Back In Time: The Lost Gold of Oklahoma

around the turn of the 20th century there was a little-known gold rush in southwest Oklahoma Americans came from all over seek their fortunes in gold silver and copper most were disappointed and in 1903 the United States government determined there wasn't enough gold in the Wichita Mountains to make mining cost-effective but the lure of quick riches remains to the present day Hanners and prospectors are joined by treasure hunters chasing legends of Spanish gold and buried outlaw treasure next we look back in time for the lost gold of Oklahoma early in the morning near Mears a group of Oklahoma prospectors are sifting the sand and looking for something shiny let's get some of this gold down here we gotta go down to this bedrock area right over here and Mike was saying it way that water turns up underneath him stops at that bedrock should be primed area so let's hit it you guys let's hit it on any given weekend they pack up the gear and the kids and they spend the day in a dry streambed looking for gold gold fever is the sickness of which there is no cure we get out there as much as we possibly can and and we bring material home with us and we go through that material just just so we stop shaking they look for black sand deposits in streams where the water may have pushed a small nugget or two into a crack there's not much to be found in Oklahoma but that doesn't stop them from looking a little bottle there's right now thanks $1,600 and it ain't the money to us it's the fun a good time we have meet and Laura nice people finding it and we have a ball and we really enjoy getting out and doing it it's the first kiss ha ha I'd say what when you get that first what they call the first flash in the pan and you did that yourself this is this is a piece of gold that nobody in history has ever seen before the lure of lost treasure has brought many men to Oklahoma who spent their lives looking for the X on a secret map they say there's more gold buried in the Wildlife Refuge per square mile than anywhere else in the United States that even includes California there's number of areas for a lot of those hidden the legends of lost gold go back 400 years in Oklahoma as Spanish explorer Francisco Vasquez de Coronado crossed the plains in search of the Seven Cities of Gold Spanish were good about chasing legends they were in here probably from the 1700s through the early 1800s Mexicans as well Devil's Canyon over by Altis that's a one of their camp sites I guess well a lot of the mythology of buried treasure has some foundations in history as many of our needs have the Spanish claimed Oklahoma as part of the Spanish Empire as early as the 16th and 17th century Coronado comes through in 1541 in claims all of this land well the Spanish of course are here for gold and silver now there was a legend I read over the years of the Spanish whenever they took over the Mayans and Aztecs and stuff they confiscated a lot of goat and that goat was brought up buried some in the Wichita Mountains some near Devil's Canyon throughout Texas they they were said to have buried it all over the place so that they could come back and the mythology of gold and silver would follow Coronado so Coronado's buried gold has has been one of our mythological stories all this time but then the Spanish really did come to mind they've left their mark we find Spanish markers quite a bit anything from hearts to carvings in the rocks to you know rock shaped like hearts or birds there's some indication there may have been a Spanish or later Mexican mining camp in the western Wichita Mountains but what the Spanish found in the 17th and 18th centuries is that it was not in enough quantity to to bear the expense of extracting smelting processing and transporting they're just not enough there you'd have to tear down an entire mountain to get an ounce of gold in some cases Indians used to tell here and thunder in the mountains which was thought to be the Spaniards blowing up stuff to try to mine forego there's a few mines around they were really good about covering their trail they would backfill the mine shafts but there are a few that you can still find usually their vertical shafts not very big around you know they may only be about this big around one treasure tale has the Spanish hiding Aztec treasure inside a cave in the Wichitas and sealing the entrance with an iron door and in nineteen five I believe it was there was a father and I don't know as a daughter or son was cutting through there they found that when the youngster went underneath it was just barely big enough and with a torch looked around and it was gold all over a lot of gold coins and kegs had building gets bags of gold little everything you name as they had it there it's all Spanish the last time that I heard anything about it as this young guy from the Job Corps said he had went behind this big boulder that had slipped off and he said it was behind that Boulder and that would be north to the Job Corps out there some say it was Jesse James iron door some say it was just a Spanish mind that that they made a door for the hundred years of people have been searching for it has never been found a good chance that it was just all it is is a legend the Spanish that mined in and around the Wichitas left behind several open shafts and symbols carved into the rock at Aurora's like this one at the base of Mount Sheridan donkeys would pull a stone wheel to crush large or bearing rocks in to sift Abul dust near Choctaw modern prospectors from all over the Midwest meet to swap stories treasure tips and to plan new adventures there's not a whole lot in Oklahoma to go find any gold we've picked up few little flakes you know on the Arkansas River up there and places which you know we go up a bunch of 15 20 and with we'll have a good time find a little bit back in south/southwest far to get better and read the real fun is out in the dry riverbeds where whole families spend a weekend turning over rocks and digging out buckets of dirt hoping to see something shine in their shovel go in this area we found it to be 18 to 20 karat gold and some lower grade gold and and then up in the higher areas probably around Madison Creek is probably higher grade gold in 1860 the Wichita Mountains were virtually untouched by the prospectors pick overnight Indian Territory mining camps sprung up with names like Wildman golden pass poverty Gulch and oreonna the army had a hard time keeping prospectors out but they kept kicking them out because the cow was in command she still had their reservation they kept coming back probably the next