franklin, I have followed several others of your posts, on various forums, and have seen you are really into the various "legends" cache stories, etc..... Have you ever given thought to how these old legends start? Any such one you read in any book or magazine (the treasure magazines were FILLED with them, back in the late '60s to mid 1970s), are so fun to read, and the human mind wants SO hard to believe (lest you be "left out"), etc.... But you have to be little scrutinizing to realize how silly and simply made up, or non existent, they really are.
Let me give you a true story, to illustrate the psychology of how quickly such nonsense gets started, and then .... 100 yrs. later, is just taken as "gospel fact". Heck, throw in a few faded newspaper clippings, a drawing of a miner posed next to his burro, a few " and presto, you'd be a fool not to go get it. All you need is a lawyer, right?
Ok, here's the true story of how this type stuff is born, and are all just fanciful legends:
There was an oldtown urban commercial district sidewalk demolition tearout, in a city near me a few years ago. A buddy of mine was down on it, every day, and was finding old seated and barbers coins under each section they ripped out. You know. .... fumble fingers losses from back in the days when the sidewalks were wood and dirt. Each day they would progress 4 or 5 more store fronts down, till eventually, they were going to have finished 4 or 5 blocks, on each side, of new downtown sidewalks. And each day, the workers would curiously come over to see what each day's finds were.
One of those days, my friend found a two or three silver coins, and an old amulet thing, in the shape of an owl, that looked like it might be gold. As my friend stopped to look at, and rub the dirt off this owl shaped amulet charm thing, a few of the workers came over to see what he'd found. As the 3 of them looked at it, he told them "it looks like gold" (because it was gold colored). And as they looked closer, they could see there was some sort of red sparkly stones for the eyes of the owl. So he told them: "wow, those might be rubies". And based on the age of the coins he was finding, he said "and it might be from the 1800s!". He put it in his apron, continued hunting, and the workers went back to work. That night, my friend got home and cleaned and studied the owl thing more. Turned out to be just gold plated, and with nothing but colored glass chips for the eyes, and probably just costume junk jewelry from the 1920s.
The next day, my friend was out there again in the afternoon, to start working the next day's tearout. As he was hunting, he could see a tractor worker kept looking at him. My friend noticed that this worker was a new worker, whom he hadn't previously seen or met yet (a new worker to this particular job-site). Eventually, the new guy gets off his tractor, works up his courage, and comes over to ask what my friend had found. My friend told him "nothing but some junk. I just got started". The worker tells him that "yesterday, a guy was here and found lots of gold and silver coins from the 1800s!". My friend was startled by this, and wondered if someone hadn't either come before him, or after he'd left, and found stuff. So he started asking the guy questions about this supposed guy who had been finding all these coins. And the worker added in that the mystery fellow had found "a solid gold owl with priceless rubies in the eyes!". When my friend heard the word " ...owl...", he realized the worker was talking about HIM! Doh.
So he corrected the worker and told him: "No, that was me, and no, I only found a few coins, and no, none of the coins were gold, and no, the owl charm was not 'gold', and didn't have any gems in it", etc.... But the worker would NOT be dissuaded! He assumed therefore, that there must've been another hunter there the day before, who had found these things. Because, he told my friend, that he had heard it from his other co-workers (around the water-cooler talk), who were FIRST HAND witnesses. So therefore, my friend must be mistaken, and there must've been someone else there.
Now Franklin, this "embellishment" happened in the space of just 24 hrs! And what had been a "few coins", turned into "handfuls" of coins. And what had been "I think it might be gold" turns into "it's gold". And so forth. And when you add 100 yrs, where this worker tells his son, who tells a grandson, etc.... Pretty soon it will just be impossible to dispel. I mean, afterall franklin, these were "eye-witnesses". Only workers had authority to be on that job. And it was THEIR job afterall.
And I bet you, that if someone wants to find the "rest of that gold" under those streets, and goes to get a lawyer to allow him to dig up the streets, and when the city resists, then in the mind of the faithful believers, even THAT will just be MORE PROOF that the gold must certainly be there, and that the city knows, so is therefore part of the conspiracy plot to hide things.
Anyhow, I hope you'll take this to heart. All those stories sound like this: "The dying miner drags themselves into the wild-west saloon. He's the last survivor of an indian attack. He spills his story of fabulous riches to onlookers in the saloon, giving 3 valuable clues to his forutune ..... But unfortunately dies before being able to go back and get to his buried riches" blah blah blah. Yawns like that sold lots of treasure mag's back in the 1970s. If you want even more to chase (and so you can go find more lawyers to hire), just go get back issues of any one from the mid '70s and earlier.
