Dutch John's Pot of Gold

John Shuttlebar aka "Dutch John" was an early day Oklahoma Hermit. When he wasn't operating his ferry you could find him searching  for a bean pot full of gold and silver rumored to be worth $20,000 face value. The area he centered his search was near the junction of East and West Cache Creeks in Cotton County Oklahoma. According to the map, John had been given by his father who lay on his death bed, the money could be found in a triangle formed by three large oak trees.

Though Ol' Dutch John searched for the long lost money up until his death, sometime around 1918, he never was able to find the buried iron pot and small fortune it held. This would be a good treasure for a modern day hunter with a Schonstedt to go on the search for. More details can probably be found in old copies of the Temple Tribune.

Good Luck and Good Hunting!

Treasure Hunting Around the World

I get request for help with treasure sites from all over the country but in the past few months those request have been coming from all over the world. While I have helped with a Roman era treasure site in the past I have to admit I don't know much about Persian treasure. I'm kind of an outlaw and Spanish treasure kind of guy, so if any of our readers have experience with middle eastern treasure hunting feel free to e-mail me and I will get you in touch with our fellow overseas treasure hunting friends who are seeking help. If you may know of any books or websites that deal with this please feel free to contact me as well. okietreasurehunter@msn.com

Back In Time: Lost Gold of Oklahoma

I thought the OETA guys did a great job of putting this show together. I've had a number of people express their desire to see more shows like it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXPwLAbb2Fc

Watch Treasure Hunters In Action

There is a growing interest in treasure hunting, and judging by the number of hits the blog gets each time a show comes on tv, that interest is growing. Here's an online site that you can watch treasure hunters in action. http://www.ovguide.com/tv/treasure_hunters.htm  

Texas Vacation

Early one morning a few weeks ago my wife awoke with an urge to go pick up seashells on a beach somewhere. We packed up the car and headed south to Galveston Island, Texas. Of course my sons and I decided a side trip to the Cabela's Store was in order on the way down.

Having spent over a year on the sea I no longer have a desire to see the sun rise up on the water but my wife did, so the next day we were up before daylight heading to the ferry that crosses over to the Bolivar Peninsula. For some reason the TSA guys at the ferry entrance decided my family of four looked like a group of terrorist and pulled us out of the line so that they could search our car. Now remember we had made a stop at Cabela's and had a few boxes of ammo in the trunk. Just imagine the thoughts I was having of my car stripped apart as they looked for the guns the ammo went to. Fortunately they just had me pop the trunk and hood so they could take a quick look.

I did make note that they didn't pull any of the cars to the side that had occupants not born here in the good ol' USA. It could have been my Oklahoma license plate that triggered their need to search us.

Once on the Bolivar side we headed towards Roll Over Pass which happens to have the best spot for gathering seashells. I also found reminders of the hurricane that just about swept the place away. I picked up pieces of bright colored tile and a ceiling fan blade.

From there we headed north to Glen Rose Texas. This is a great little town to visit. I recommend eating at Hollywood and Vine. The food was delicious. We also made a trip to the Creation Evidence Museum. Just after you turn onto the road to the museum there's the Stone Hut. You have to stop in and look around. It was well worth the trip just to talk to Morris Bussey. You can go to http://www.glenrosefossilhunter.com/ or look him up on Youtube. You can find dinosaur tracks in the local streams around the Glen Rose area.

All of this got us in the mood to find a few fossils ourselves, so once again we loaded up and took off driving towards the Mineral Wells Fossil Park where you can find and keep the fossils that you come across. On the way up we made another side  trip to Granbury where J. Frank Dalton is buried. The town seems to have become a tourist trap and I couldn't find anyone on the square with an interest in J. Frank, so we drove the short distance to the cemetery and located his grave. There were pennies scattered across the tombstone. I'm not sure if people left them there for luck much like a wishing well, but to not be left out I placed one there as well.

Mineral Wells is an interesting area, but I didn't have a detector with me to go looking for the gold that Frank James had supposedly hidden in the area. After a couple of hours of searching for fossils we decided that we had enough of being on vacation and headed north to our beloved Oklahoma. There's nothing like sleeping in your own bed.

What were the trains carrying back in the day?

Here's another tidbit from Rick. I can see why trains were targets for outlaws.




This excerpt is from The History of Linn County Iowa by Luther Brewer and Barthinius Wick


After the completion of the railroad, Mr. Reiner was given a position as ex-
press messenger on one of the trains. "Many times," said the veteran express
messenger, "I have literally had the car floor paved with gold and silver, over
which I walked in doing my work. We had carried lots of gold and silver bars
east from Virginia City, in Nevada. In order that the weight should be evenly
distributed the bars were spread like paving bricks all over the car floor. The
following description, written by a reporter from one of the Council Bluffs
papers while Mr. Reiner was yet at Boone, gives a description of the work! of
carrying the bullion :

"While viewing the scenes at the transfer yesterday afternoon, we boarded
W. F. Reiner's Northwestern express car and beheld a scene that caused our bump
of inquisitiveness to jump. Mr. Reiner is a messenger of the American Merchants
Union Express company, and will have served in his present position and on his
present route seven years in November next. He lives in Boone. On the floor
of his car were sixty-seven gold and silver bricks. That is, each brick was com-
posed of gold and silver in compound. In some of them, silver predominated —
in value. They resemble silver almost entirely in color. They are of somewhat
irregular sizes, though nearly every one of them weighs more than one hundred
pounds. Some of them were much more refined than the others. The amount
of gold and silver in each one is stamped on the face or top, in different lines, and
the total value of the brick is added in a third line. The value of each metal is
marked, even to a cent. How those values can be so accurately determined in a
compound brick is beyond our knowledge.

 Fifty-seven of those bricks which we yesterday saw, were worth $101,950.80. The remaining eleven were worth $15,077.57. They were mostly from Virginia City and are being taken to New York. Mr. Reiner informed us also that these bricks are carried only by the Northwestern and Rock Island roads. On some days he has had as many as 160 of them in his car. They are taken east nearly every day."

Is a Steel Penny in Our Near Future?

It cost more to make a penny than it is worth, so say goodnye to the copper/zinc penny and welcome the steel penny. I have a large pile of the 1943 steel pennies, so having one made 70 years later in my collection is fine with me. This will also bring the legal melting of copper pennies one step closer to reality. I have mixed feelings about this though. Please leave a comment with your thoughts on the subject.

http://coincollectingenterprises.com/copper-pennies/penny-composition-change-steel-pennies