The Lost Bowie Mine: Texas's Los Almagres Silver Legend
Spain chased it, Jim Bowie fought 13 hours for it, and nobody agrees where it is. Here's what's documented about Texas's Lost Bowie Mine and what's legend.
Lost mines, outlaw caches, pirate gold — the stories, the clues and what’s still missing.
Spain chased it, Jim Bowie fought 13 hours for it, and nobody agrees where it is. Here's what's documented about Texas's Lost Bowie Mine and what's legend.
A stonemason's find, a seven-name roll call and a message dated 1834. Here's what the Thoen Stone says, who backs it, and why South Dakota still argues about it.
A mutinous London ship, four sealed bags and a governor with a long memory. Here's what the record says about Bradish's loot, and where Block Island fits.
A desperate wagon train, children with a bucket of heavy yellow pebbles and a creek nobody could find again. Here's what's known about Oregon's most famous lost gold.
Ten French soldiers, a string of packhorses and a payroll buried in a hurry. Here's what Ohio's Minerva legend says, what history backs up, and why the gold has never turned up.
A gangster, a rambling deathbed and a safe said to be buried near Phoenicia. Here's what is documented about Dutch Schultz and what the legend adds.
A hanged pirate's gold, a sea captain's silver bars and a Blackbeard honeymoon that doesn't add up. Here's what's real on New Hampshire's Isles of Shoals.
Six masked men, three wooden boxes and $60,000 in fresh gold coins. Here's what's known about Sam Bass's Big Springs robbery and the treasure that never came home.
Did Jesse James bury a fortune in Missouri? Train robberies, a Wayne County cave that fizzled in 1948 and a rented house in St. Joseph: here's what the record shows.
A river pirate turned highwayman, an empty camp at Rocky Springs and buried gold nobody can prove. Here's what's documented about Mason's Mississippi loot, and what's pure campfire.
Hundreds of Frenchmen, a mountain of gold and a map that vanished. Here's what's legend and what's record behind Colorado's Treasure Mountain and Treasure Falls.
Two men crawled out of the surf. The rest of Black Sam Bellamy's crew, and tons of pirate gold, went down off Cape Cod in 1717. Some of it has been found. Most of it hasn't.
A sandalwood king, storehouses of Spanish silver and a fortune that seemed to vanish. Plus the real Hawaii mystery: where Kamehameha the Great lies, a secret kept on purpose for 200 years.
In 1699 Captain Kidd anchored off Lewes for ten days, locals rowed out to trade, and a pirate's chest went ashore. Legend says Kidd buried gold on a Delaware Bay island. Here's what really happened.
A hurricane sank eleven Spanish treasure ships off Florida in 1715. Pirates, salvors and beachcombers have chased the silver ever since, and the queen's jewels are still missing.
Blackbeard really did raid ships off the Chesapeake and hide out on the Eastern Shore. So did his crew bury loot in the sand? What the records say, and what three centuries of shovels have found.
A blind Englishman, a journal full of silver and two centuries of Kentuckians searching the hills for it. The Swift Silver Mine: what the records show, and what's pure legend.
An iron chest, three curses and a headless guardian. The legend of Captain Kidd's gold on Charles Island off Milford, Connecticut, sorted into fact and folklore, plus how to walk out at low tide.
A wagon of Confederate gold, a cavalry corps laying down its arms and a cotton town on the Tombigbee. The Gainesville legend, and the real last days of the war around it.
Legend says river pirates buried stolen gold along Illinois' Fox River, then got wiped out. The records tell a stranger story: prairie pirates, a man named Fox and a buried bottle of loot.
Rich gold float on an Idaho mule trail, a finder who never came back for it, and a 1902 strike that took his legend's name. Was the Lost Packer ever really found?
A canyon of loose gold, a cache under a burned cabin's hearthstone, and a survivor who spent decades failing to find his way back. New Mexico's Lost Adams Diggings, fact and legend.
Legend says travelers on Iowa's Mormon Handcart Trail buried gold coins and never came back. The real 1856 trek tells a very different story about who had gold at all.
America's first train robbers grabbed about $96,000 at Marshfield in 1868, then vigilantes got to them. The money never turned up. Buried near Seymour, carried to Canada, or quietly laundered?
Russian prospectors panned real gold on Alaska's Kenai River around 1850, then went quiet. Did they leave a hidden stash behind when Russia sold Alaska? The records, the rumours and the rush.
Local lore swears Confederate gold went under with the valleys that became Georgia's Lake Lanier. Here's what really sank in 1956, where the real rebel gold went, and why the lake keeps its secrets.
The night before Coffeyville, the Dalton Gang camped on Onion Creek. Legend says they buried a fortune in coins by the fire. Only one of them lived, and he never went back.
French traders, a secret silver vein and a people who knew the woods better than anyone. Wisconsin's lost Menominee mine has no paper trail, but the real silver story on the Menominee River is still unfolding.
In 1857 a steamer packed with California gold sank in a hurricane, and survivors watched fortunes slide off the deck. Then came the rumours, the treasure hunter and 500 coins nobody can find.
A wagon of Confederate gold, the legend says, vanished into the hills around Blue Mountain, Alabama, in 1865. The depot, the camp and the raid were real. The gold? Not one record.
Spanish silver and church relics buried in the dunes, then storms and pirates wiped out the camp. Dauphin Island's treasure legend, checked against its very real raids and hurricanes.
Warships closing in, a fortune in the warehouses and a swamp at his back. Did the pirate Jean Lafitte bury his loot in the Louisiana bayous, or is the Barataria treasure pure legend?
Pirate Jean Lafitte supposedly buried a fortune near Fort Morgan, Alabama. The catch: no record puts him digging there, and nobody is quite sure how, or when, he died.
Smuggled gold sealed inside an old mine under Birmingham's iron mountain? Red Mountain's tunnels and concrete-capped portals are real. The gold is another matter.
An old German prospector, a box of gold under his deathbed and 130 years of searchers trying to find the rest. The Lost Dutchman Mine, fact by fact and legend by legend.