Spanish treasure finds

[smokeythecat]

I'm referring to inland finds in the US. Not in the ocean. So how many have been found and where are they housed, aka museums or where were they auctioned?

I read a lot of stories about treasure signs and people chasing treasure, so where is it? After 400 years, some has to have been found.

I'd like to read about them. I am under the great impression the Spanish smelted and minted the stuff, sometimes just left in the form of bars and shipped it back to Spain, and didn't store it here. (Although the ocean ate a lot of it.)

 

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[smokeythecat]

So there AREN'T any?

 

[Blak bart]

No treasure or death traps.seems like no one has a picture smokey.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Hey, smokey, I am a docent tour leader at Carmel Mission here in CA. That was one of the Spanish missions, and dates to 1770. Hence a full 50+ yrs. as Spanish colonial frontier outpost, before independent Mexico took over in the 1820's. And mind you, this was the capital headquarters of the other 21 missions, and one of the most elaborately built.

And of all the "dug" artifacts the museum there houses, none are "treasures" (ie.: caches). They are just individual coins, buttons, medallions, etc... Ie.: fumble fingers losses to-be-expected. And mind you the grounds were dug EXTENSIVELY from the 1920s to early 1950s during reconstruction preservation of the various adobe wings. There's photographs I've looked at where the disturbed dirt was sifted carefully for artifacts.

I suppose you could just say "they missed the treasures that were buried deeper", etc.. blah blah. But bear in mind that so too do all the other 21 missions (where extensive archie work has occurred at each one) failed to produce anything like "caches" or "treasures". In fact, the reality was quite the opposite: We were at the remotest ends of the world here at the time, so manufactured goods were in short supply. Hence far from a picture of the Hollywood notion of riches spilling out of treasure chests, these Spanish outposts were not necessarily "rich". The same thing could be said of any church today: Are they necessarily "rich" ? No. Aside from a few charlatans, or ones with benefactors galore. But the average sincere church is just making their budget, and re-investing their resources into the mission purpose they came for in the first place: To be missionaries.

And if you look at the Spanish missions of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, etc... (which can date to 100+ yrs. older than CA's missions), you likewise do not see impressions of "fabulous wealth". On the contrary, it was as if those were poor missions (when compared to the great architecture of some of the CA missions). And any manufactured goods had to come overland all the way up from Mexico through the Sonoran Desert, Chihuahua desert, etc... to make it up here.

Yes I know there will be those that say the churches were filthy rich, buried treasure (complete with death traps, etc...). To which I would say: This person has watched one too many re-runs of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Sorry.

 

[Peyton Manning]

I have always found it hard to believe there was soo much gold so as to produce so much lost treasure.
it says little about one's abilty back then to acquire such vast caches and then loose them

 

[smokeythecat]

May be people are chasing phantoms. Now, if you can find a lost SOURCE for the precious metals, that would be sweet.

 

[Tom_in_CA]

May be people are chasing phantoms. Now, if you can find a lost SOURCE for the precious metals, that would be sweet.

You mean lost mines ? This is another source of fanciful imaginations. The old treasure magazines of the 1960s and '70s were PLUM FULL of "lost mine" stories eh ? But think of it: In today's vastly improved age of geological science of finding gold region, and with our vastly improved mechanized means of extracting gold by-various-means, yet .... even now modern man "knocks themselves silly" to get the ore and nuggets and so forth, right ? So why does a mine (even if one exists) from Spanish times, necessarily bode-any-better EVEN if you were to find it ?

 

[smokeythecat]

Corporations in the US probably own most anything good. The tailings from old mines can be worth a bit on the mineral specimen market.
Now overseas, especially in Africa, it's a different story.

This cat for one is never going looking for a lost mine. Too dangerous and you can get your fur all mussed up. And hard to take a cat nap on the side of any mountain.

 

[Blak bart]

Corporations in the US probably own most anything good. The tailings from old mines can be worth a bit on the mineral specimen market.
Now overseas, especially in Africa, it's a different story.

This cat for one is never going looking for a lost mine. Too dangerous and you can get your fur all mussed up. And hard to take a cat nap on the side of any mountain.

Im with you smokey. I'll take my chances with the sea. I make my living fishing and diving, and its nice when I treasure hunt to get my gold and silver already in coin or jewlrey form.