I had the good fortune of growing up on Ft Huachuca (imaganie having to spell that as a kid).
This hidden treasure was well known in the early 60's and my dad and I would go hunting for it everychance we got. We would sit around the campfires and I'd listen as the grownups told their own tales, tales that they had heard from a reliable source.
There was a recent article about this, can't remember where but the hunt has continued even into the 1980's & 90's. Occassionaly the Army has allowed exploration but supposedly that's not going to happen any more.
Makes sense because they don't want to damage the little canyon, it's like an oasis on the Fort.
I'd love to go back and have a crack at it now that I'm much older.
Here is a short overview from: You are not allowed to view links.
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Fort Huachuca Treasure Arizona
The Mexican bandito Juan Estrada amassed a great deal of gold. It is said that he had the gold melted down into 50 pound bars and hid them in Huachuca Canyon on what is now part of the Fort Huachuca Military Reservation. The treasure is estimated at over $60,000,000.
There is some confusion as to what exactly took place in 1941, but a PVT Robert Jones was apparently involved. By some accounts Jones fell into a hole and found the treasure. By other accounts, his Sergeant actually wrecked the bus he was driving and found the gold. The Sergeant had the bus pulled out at his own expense in order to keep the location secret. Jones and the Sergeant would get drunk together and talk about how the gold would be spent. The Sergeant was shipped off the European campaign and killed in battle.
In any case, in 1959, Jones went in the canyon with Government permission and an expedition in an attempt to find the gold. He was unsuccessful. Did he in fact discover the gold and not remember the exact locations? Did the Sergeant give him truthful directions to the cache?
Here is a good excerpt from. You are not allowed to view links.
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Found, Then Lost
Arizona? Huachuca Mountains have many legends of buried Spanish treasure, but the greatest one of all may have been found and lost by a soldier named Robert Jones.
Jones, an illiterate black man from Dallas, was stationed at Fort Huachuca as an infantry private in 1941. Taking a Sunday stroll on the reservation one afternoon, he fell into a sloping brush-covered shaft some 32 feet deep. At the bottom he discovered a chamber containing at least 100 gold bars that weighed about 50 pounds each and another 100 bars of silver ?millions of dollars in bullion.
Private Jones went back to his company and reported his find to the first sergeant. A few days later Jones threw a $400 party for his friends and paid for it from the $800 he received from a jeweler in nearby Douglas, Ariz., for part of one gold bar he had obtained.
A few days later Jones was shipped to the Pacific, before he could revisit his bonanza, and was seriously wounded while overseas. For years, between long sieges in veterans?hospitals, Jones told about his hidden treasure.
Between the time he came home and late 1959, he visited Fort Huachuca in his quest for the treasure several times, only to be told he couldn? dig on the reservation. Finally, in 1959, his story reached Major General F.W. Moorman, commander at Fort Huachuca.
General Moorman realized that Jones just might be right. And if he was, the government, under the law, would get 60 percent of the treasure, plus taxes on Jones?40 percent.
The general called Jones in and told him to start digging. Jones and a companion went up Huachuca Canyon with picks and shovels. Along the way, Jones pointed to a wooden shed blazed with his initials. A little farther on, Jones picked a spot and said, "It? just about here and about 32 feet down." But after a day of fruitless digging, Jones went back to headquarters for help.
He was offered a drill on condition that if it didn? hit an underground cavity at 32 feet, he would go back to Dallas. The drill ground down through the earth? crust and at just the right depth, vanished into emptiness.
A full colonel, Elbridge Bacon, was assigned to the search with a crew of men and equipment. For two full weeks they dug and clawed through the rotten granite with pneumatic drills, scoop shovels and bulldozers. When underground streams flooded their excavation, they brought up pumps.
Finally, after 15 days and an estimated $1,000 invested in the hole, the Army officials decided they would blast, and if there was no gold, they would quit the search. They drilled a hole 35 feet deep and dumped 30 sticks of dynamite in it. The blast revealed no gold.
Jones thanked them and said goodbye, but he was not giving up his search. His confidence unshaken, he conceded he might have been a few feet off on the location and firmly declared he would go to the Pentagon or to the U.S. Treasury Department for more help. However, Jones was never able to get any U.S. official to listen, so the gold is apparently still there.
