QUESTIONS RELATING TO LOST TREASURES AND GOLD MINES, ETC

[Kentucky Kache]

There is usually at least a little truth in every story. I need to know more than whether or not the characters existed, as most treasure tales are told about actual characters. I need to know that the treasure existed, but I need more still. It's my job as a cache hunter to weed through it and find reasons to believe, as well as reasons not to believe the treasure was actually hid. If the balance tips toward true, I have a lead that is at least worth checking out. Put all your reasons to believe (that the treasure was hid) in one hand, and then put all your reasons to not believe, in the other hand. Now, which hand is fullest? And it's important to be honest with yourself, because it's true that most of these stories are just stories. But I have found reasons to believe things that came from a story. That probably don't happen often, but it CAN happen, because every great once in awhile truth comes to be told as a story. So, do your own research, and make up your own mind. Who cares if 999 out if 1000 are false? That means there is one that is true. If nothing else, the search keeps you young.

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

A History of Mining on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska - Grab it through Amazon!

[Seamuss]

A lot of lost treasures are people who buried their valuable stuff(jars of coins{silver,gold}) on their property during the depression because they did not trust banks(or the government). They usually stashed it where they could keep an eye on the location and only the spouse if anyone would be privy to the stash would know where to access it in emergencies. If the house burned down and the cache wash byried close by then they would rebury the cache or pass on without telling anyone else and the treasure would still be there for some one else to find if they knew how to research the farms or houses of the depression.

Bank loot of the nineteenth century could be of semilar caches if the researcher knew how the robbers hid their ill gotten loot. A lot of it was retrieved by the local law back then or the robbers were shot and killed before they talked assuming the law thought the robbers did not have time to stash it.

Some of the treasures now are items stashed in the attics and barns of old buildings abandend by your great grandparents generation.

 

[lastleg]

Have you ever seen a sway backed horse and wondered what happened to
it? That poor nag had to carry 300 lbs of gold bars 40 miles with 30 mounted
rurales chasing him and the rider before giving them the slip for enough time
to bury the loot 6 ft deep before resuming the chase another 15 miles before
getting plugged 8 times and getting dragged 2 miles by his bootheels. Living
only long enough to mutter with ragged breath "I planted it back on that strip
of government land."

 

[rockhound]

Like the lady said, there is no treasure out there.Don't even attempt to try to locate it. Your search will be futile. Send her or me your detecting equipment for proper disposal. If you are looking for treasure in a certain spot, then you are looking in the wrong spot,because whoever left,buried,stole or lost it,forgot where it was lost, or intentionally told those interested it was in another direction,to throw them off the trail. Good Luck. rockhound

 

[lastleg]

That was MR Oro

 

[rockhound]

Whichever one said it,It was the truth.If you knew or thought you knew where a large treasure was, and were able to buy the property,with other peoples money,would you not buy that property in order to hunt,retrieve it at will. The gov't reads tresure tales, and acesses the truth behind them. They bought a large section of land near Bedford,Va. and built a military complex on top of the mountain where Beale's treasure is supposedly buried. Before that it was part of the blue ridge parkway,also part of the national forest system.Almost all of the peaks of Otter are now under gov't control.Good Luck. rockhound

 

[gollum]

Harley,

I have researched literally hundreds of Hidden Treasure, Buried Loot, Lost Mines/Ledges, etc. stories. I have found that there is usually some truth in most of them. What you have to weed out (which is much harder), is which stories have become intertwined, and which stories started with one and branched out into the same story in 50 locations. Also you need to figure out just how much the value of each story was stretched with each retelling.

The biggest thing I ran into was when you talk to locals who know their history, many times you find out that the loot was found and spent many years ago.

The moral of my story is........if you find a story that you want to look for......do your research.

