I've read this article before. For those leary of links:
• Beil says he has researched the three characters in the story — Lt. Castleton, Sgt. Mike O’Rourke, and a man only identified as “Conners,” who was a civilian guide. In the course of that research, he found no government documents proving that they exist.
“We know every single soldier who fought in the Civil War. That information is available to us through the United States National Archives. None of these men were ever in the Civil War. They were never soldiers,” Beil said. “They’re not in any geneaological reports, they aren’t in any Army records, they aren’t in the National Archives, they’re not in any census report.”
• He also searched a newspaper database called “Chronicling America” which archives newspapers from 1789-1963 — and came up with no records. Of this, he said simply, “Newspapers would have jumped all over this... The first time we see this legend (in print) is in 1973 in Treasure Magazine.”
• Another issue Beil takes with the story focuses on the place names within it. In 1863, Dents Run would have been known as “Two Mouth Run,” Benezette as “Winslow,” and Hicks Run as “Three Mouth Run,” according to maps from that time. Beil said a red flag is that the sites are referred to by the names they would have been identified by in the early 1900s and beyond.
• And lastly, there’s the wagon. The story goes that the gold shipment was traveling from Wheeling, W.V. up through Ridgway and St. Marys and then down through the Dents Run area, headed for Harrisburg to pay Union soldiers. (load too heavy for the wagons and roads of the time).