biggest gold rush was 1892 in 1895 in Washington County about canoe they found a lot of placer gold big run on on that area couldn't buy a shovel from 19 1 to about nineteen seven you have over 2,000 mining claims filed for gold silver and copper in the Wichita Mountains two thousand miners say I want to stake this claim I'm going to mine here two thousand filed there were at least a hundred two hundred and fifty tunnels and holes various sorts and maybe even far more than that dug there were eight or nine smelters or processing plants of various sizes the largest one called the gold bells mine and had a cyanide smelting plant that was quite large near north of presentation Eider Oklahoma they popped up around the Wichita Mountains and towns like Hollis and Snyder would grow because the jobs the materials coming in came through those railroad depots by the 1890s early 1900s there were comparisons of Wichita Mountains to Cripple Creek in Colorado or Klondike there's going to be another Klondike here that those terms show up in nationally in newspapers the Lawton Constitution had articles that that hyped it and said yes it could be and of course it was wishful thinking that it was also a way of gaining attention and making money you had people who would scatter throughout every crevice in the area along the Mount Sheridan to the north and try to find gold and silver but most of these were not as large or as as long-lived as the as places like Deadwood and so forth so very miniscule in comparison because now if gold had been discovered then he would have had real a real mining camps you guys come back in hard-drinking rabble-rousing does anything to take up time like that to have fun just to break the monotony you get these young people rough frontier everyone carrying weapons working with their hands you get a rough crowd that leads to prostitution to illegal alcohol to gambling to fights to murders in 1903 the US Geological Survey sent out a geologist to determine once and for all how much gold was in them there hills he found traces of gold and silver in one of those and he said it's not anywhere near being a economically feasible and there was some copper and some lad and things of that nature but not near the quantities that would make it commercial and so that kind of deflated people in nineteen four but that didn't stop people from believing that there were all kinds of veins of ore coursing through the Wichita Mountains a lot of promoters would salt the little mind that they had and bring in as many people as they could to buy stocks well come to find out those were salted usually a bunch of nuggets were fired into the rocks using a shotgun and they think they hit it big nothing in pain quantities was ever found people selling dynamite and shovels or shares in the claims that's who made the money some men are not content to sift and dig since before statehood treasure hunters have followed clue after clue and some found what they were looking for as a treasure hunter your your historian you know part Explorer part investigator I mean it's just it takes it all of it in you know combined into one to be successful it's solving problems that no one else has saw you know it's the thrill of the chase it's more like looking for something instead of finding it it's like finding your first silver quarter when you're metal detecting you know it it only gets better the bigger the fine that I found Spanish artifacts that's always neat to know that you're at a site that someone was there you know 250 300 years ago before you they left a little piece for you to find in 1932 Joe hunter was a peace officer in rush Springs when a mysterious silver haired man named Cooke unfolded a story of hidden riches and gave him three maps I guess you could say his obsessed with the treasure from the time that he first received his maps to the moment they died that's what consumed his life I mean as soon as he got enough money to to hit the road and look for it that's what he he did he'd abandoned job and family alike just to go find that next clue but it he probably went as far as anyone on chasing down the Frank and Jesse's treasure now perhaps the single most famous story about treasure in Oklahoma is that story about Jesse James and the Hills which are near present-day cement and south of Anadarko near samantha fletcher in that area back in the 1800s the story goes that somewhere near El Paso or something that the that the James Gang robbed a pack load train of mules our Mexicans that were carrying gold they then brought that goad on the mules up to the Wichita Mountains when they were coming coming up here with that 18 burl loads they got caught in a blizzard and traveling was so hard what they did was they dumped it into the little Canyon there and then covered it up best they could and burn the pack saddle but they came back for it from there from there then they divided it up into different caches that's whenever they carved up the Copper Kettle contract stating how much there was and how they would divide it everything when they returned for it the treasure hunters believe Jesse James himself carved a secret pact into this brass bucket and buried it in the kechi hills near cement it just says 15 March 1876 that these people put together bounty Bank and that they were burying this and basically it was each person's name was carved in it saying that they they got an equal portion of it and story goes that they made up the contract because some of the people and questioned whether or not there be any type of guarantee they there are some trust issues I'm sure there was I mean they were all robbers I can see how you wouldn't trust them when the thieves went back to get their gold they started at a Natural Landmark buzzards roost this is kind of like the epicenter of hiding treasure in Oklahoma the brass bucket contract the I left Kansas Matt the the copper map just this was the area that they would come to faint carvings into the weathered rock are believed to be Jesse James coated guide to the location of the blood-stained treasure right up here we have the pistol and knife that are carved kind of faint we might be able to outline it for you knife is here just still there normally the pistol or a knife they're pointing at the next clue or the object buried and normally it's not far away because you know pistol is a short-range weapon so depending on whether the Hammers or not cocked it's just different factors yeah we're basically standing right above where the cave would have been if you look down from here you can kind of see down into where it was but the rocks that