Best-Mike

 

[lastleg]

Most of the yarns can be written off by examining the details. Some are so
comical you wonder who could believe it. It helps if you are familiar with the
area in question. The "frenchmen" who stole staggering amounts of gold in
Taos vicinity and travelled to OK panhandle and then sent scouts to New Orleans and while waiting for them to get back went back along the Sante Fe
passage planting house size boulders on end as markers all the way to Clayton.
Whew, and people still think it's legit.
I have a relative who left his wife and job behind to hunt for the Lost Adams
and may be still looking. Last I heard he was broke and trying to get a grub-
stake. He broke all ties with his family to seek a legend that is probably baloney
IMHO. I'll get heat from this but the KGCers who fall for the looneytune mega
cache mirage spread all over the USA fall into the category of starry eyed
amateurs who do not understand history or human nature. If it doesn't make
sense it probably never happened.
But truth is stranger than fiction. Ergo two stories I have investigated in the
last two years are legit and another is a probable. The moral is don't waste
time on fairy tales.

 

[Oroblanco]

Thanks for the clarification amigo, not that I disagree with the Mrs (Mrs O that is) on a lot of issues but this one she would probably disagree with my post.

Treasure stories seem to be viewed pretty darkly, surely this can't be due to the "sour grapes" effect when folks go hunt for them and can't find them. The value of lost treasures gets exaggerated, often enough by innocent error - someone reading an account of a stage robbery, in which $4000 in gold coins was taken and never recovered for instance; in 1880. This writer then multiplies the 1880 value by his current gold price and gets something ten times as much. The next writer reads his account and does the same thing, and before long the original $4000 in gold coins, has become $800,000 in gold.

I want to urge all of our readers, stop hunting for lost treasures, join the skeptics, send us your equipment and maps, references etc and leave the treasure hunting business to the real whackos like ME! Heck I might even be willing to reimburse you for the shipping charges for your detectors, as I am feeling particularly generous.
Oroblanco

 

[lastleg]

Oro, I wonder if Mrs O really wants thousands of BFOs, TRs. Red Barons,
tube Whites, All Dumb Suckers (ADS), Bobcats and Turtles cluttering up her
neat as a pin house? If she does I have a D-Tex Bob Lilly TR you might be
able to fix up. Or how about a Gold Mountain VLF-TR? Sorry, my Relco TR
is my main machine and can't bear to part with it.

 

[Frankn]

I have developed my own research method. Over the years, I have read many versions of the same stories. What I do is run it thru my BS filter! I take all of the facts that only appear in one version of a story and disguard them. I continue this filtering process until I have a believable or a discarded story. I rely on certain guides like the Treasure Atlas which gives brief starting points to research. Right now I am working on a story of a train robbery where the car was blown up with a huge amount of explosives It rained paper money, some burned,but most were recovered. the twist in the story is that $6000 in silver coins were spread out over a wide area and were not recovered. The key that I need to find the coins lies in the location of the train tunnel it was about to enter. I have some RR friends working on that.:::::::::::::: I went looking for the hole in the wall hide out of Cassidy fame. It was listed as BLM so I drove over 3000 miles to search the area for a few weeks. Upon my arrival at the BLM office on location I was informed that the NPS had just taken over the search area using the desert protection act as a cover. BLM said the NPS was given authority to take app. 12,000 ac. where ever they wanted from other agencies. BLM said they were taking areas of suspected treasure!!

​

 

[Saturna]

The very beauty of treasure stories is, by their nature, they involve secrecy and an expectation of silence if something major is discovered, especially in countries that don't have enlightened laws like England.

If one joined something like a fishing forum and constantly posted about the big fish he caught but never provided pictures, etc. or posted on a classic car forum about all the rare old cars he finds in barns, but again, never posted anything more, that member would very quickly become someone not taken seriously (to put it mildly.)

But on a TREASURE forum, the secrecy is part of the deal. If one claims to find tons of KGC or Yamas.hita gold, it's expected they don't have to reveal more because it would just get taken away by some authority, so one can claim anything and not be expected to confirm it. Perfect.

Start with a seed of truth, sprinkle with human nature, add some, ahem, fertilizer and incubate over time, and you may have a treasure legend.

