Here is a good tale, found in Golden Treasure of the San Juans by Temple Cornelius: The Cache of Gold on Falls Creek.
The general story is in 1903 a cook on his way down to Durango from the Neglected Mine found a high grade cache. He moved it to a new location not far away, but was never able to locate it again. It supposedly comprises around 700 pounds of high grade ore and nuggets.
I recently visited this site, and spent a whole day scrambling around the Falls Creek watershed in the area described in the book. It was exactly as described, but the terrain was difficult to say the least! I didn't lay foot on a single piece of ground on the downslope that wasn't 45 degrees or steeper! Dense vegetation, fallen trees, and high temperatures made for an exhausting day. Even so, I was able to define an exact area of the watershed where the landmarks mentioned in the book can be seen. My next visit I plan to use a rope tied high up in a tree on the top of the slope to give me more to hang onto than shallow rooted weeds and branches that are dry and easily broken off. Then I will just move back and forth below my tie off point while doing the best I can to get my metal detector near the ground. I use a smartphone app to track my exact search paths so I don't miss anything. If there is any truth to this tale, a good metal detector should have little problem detecting such a a huge mass of gold that is buried under only leaf mold (probably more than that now after so many years).
Some problems I have with this tale after visiting the site:
1) I could not see any "shelfs" on the watershed at all as described in the tale. There were also no "stands of spruce", but there were several lone spruce trees that could be as old as from 1903. The only "shelf" is the top out near the top of the slope, but I wouldn't really call that a shelf unless I was speaking in HUGE terms. And how many trees does it take to comprise a "stand" of spruce?
2) I had great difficulty moving around the slope with just a light backpack on with almost no load. I tried to imagine what a cook would have gone through to move 12 sacks of ore weighing around 60 to 80 pounds each, 300 yards across such a slope. I guess you would certainly be motivated, but supposedly he was able to walk from the mine to this area (several miles), then move the gold, and then walk down to the Animas valley and into Durango, all in one day in October. The days are already getting short by then, so daylight would have been much shorter than in summer. This site is 16.5 miles from Main Street in Durango where 25th Street meets Main, so it is not a short distance. Especially since he supposedly got off the main trail on his way down to avoid meeting anyone whose gold he had just taken. All this sounds a little off, though I guess it is possible if you have adrenaline from finding such a hoard running in your blood all day.
Constructive thoughts or comments?
