Gypsy Heart
Gold Member
In 1887, Hiram Smith, a Colorado River rancher, was awarded a contract to supply beef cattle to the Indian agency at Fort Mohave. In June of that year, he drove a herd south to the reservation and was paid $16,000 in twenty-dollar gold pieces. He put the money in a heavy leather money belt and proceeded to the nearest saloon to celebrate his transaction and prepare himself for the journey back to his ranch. Two hours later, the Indian agent saw him driving his team and wagon through the reservation gate.
Smith had advised his family as to when he expected to return and his neighbors initiated a search when he did not show up. The third day out, he was found near Boundary Cone in the vicinity of the Arizona mining camp of Oatman, just across the river. Taken back to his ranch, he said that he had gotten lost while drunk and had buried the belt and the gold in the desert, marking the spot with an olla, an Indian water bottle, and two horseshoes. He never recovered from his sojourn in the desert, however, and died two weeks later.
The story of Hiram Smith's buried gold spread far and wide and search parties scoured the southern deserts for many years, but found nothing. Many men came to believe that Smith had lost the money in a poker game in Oatman and was heading for Mexico when he lost his way.
Interest in the treasure waned and died until another rancher, P.W. Sayles, found an olla and two rusty horseshoes on the Arizona side of the Colorado River in August 1910. He knew the story of Smith's money cache and dug up the surrounding area - "enough post holes in that sand dune to sink Rhode Island" - as he later told Fred Bullard, editor of the Searchlight Bulletin. Sayle's friends were no more successful and he broke the story to Bullard in December, precipitating another intensive search by readers with the same results of those earlier quests - nothing - or so it was reported.
At today's coin prices, the cache would be worth several hundred thousand dollars. Those considering resuming the search might have a problem, however. The area today is covered by Lake Mohave, backed up behind Davis Dam further down the river.
http://dmla.clan.lib.nv.us/docs/museums/reno/thiswas/cache.htm
Smith had advised his family as to when he expected to return and his neighbors initiated a search when he did not show up. The third day out, he was found near Boundary Cone in the vicinity of the Arizona mining camp of Oatman, just across the river. Taken back to his ranch, he said that he had gotten lost while drunk and had buried the belt and the gold in the desert, marking the spot with an olla, an Indian water bottle, and two horseshoes. He never recovered from his sojourn in the desert, however, and died two weeks later.
The story of Hiram Smith's buried gold spread far and wide and search parties scoured the southern deserts for many years, but found nothing. Many men came to believe that Smith had lost the money in a poker game in Oatman and was heading for Mexico when he lost his way.
Interest in the treasure waned and died until another rancher, P.W. Sayles, found an olla and two rusty horseshoes on the Arizona side of the Colorado River in August 1910. He knew the story of Smith's money cache and dug up the surrounding area - "enough post holes in that sand dune to sink Rhode Island" - as he later told Fred Bullard, editor of the Searchlight Bulletin. Sayle's friends were no more successful and he broke the story to Bullard in December, precipitating another intensive search by readers with the same results of those earlier quests - nothing - or so it was reported.
At today's coin prices, the cache would be worth several hundred thousand dollars. Those considering resuming the search might have a problem, however. The area today is covered by Lake Mohave, backed up behind Davis Dam further down the river.
http://dmla.clan.lib.nv.us/docs/museums/reno/thiswas/cache.htm
![:-\](https://www.treasurenet.com/smilies/undecided.gif "Undecided :-\")
