Tuberale
Gold Member
- Joined
- May 12, 2010
- Messages
- 5,775
- Reaction score
- 3,452
- Golden Thread
- 0
- Location
- Portland, Oregon
- Detector(s) used
- White's Coinmaster Pro
- #1
Thread Owner
Back in the '70s, when I first got interested in metal detecting, I also realized an occasional coin wasn't gonna do it for me. So I started researching, collecting books and magazines on treasures, and putting together a cross-reference index.
I noticed what magazines call a treasure lead was often opinion. So decided to start my own identification system, which lead logically into the above.
Each story needs to address the 5 W's: Who, What, Where, When and Why. The easiest thing to research is people, so unless you have a who involved with a treasure story, you probably are not going to find much.
A lot of early magazine articles involved pirate treasures, and I soon realized each was far apart. So the next most important piece of information was not What, but Where. The closest community or town and state (or province) would be of secondary importance. If I plotted that information on a map later, proximity would be important.
When sometimes makes a big difference. No point looking for $50 CA territorial gold pieces after about 1860, since most were found to contain more gold than they said, and were therefore quickly melted down for bullion value. In other words, it's not enough to have a date, you must confirm the story and dates could be plausible and possible. Have you looked for a stagecoach robbery in the 1920's? (not many around then).
The least interesting thing about a cache IMO is the $ amount: the what. Fixating on what you are searching for will not help you find it, and often blinds you to treasures at hand. Ever search for a meteorite and not notice the morels?
My re-ordered the W's went into the following sequence: 1) Who, 2) Where, 3) When 4) Why 5) What.
A lot of treasure stories are what I call leads: they may have a grain of historic truth in them, but not much that can be verified. And without verification, a lead doesn't warrant your searching/researching time.
There are the well-known legends, like the Blue Bucket Mine. While researching this old Oregon standby, I found out the people involved were actually members of an 1845 Lost Meek wagon train, predating the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in 1848. While researching the members of the train, it became obvious that one group left Ft. Boise, ID and went southwest toward California. One of these members wrote a diary in which she documented finding gold (before it was announced at Sutter's Mill in 1848), and put it in her blue water bucket. Oddly, she returned to the site of her find with her new husband, and worked the placer for several years afterwards, recovering significant quantities of gold, before moving to Oregon in the mid-1850'sm where they continued to mine gold. Sometimes (rarely) you find historical references that are at odds with accepted history.
Some stories even included all the important information, but mis-identified the important parts. (Was this done intentionally?) Why call something the Lost Dutchman's Mine when you know it should have been Jacob Waltzer's Lost Mine? A legendary cache or treasure can become so legendary you must also connect it with the mis-identified stories also associated with it. Thus, I also added footnotes to each tip or lead to note an associated legend may be important to the new treasure lead
I've just started putting everything in my files in order, kind of similar to what Thomas Penfield tried to do in the Guide to Treasure series he started. The results are somewhat surprising.
Did you know, for example, that there are Lost Indian Mines in Georgia, Ohio, California, Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Indiana, Maine, Mississippi, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Utah? How does the term Indian help identify any of these?
Did you know that something as ironic as an Iron Door is associated with leads in Idaho, Utah, Arizona, California and New Mexico? (There's also an Iron Door treasure in Oklahoma.)
Did you know there was an Iver's brothers treasure in Iowa (part found in 1935); but also an Ives Brothers cache in Iowa and a George Ives cache in Nevada, Montana? (That's the town Nevada, btw).
Is it any wonder there is so much confusion?
How to make logical sense of this information. That's the problem facing all serious researchers.
I noticed what magazines call a treasure lead was often opinion. So decided to start my own identification system, which lead logically into the above.
Each story needs to address the 5 W's: Who, What, Where, When and Why. The easiest thing to research is people, so unless you have a who involved with a treasure story, you probably are not going to find much.
A lot of early magazine articles involved pirate treasures, and I soon realized each was far apart. So the next most important piece of information was not What, but Where. The closest community or town and state (or province) would be of secondary importance. If I plotted that information on a map later, proximity would be important.
When sometimes makes a big difference. No point looking for $50 CA territorial gold pieces after about 1860, since most were found to contain more gold than they said, and were therefore quickly melted down for bullion value. In other words, it's not enough to have a date, you must confirm the story and dates could be plausible and possible. Have you looked for a stagecoach robbery in the 1920's? (not many around then).
The least interesting thing about a cache IMO is the $ amount: the what. Fixating on what you are searching for will not help you find it, and often blinds you to treasures at hand. Ever search for a meteorite and not notice the morels?
My re-ordered the W's went into the following sequence: 1) Who, 2) Where, 3) When 4) Why 5) What.
A lot of treasure stories are what I call leads: they may have a grain of historic truth in them, but not much that can be verified. And without verification, a lead doesn't warrant your searching/researching time.
There are the well-known legends, like the Blue Bucket Mine. While researching this old Oregon standby, I found out the people involved were actually members of an 1845 Lost Meek wagon train, predating the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in 1848. While researching the members of the train, it became obvious that one group left Ft. Boise, ID and went southwest toward California. One of these members wrote a diary in which she documented finding gold (before it was announced at Sutter's Mill in 1848), and put it in her blue water bucket. Oddly, she returned to the site of her find with her new husband, and worked the placer for several years afterwards, recovering significant quantities of gold, before moving to Oregon in the mid-1850'sm where they continued to mine gold. Sometimes (rarely) you find historical references that are at odds with accepted history.
Some stories even included all the important information, but mis-identified the important parts. (Was this done intentionally?) Why call something the Lost Dutchman's Mine when you know it should have been Jacob Waltzer's Lost Mine? A legendary cache or treasure can become so legendary you must also connect it with the mis-identified stories also associated with it. Thus, I also added footnotes to each tip or lead to note an associated legend may be important to the new treasure lead
I've just started putting everything in my files in order, kind of similar to what Thomas Penfield tried to do in the Guide to Treasure series he started. The results are somewhat surprising.
Did you know, for example, that there are Lost Indian Mines in Georgia, Ohio, California, Arkansas, Colorado, Idaho, Indiana, Maine, Mississippi, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Utah? How does the term Indian help identify any of these?
Did you know that something as ironic as an Iron Door is associated with leads in Idaho, Utah, Arizona, California and New Mexico? (There's also an Iron Door treasure in Oklahoma.)
Did you know there was an Iver's brothers treasure in Iowa (part found in 1935); but also an Ives Brothers cache in Iowa and a George Ives cache in Nevada, Montana? (That's the town Nevada, btw).
Is it any wonder there is so much confusion?
How to make logical sense of this information. That's the problem facing all serious researchers.
