Treasure in new mexico. Unsolved mysteries.

[robsteth]

Anyone here recall the episode where a big treasue was found in som mountain peak and there were gold bars and more and the person w ho found it went down a ladder to access it and eventaly the tunnel entrance became converged due to a blast and they could no longer access it. Eventually the military needed the site and it is rumoured the military moved the treasure out and the family of the party that originally found it was still trying to excavate or sue the military or something like that. What ever was the outcome of this case....... Please post. Thanks..............

[+DieChecker]

You're not talking about the Lost Dutchman Mine are you? That was back in Cowboy days I think.

Otherwise, never heard of it. Sorry.

[RabidCat]

Those of us who have fiddled around with gold hunting have heard of it. Along with numerous others, such as the Lost Dutchman.

The one you speak of was supposedly a long tunnel excavated in some prehistoric time, and there were several entrances. The bullion apparently was removed by the army, but I don't know what became of the suit. The land was a part of the army test grounds when the tunnels were discovered, and so the army had rights to the entrance from which the gold was removed.

There are no records of any of this, just hearsay, unlike many of the other lost mines.

[UconnHusky]

I saw an episode about this a long time ago on Unsolved Mysteries. It was in like 60s or 70s right? This guy found gold in a mountain and had no clue how it got there. It wasn't put there by Indians because the gold was in bar form and obviously the Indians didn't have the technology back in the old days to make gold bars. Anyway the guy took some gold out of the mountain and buried it in secret spots and never even told his family where he hid it. Most of the gold was still in the mountain and eventually the military actually confiscated the gold. The family sued the government but I think they denied ever knowing about the gold. The interesting thing is one of the soldiers who said he helped move the gold carved his initials into rock on the mountain. His initials were found proving that he had been there but there was still controversy over whether the military actually took the gold. They never found where he hid is gold either because I think he died and never told his family. It's pretty interesting story.

Edited October 18, 2006 by 420

[RabidCat]

I saw an episode about this a long time ago on Unsolved Mysteries. It was in like 60s or 70s right? This guy found gold in a mountain and had no clue how it got there. It wasn't put there by Indians because the gold was in bar form and obviously the Indians didn't have the technology back in the old days to make gold bars. Anyway the guy took some gold out of the mountain and buried it in secret spots and never even told his family where he hid it. Most of the gold was still in the mountain and eventually the military actually confiscated the gold. The family sued the government but I think they denied ever knowing about the gold. The interesting thing is one of the soldiers who said he helped move the gold carved his initials into rock on the mountain. His initials were found proving that he had been there but there was still controversy over whether the military actually took the gold. They never found where he hid is gold either because I think he died and never told his family. It's pretty interesting story.

That's pretty much the way the story goes. There were supposedly long underground passages/caves, with stairways that had been built.

It's doubtful that the American Indians ever did anything with gold, as they just didn't care about it. While the early technology in the Americas implies little was done with metals, there is evidence that knowledge of metals did exist (bronze casting in pyramids in Mexico, for example, and the copper mines in the north central US). The Indians simply didn't care. Who did the work remains an open question, assuming that the story is true.

If one were interested in finding lost mines, etc., there are many other stories that have been verified, at least in part. The Lost Arches of the Mojave have been discovered many times, but it seems that landmarks and such that are left either disappear or cannot be found again. Yet there are at least a half dozen verifiable stories of miners that found Lost Arches.

The Spanish did a lot of discovery work in the southwest, more often with refractory ores than placer, but when the US was in expansion, most of the mines were blown because the operators didn't want the US to acquire that wealth. Further, the ores that we know of were difficult to refine, and the Mexicans/Spanish used an unknown method. Many arrastras and associated equipment have been found, but the methods are still unknown. (An arrastra is a grinding apparatus used for crushing ore.) It is possible that the bullion in the cave in NM is the result of one of these operations.

Besides Lost Arches, the Pegleg is presumably lost, though there is one record of a fellow who sent a nugget to a newspaper, claiming he had found the Pegleg. Another was a deposit covered by a landslide somewhere in Modoc County, CA. Another is a hearsay of some miners who worked the beaches near Gold Beach OR, buried their gold in coffee tins somewhere on the beach, but were murdered by highwaymen when they went for supplies. Henry Plummer, outlaw sheriff in Bannack, MT, is reported to have buried his robbed fortune (some $20 million in gold) in several caches near Bannack/Grasshopper Creek. The Plummer gang was captured by vigilantes and all but one were hung; Plummer never disclosed the location of his ill-gotten gains, and he was the only one who knew the location.

Alder Gulch MT has many lost or undiscovered veins of gold; there were hundreds, if not thousands, of outcrops with quartz/gold in the gulch, and the reports claim that more gold was taken in a shorter time in the gulch than anywhere else in the world.

East of Great Falls MT, there are reports of a small gulch that contains the only known deposit of garnet laced with gold, but no one knows exactly where it is. The samples from the gulch have sold for as much as $12,000/troy ounce to collectors, but few are available to analyze, and those have been cleaned up so it's almost impossible to get much geological data and find the deposit.

Along the Klamath in CA, one of the creeks on the north side of the watershed contains turquoise laced with gold. Not much of this has been found, but enough to indicate a larger deposit lies up the creek.

Several lost mines can be traced into the northwest corner of Arizona.

And all these are more verifiable than the NM caves. So if you're looking for gold, go to the places it has already been found, or look for lost mines whose existence is more thoroughly proved.