Buried Treasure: Does it really exist?

It has been estimated that in the area of North and South America alone, there is upwards of 4.5 billion dollars in buried treasure lying about just ready to be dug up. The question is, where? Well, here is some information about some of the lost treasures.

THE LOST ADAMS DIGGINGS:

In 1864, a teamster called Adams was traveling in New Mexico and while staying in an Indian village listening to some prospectors talking, an Indian, nicknamed, Gotch Ear told the men that he knew where gold could be found in a canyon just ten days away.

The prospectors and Adams followed the Indian and sure enough, he led them to a canyon in which a small green valley surrounded a creek. The prospectors and Adams panned $60,000 in gold from the creek in three weeks but despite warnings from the local Apache chief not to venture past the waterfall where there were better diggings, they disobeyed him. The Apaches killed most of the prospectors however several including Adams escaped.

Adams killed two Apaches at a later date out of the desire for vengeance and was jailed for murder. He escaped and didn't return to New Mexico until 20 years later. By then, he had forgotten the exact whereabouts of the lost valley of gold.

To this day, no-one has ever found it. The canyon lies somewhere in the Zuni Reservation and it is believed that the creek is a tributary of the Zuni River.

THE COCOS ISLAND TREASURE:

While Simon Bolivar marched through Peru in 1823, a group of Spaniards in Lima seized the state treasure to keep it out of the hands of Bolivar.

The treasure, now estimated to be valued at more than $20 million, consisted of 200 chests of jewels, 250 swords with jeweled hilts, 150 silver chalices, 300 bars of gold and 600 bars of silver, just to describe some of the trinkets taken.

To get their treasure out of South America, it was put on board the Mary Dier which was under the command of a Scotsman called William Thompson.

The governor of Lima and a bishop, along with some other Spaniards traveled with the treasure so that the wrong hands wouldn't get hold of it. They were no match for Thompson and his crew and were killed outright. Thompson then ordered his crew to sail his vessel to the island of Cocos which is on the Pacific side of Costa Rica. There, the treasure was stashed in a cave. Soon after leaving the island, they were captured by a Spanish frigate and Thompson and a member of his crew was returned to Cocos on the promise that their lives would be spared if they disclosed the whereabouts of the treasure. Once on the island, Thompson and his crew member escaped. The Spanish left the island empty handed and Thompson was rescued when a whaler showed up to get a supply of fresh water. He claimed that the crewman died. Thompson never returned to the island but he later gave his friend John Keating a chart which specifically stated where the treasure could be found.

Keating went to the island and rediscovered the treasure but the crew of the vessel he was sailing on mutinied and Keating and a friend narrowly escaped to the island with their lives. Keating was rescued (without his friend who, not unlike Thompson's friend, also died) and Keating, like Thompson, never returned to the island. He did however entrust his secret to a friend.

In 1872, Thomas Welsh and his wife, the owners of the South Pacific Treasure Island Prospecting Company and several of their followers dug a tunnel 85 meters into the mountain on Cocos Island but netted nothing for their efforts.

A German named August Gisler, using a treasure map which supposedly belonged to a pirate called Benito Bonito, searched the island from 1899 to 1909. He found no treasure but he did find clues, such as stone with the letter K (for Keating) carved in it and a cable attached to a hook.

Since then, there have been several expeditions to the island, and even Sir Malcolm Campbell, (the famous race driver) Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Count Felix von Luckner tried their hands at searching for the treasure.

In 1932, Colonel J.E. Leckie using the services of a metal detector did uncover some of the gold, however, to this day; the bulk of the treasure still remains on the island. Cocos Island is situated 643 kilometers west of Costa Rica and can be reached only by a chartered boat.

THE OAK ISLAND TREASURE PIT:

The story of the Oak Island Treasure Pit in Nova Scotia has been written about in numerous books. To date the treasure has not been uncovered, but tantalizing glimpses of what are purported to be part of the treasure have been reported. The following are a sample of some of the theories on who buried the treasure on Oak Island:

The most popular theory is that of the early 18th century pirate Captain Kidd, who frequently visited the region of Oak Island for rest and relaxation and to repair his ships. He seemed to have a habit of burying part of the treasure he plundered far and wide.

The most bizarre theory is that the treasure is the original works of William Shakespeare/ Sir Francis Bacon buried on the site in the late 16th century. This theory is based on the evidence of a piece of parchment paper brought up from the pit by one of the treasure hunters.