fell in over time this is where the brass bucket that Joe hunter found this is the outlaw contract that was carved in it so this fifth day of March 1876 in the year of our Lord 1876 we the undersigned do this day organize a bounty Bank we will go to the west side of the key shot Hills which is about 50 yards from the crossed rifles which they used to set up here on the hill says follow the trail line coming through the mountains just east of a lone Hill which the lone Hills is buzzards roost here where we buried Jack Jack was actually laid out in rocks right over here hunter found this Oh probably in the 30s or 40s is when he noticed that Jack was laid out in rocks and correlated to the the brass bucket pack the photo we have that the hunter had taken you know clearly shows it right over here Jack they believe is code for gold in a small cave on buzzards roost Joe hunter dug up an iron teakettle inside were more clues this is the tea kettle with the with the stuff that was found in the teakettle you got the watch there are several coins a star the legend says Frank and Jesse planned on using the outlaw gold to buy a ranch that stretched from the Wichitas to the Red River and that after Jesse's death Frank bought a house in Fletcher and spent the rest of his days searching for the loot they said he spent a lot of time between the Fletcher and Missouri so he would come down here and spend some time I know different places he hunted for treasure one place was over here but Marlo did seem go out there but never where he went he was pretty crafty when it came down to it a lot of loot this the learners his real good friends with the banker in Fletcher and at one time he brought in a big roll of moldy bills to deposit in an account so they've been freshly dug evidently Frank and Jesse spent a lot of time in Oklahoma which the historians don't attribute to any of that time to them spent here in Oklahoma but nevertheless they did a lot of people claims that there that they were never here claims that the gentlemen in Fletcher was actually a gentleman named Sam Collins that was paid to take the fall for Frank James however at Anadarko the courthouse there's actually a copy of his Frank James's will filed there whenever he died in Missouri they had to file copy there since he owned land in that County stating his belongings and stuff other outlaws used the rugged Oklahoma landscape to shake the law and perhaps to store their stolen riches did Belle Starr bury gold who knows she may have did she still go probably and we can prove that maybe she she stole it can we prove that Frank James is in Oklahoma maybe maybe not but we do know that the Nuland and Dalton Gang Road in Oklahoma we do know that Bonnie and Clyde and Pretty Boy Floyd were in Oklahoma did they bring you near their loot and bury it maybe not all the treasure in the Wichitas is gold and silver a Kiowa legend says an Indian paradise lies beneath Mount Scott I guess it's Buffalo it's a see my mystical story but I believed it all my life when they were going to leave us for good the grandpa Buffalo was walking it's better told in Kiowa but he's walking along and he sees he stack of bones goes a little bit further and he recognizes his grandmother's bones then he goes a little further and the bones are getting higher and higher and just stacks and some of their you know they were just left there because people were just taking their coats off it's how it was told to me and he got real sad because he said my whole family is out here I'm alone now what good are we doing and kind anymore if they're just going to come and kill my people so he takes this little herd and it's on a misty fall morning you say the mountain opened up and in there it looked like an Indian paradise with the campground and all of that and they walked in there and it closed up and this young Kiowa lady seen that happen and that's how you know the Buffalo is not here anymore and we we only have that past life and dreams or stories that's gone and it still makes somebody from my era sad you know that our folks had to live through this transition and the people that were my elders were such great people can't begin to emulate them we can try it's at least kinder I thought ah heat all day after a morning of digging a pile of dirt and sand is reduced down to just a few grains in the bottom of the pan now the black that you see in here is actually an iron type of a substance called magnetite and if you pick that up with a magnet you know it'll actually lift with a magnet because it's a type of an iron so we look for the iron when we're prospecting because it's so heavy that if there's gold in the area that heavy gold is going to fall out in the same place that the black iron falls out that might be a piece of gold right there the search for gold can be a fever for Oklahoma treasure hunters it's a lifelong passion and they found more than gold along the way actually the thrill is in the hunt you know once you find it it's found there's no more hunt you have to go to the next one so for me it's the hunt itself it's not so much the finding of it when you find something that just verifies that you're on the right track that optimism is typical of Oklahoma and then when you take the little kernel of truth in history magnify it with the mists of time people want to believe that and so lost treasures are a part of life in Oklahoma and always will be there's a long it's you you're looking it's interesting because it's researching and you're finding out things you're learning time that's what keeps his card I've learned more about history from having to research you know this then probably a lot of people ever know I mean Oklahoma is just loaded with history treasure hunting and gold panning are strictly prohibited in the Wichita Mountains National Wildlife Refuge violators may be charged with a variety of federal crimes and face fines and restitution costs the price of prospecting may be still higher on Fort Sill gunnery ranges where things routinely explode and of course permission should be obtained from private property owners before searching for the lost gold of Oklahoma you for a copy of this program please send a check or money order for 2295 to the OETA foundation post office box one four one nine zero oklahoma city seven three one one three or call 889 six three eight two

Channel: OETAvideo

Views: 311,325

Rating: 4.7056856 out of 5

Keywords: Back, In, Time, Oklahoma, History, Gold, Panning, For, Spanish, treasure, bank, robbers

Id: uXPwLAbb2Fc

Length: 27min 47sec (1667 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 04 2012