onemississipp
Jr. Member
Natives of Florien believe their section of the state has the only gold mine ever heard of in Louisiana.
Nobody knows how old the abandoned site is or who dug the many bee-hive of tunnels which traverse the approximate seven acres of high ground, deep in the woods west of Florien.
According to Kile Salter, a resident of rural Florien, that section of Sabine Parish was Settled about 1882 and those early settlers said the "mine" was old when they first came.
He said there are three legends surrounding the hill, which towers approximately one hundred feet and is covered with..underbrush and trees: Ancient Indians could have.dug those tunnels, the Spaniards could have dug them when they held that section of the state or it could have served as a hidedut for the desperate Murrell out-law gang which operated in the Free State of Sabine before it became a part of Louisiana.
Walls sparkle
At any rate, the walls of the tunnels sparkle here and there wiih a golden dust: and the sandy soil topping the hill gleams with the same substance when closely inspected.
Salter said in the early thirties, carloads of the gold-flecked dirt was shipped out of state by a company working the site and that some people baked and chipped some of the soil with the hope of getting enough "dust" to do some good.
Salter said legend also has it that a room filled with a fortune in gold is supposedly sealed off from one of the tunnels. Through the years various prospectors have dug down into the hill crest as deep as seventy five feet in.the hope of penetrating the treasure room. Nobody has yet succeeded.
Area folks believe the flecks to be gold dust but as to the who, when or why of the tunnels, which are over a hundred years old, the mystery remains a mystery.
http://www.toledo-bend.com/sabinepar/history/index.asp?request=florien
Nobody knows how old the abandoned site is or who dug the many bee-hive of tunnels which traverse the approximate seven acres of high ground, deep in the woods west of Florien.
According to Kile Salter, a resident of rural Florien, that section of Sabine Parish was Settled about 1882 and those early settlers said the "mine" was old when they first came.
He said there are three legends surrounding the hill, which towers approximately one hundred feet and is covered with..underbrush and trees: Ancient Indians could have.dug those tunnels, the Spaniards could have dug them when they held that section of the state or it could have served as a hidedut for the desperate Murrell out-law gang which operated in the Free State of Sabine before it became a part of Louisiana.
Walls sparkle
At any rate, the walls of the tunnels sparkle here and there wiih a golden dust: and the sandy soil topping the hill gleams with the same substance when closely inspected.
Salter said in the early thirties, carloads of the gold-flecked dirt was shipped out of state by a company working the site and that some people baked and chipped some of the soil with the hope of getting enough "dust" to do some good.
Salter said legend also has it that a room filled with a fortune in gold is supposedly sealed off from one of the tunnels. Through the years various prospectors have dug down into the hill crest as deep as seventy five feet in.the hope of penetrating the treasure room. Nobody has yet succeeded.
Area folks believe the flecks to be gold dust but as to the who, when or why of the tunnels, which are over a hundred years old, the mystery remains a mystery.
http://www.toledo-bend.com/sabinepar/history/index.asp?request=florien
