was made on a small rock outcropping at the top of a hill. The location of the caches ended up being just a little over 75 feet away and could be plainly seen from the location of the carving. Everything you needed could be seen from the carving if you were looking for it. The Ks in the carving are topographical features. Part of the hill the carving was on had been manipulated, they had dug a three foot deep trench 100 yards long to form the back of the first K. Other than that, everything else was natural.

If you look at the carving you will see that one K is bigger and sits higher on the carving than the other. This positioning of the Ks was to show elevation. The first K was higher on the side of the hill than the second K. The W or what looks like a W is actually two V points pointing you down from the top of the hill, directly below the carving, which is where the Ks are located. It was my assumption that there was one point for each K.

The carving has drill holes in it to tell you how many caches you are looking for. This carving basically says find the two Ks. From the end point on the angled bottom leg of the highest elevation K you will go in a straight line parallel with the back of the K (this is the trench they dug). The distance to go was figured out by measuring the back of the K in the carving and measuring the line that takes you to the treasure. By knowing the trench that formed the back line of the K in the layout was 300 feet long you could use the length of the two lines in the carving to formulate the distance to go.

Along with a picture of the carving I have added two satellite photos of the area. The first is just the photo and the second is the photo with the Ks and hole locations marked. The yellow dot is where the carving is located; the red dots are two of the cache locations.

As far as carvings go, this was a simple one, if you can actually call them simple. It only had a few steps to go through to find what you were looking for. It was very straight forward and when looked at properly gave you all of the information you needed, the topography, the elevation, the complete layout and what direction to go and an exact distance. You just had to know what the Ks were.

Most of the other carvings I have run into aren’t this short, straightforward or simple. OK, not simple, let’s say less complicated, but I will tell you from experience, DO NOT try to over think things. Most of the mistakes that are made working these kinds of carvings are made because we try to make it harder than it really is.