The Hijacked Mule Train: From GoldMine to Denver Mint.
Around the1890's three young men came out west to New Mexico to make a new life. However, after awhile they weren't very lucky at finding a job, so they started small time hijackingsand robbing stage coaches. They had set a camp near a place called ApacheSpring. In their idle time, they tossed gold coins into the spring at theircamp.
One day they sawa mule train loaded with gold bars headed to the Denver mint. They decided their odds werepretty good to take the guards by surprise. They ambushed the group and in factdid kill all the guards and also lost one of their own and one waswounded. The two then took the mule train back to their camp and unloadedthe gold bars into an old prospector’s dig at their camp. They took the mulesseveral miles away and shot them.
Now the woundedone died and the lone survivor buried him at the camp. He became scaredof the idea of being alone and likely the object of a manhunt for him, so he tookoff and went back east, where he settled down, married and had at least oneson.
Never havingtold anyone of his exploits he finally broke the silence on his death bed andtold his son the story.
In the mid1950's the son came out to New Mexicoand hired a pilot to fly him over the area his father told him about. It wasearly spring and there was still snow on the ground. The son must have decidedgive up the idea of finding his father's old camp and went back home.
Now the pilot, (alsoa friend of my dad), having heard this story, didn't forget about it and he andmy dad drove several times to the area and confirmed several points of thestory. My dad also told an old friend of the story. And the friend told, whenhe had worked with the WPA in the '30's improving springs in that area,they had found a spring with old gold coins in it.
However, after about 100 years the snow melt can wash a lot of soil down and,while the area has been found, it will likely take a deep penetrating metaldetector to locate the gold bars. I spent several weeks at the site the summerof 1961 and we found clues that this was the site, but lacked the equipment tolocate the buried stash. We had dug a 17' deep hole at one point and there was nota single rock in the dirt, and at that depth found chunks of horse manure.Later we started a trench about 6' deep from the hole and ran into a lot ofrocks from fist size to 3' dia. This area of the hole is on Nationalforest land.
I had not thought about this till about 2004, and then with the internethelp I located the name
of the site at some of the ForestService web sites. Then I bought a detailed map of the area.
We made a recon trip there May, 2007 and was satisfied that this waswhere we had been digging in 1961.
The depth this might be, will require a GPR (ground penetrating radar)unit to
Pinpoint the location. At that time,we can bring this to the surface.
I have no resources to explore this and will need about $80,000 to
cover all the expenses, detectionequipment & removal equipment.
I will return 10x any investment when this is recovered.
.
I can be reached at e-mail [email protected]
My phone # is 620-510-8504
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