Equally strange is the theory of the crown jewels of France which went missing in 1791 and were said to have been smuggled to Louisburg (north of Oak Island in Cape Breton). Since Louisburg was frequently attacked by the British when the French owned it, the jewels were considered unsafe and were transported to Oak Island.
Excavation of the Pit has never been successful because of the booby traps which were set to protect it. In the mid-1860s, while excavating at the 90 feet level, the treasure hunters encountered soggy ground. This was not too surprising because the Pit was only 500 feet from the coast line and high tide of the ocean was about at the 32 foot level. At 93 feet the wetness was more pronounced. At 98 feet they struck an extra hard surface. They took the rest of day off and the next morning found that the shaft of the Pit was filled with sea water to the 32 foot level. We now know that the miners had inadvertently opened a series of channels to the beach which had been installed as a booby trap to protect the treasure.

Many attempts have been made over the years to discover how the booby trap works. Coffer dams have been built on the nearby beach, thought to be the source of the water flow… but to no avail.

In over 200 years that adventurers have searched for the Treasure Pit of Oak Island, they have encountered oak log platforms every ten feet or so to the thirty foot level. From there, a drill probe used in 1849, encountered multiple layers of charcoal, putty and coconut fibre. At the 98 feet level, a spruce platform guarding two oak chests containing loose metal pieces (pieces of eight?) was discovered.

But the discoveries do not stop there. Continued drilling, in 1897, found that there were, below the 98 foot oak chests, layers of wood and iron, a 30 foot layer of blue clay (a hand-worked watertight mixture of clay, sand and water), a seven foot deep cement vault at 153 feet and an iron barrier at 171 feet.

Who knows, maybe some day we will know the true story of the mystery of the Treasure Pit of Oak Island.

THE LOST DUTCHMAN GOLD MINE

The mine is reportedly a very rich gold mine hidden in the Superstition Mountains, near Apache Junction, east of Phoenix, Arizona in the United States. It is perhaps the most famous lost mine in American history. 8,000 people annually make some effort to locate the Lost Dutchman's mine.

Others have argued the mine has little or no basis in fact and is nothing but a legend although, some argue that all the main components of the story have at least some basis in fact.

OTHER BURIED TREASURE IN THE UNITED STATES

In Martin County, just north of Shoals, Indiana right off State Road 150 where it overlooks the White River on what is fondly called Rock McBride Bluff is a fortune. During 1810, Indians from the area buried figurines and gold bullion in a safe.

Another bad guy that traveled through Indiana was John Dillinger. The FBI has stated that Dillinger buried around $25,000 in Mooresville, Indiana on his father’s 67-acre farm. John Dillinger, supposedly buried $200,000 in the Wisconsin woods three months before his death. Ken Krippene, author of Buried Treasure, heard the story from Patricia Charrington, a girl friend of a member of Dillinger's gang. How to Get There? Mercer, Wisconsin is a small town on Route 51 near the Michigan border.

As the story goes, outside Terre Haute, Indiana along State Road 42 is a fortune worth $95,000. During the 1920’s it is believed that a bank employee embezzled this amount of paper currency from the bank and then proceeded to bury the money and then later committed suicide.

If you could find the exact point outside of Crown Point, Indiana in Lake County, you would find yourself a millionaire or so they say. A gangster by the name of Jim Colosimo, during 1920, buried diamonds worth millions of dollars. The exact location has never been found. Even the FBI has searched for this treasure without ever locating the exact spot.

Travel to Marshall County, then close to Bremen on State Road 6. There is a dirt road there and approximately one and half miles down the road, Jim Genna buried a very large amount of money contained in a steel box. He placed them under a rock pile in a pasture. Good luck finding this one.

Off to Jackson County. The Reno Brothers were famous robbers of the area and in 1868 after robbing a train and burying the $80,000 they headed to Canada of course with a sheriff’s posse trailing them. Not only did they bury this treasure but also it has been told that in their home in Rockford, Indiana they also hid $98,000 from one of their other robberies. There home was not actually located in Rockford but somewhere in between Rockford and Seymour near State Road 31a.

Here are more cases of so-called treasure in the United States that does exist, but that has never been found:

$5,000-$40,000 in gold, buried by French miners before they were killed by Indians in the mountains of Colorado in the late 18th century.

$114,522 in gold currency, buried when Confederate soldiers robbed a Union bank in 1864.

$180,000 in gold and money, stolen by two gangs in 1865 from a Wells Fargo stagecoach in Idaho.

$1,000,000 in gold nuggets, hidden in 1879 in a washtub in the Black Hills of South Dakota by an old prospector, who died before he could dig it up.
$
1,000,000 in gold bars, stolen by the Jesse James gang in Oklahoma.

$50,000 in gold and jewels, buried by Captain Kidd in 1699 on Gardiners Island, off Long Island, New York, before he was hanged.