 

[Oroblanco]

Oro, I wonder if Mrs O really wants thousands of BFOs, TRs. Red Barons,
tube Whites, All Dumb Suckers (ADS), Bobcats and Turtles cluttering up her
neat as a pin house? If she does I have a D-Tex Bob Lilly TR you might be
able to fix up. Or how about a Gold Mountain VLF-TR? Sorry, my Relco TR
is my main machine and can't bear to part with it.

Well some of those you mention, we have a few examples of, and with some tinkering should work - a great time filler for the long winters. A Gold Mountain VLF-TR is one I never have tried or even seen - it is on the blink? If I still had the oscilloscope <picked up at an auction>, I would love to 'operate' on it to see if it could be coaxed back to life but unfortunately sold the O-scope. If you have a friend with one, you can try a few experiments with it to see if it is something simple.
Roy

 

[lastleg]

Oro:

Yes the Gold Mountain BOSS VLF-TR Discriminator has been on the blink from the time I brought it home in the late 70's. You might be more interested
in my Compass Goldstar 1000. It actually has possibilities but I don't have the
skills to get it purring like it once did. The downside is someone cut the shaft
trying I suppose to wear the huge control box like a necklace. I taped it back
together and was delighted with it's accurate discrimination. I have used contact cleaner on these old boys but they need more than that.

 

[Oroblanco]

Hola amigo,
I wonder if one of our members here is an electronix tinker? I would bet that a lot of us have dead or malfunctioning detectors of various makes, some are no longer in business so we can't exactly ship them back to the manufacturers. Might make for a good side biz, for a person with the ability and equipment.
Roy

 

[gollum]

Hola amigo,
I wonder if one of our members here is an electronix tinker? I would bet that a lot of us have dead or malfunctioning detectors of various makes, some are no longer in business so we can't exactly ship them back to the manufacturers. Might make for a good side biz, for a person with the ability and equipment.
Roy

I don't know how good that business would be. If I charged $25 an hour, plus parts, plus shipping to work on your 30 year old detector, and you could buy a modern decent ACE 250 for about $200, would you REALLY want to spend all that money on 30 year old technology?

Maybe someone who was retired and just wanted to play around with old detectors, but not for a business.

Best-Mike

 

[Real de Tayopa Tropical Tramp]

Mike, you mean $25 US plus shipping isn't nice if you are holed up in a roofless, line cabin, in Wyoming with two big toothed, hungry wolf descendants and a patient back scratcher /cook??

Don Jose de La Mancha

 

[stefen]

Thanks for the clarification amigo, not that I disagree with the Mrs (Mrs O that is) on a lot of issues but this one she would probably disagree with my post.

Treasure stories seem to be viewed pretty darkly, surely this can't be due to the "sour grapes" effect when folks go hunt for them and can't find them. The value of lost treasures gets exaggerated, often enough by innocent error - someone reading an account of a stage robbery, in which $4000 in gold coins was taken and never recovered for instance; in 1880. This writer then multiplies the 1880 value by his current gold price and gets something ten times as much. The next writer reads his account and does the same thing, and before long the original $4000 in gold coins, has become $800,000 in gold.

I want to urge all of our readers, stop hunting for lost treasures, join the skeptics, send us your equipment and maps, references etc and leave the treasure hunting business to the real whackos like ME! Heck I might even be willing to reimburse you for the shipping charges for your detectors, as I am feeling particularly generous.
Oroblanco

Sounds like an exponential equation...just keeps getting bigger...just add some branch water and watch it grow...

In addition, you ever notice that many of the mines and lost treasures are dying declarations...

And while being closely trailed by a posse of hundreds, the robbers buried the 500 lbs of gold coins 20 feet deep...in granite yet.

 

[Saturna]

Sounds like an exponential equation...just keeps getting bigger...just add some branch water and watch it grow...

In addition, you ever notice that many of the mines and lost treasures are dying declarations...

And while being closely trailed by a posse of hundreds, the robbers buried the 500 lbs of gold coins 20 feet deep...in granite yet.

... AND had time to carve huge rocks in the shapes of turtles and then stack them up to serve as markers.

 

[stefen]