This site, since the U.S. Army believed Jones and tried to help him, certainly needs further investigation. The estimated value of this treasure is between $28 million and $100 million. Fort Huachuca and Douglas are located in Cochise County. There is no record of this cache being found.
2) Lost Spanish Treasure
The following site is unusual in that there are two valuable things to search for:
?The lost mines from which the gold and silver was obtained, and
?The vaults where hundreds of bars of gold and silver were hidden.
Somewhere north of what is the Arizona-Mexico border, in Pima County, the Lost Mission Treasure is believed to be buried. Some believe it is hidden in a black sugarloaf mountain south and east of Gunsight Well. Others have sought for it in the vicinity of Sonoyta, as the lost treasure belonged to the San Marcelo Mission there.
San Marcelo, founded by Father Kino in 1699, was destroyed when a bloody Indian revolt drove the Spanish Jesuit priests from their missions and their gold mines throughout this territory. The Indians grew tired of working the gold mines of the padres and decided to revolt.
On Nov. 21, 1751, the Indians turned on the padres and every Spaniard who did not flee was slain. Arrastras and smelting furnaces were destroyed, and gold mines were filled in and hidden. At Sonoyta, the San Marcelo Mission was plundered and burned to the ground. Its underground treasure vaults of gold and silver and the mines were sealed up and hidden under rocks and earth.
Parts of bronze mining machinery from Spain and bits of broken arrastras and smelters have since been found in the area, but the secret of the hidden gold mines and treasure vaults of the padres has not been learned.
3) Stagecoach Loot
Records in Mohave County could help on the following site.
In 1872 a stagecoach on its way from Prescott to Fort Mohave was robbed of $72,000 by two men near Canyon Station, located about 12 miles from Kingman, on the Stockton Hill Road in Mohave County.
The story is that one of the robbers was killed by a sheriff? posse. The second one was captured and sent to prison where he died years later. While in prison, the man told of the cache, which had been buried near the holdup site. Attempts to locate it were unsuccessful.
In 1915, a man named John Goodwill owned the property where the original station stood. One day he saw an old man searching around the foundations of the station. When he approached, the man told Goodwill that he had been in prison with a man in the 1890s who told him that he was one of the robbers and that the money had been buried near the station.
The man was given permission to search, but after several days he told Goodwill that the area had changed and he could not find any of the landmarks that the old robber had told him to locate.
It appears that the $72,000 is still hidden near the old Canyon stage stop.
4) Spanish Gold
It was in 1690 that a group of Spaniards camped between Sedona in Oak Creek Canyon in Coconino County and Perkinsville in Yavapai County. While they ate a meal one of the small boys wandered away. When he was missed, the men began a search. They found the boy and a rich outcrop of wire gold.
The entrance to the canyon was narrow, and all but covered with brush and trees. The party built cabins and settled down to mine the gold. How long they labored is unknown, but when they had enough gold they carried it back to Mexico City and reported the find to the church, as was the custom.
Others were sent to help at the mine, but this did not last long. The Indians were angry and drove them from the area, and many were killed. None of the Spaniards ever returned.
It is known that during the 1870s, a prospector stumbled upon the old Spanish camp and found it in a state of ruin. Everywhere was visible evidence of the early Spanish activity.
The prospector examined the mine tunnels and found they contained a fabulous amount of wire gold. He immediately set out for supplies and secretly made his way back to the mine, making sure no one had followed. Retimbering the old tunnels, he set to work extracting the gold and melting it into bars. He had mined only a short time when Indians attacked, driving him from the area.
It wasn? until 1905 that two or three people on separate trips stumbled onto the old Spanish camp. However, the story of the gold had not been known to them. Upon hearing about the mine, these people made several attempts to retrace the route, but could never find the place.
There is no doubt that the mines existed, are rich in gold and a knowledgeable prospector could find them.
5) Silver Cache
South of Tucson, near Arivaca in Pima County, a cache of over $70,000 in silver bullion is buried. In bar form, it was stolen from the Cerro Colorado Mine by the mines?Sonoran foreman, Juanito, during the Civil War.
John Poston, who was in charge of the Cerro Colorado workings for the Sonora Mining and Exploring Company, knew that silver was being stolen by company miners and being buried nearby. Therefore, when he finally caught Juanito making off with a load of stolen bullion, he decided to make an example of him and shot the Sonoran.
Shortly thereafter, a band of Sonoran outlaw friends of Juanito? attacked the Yanqui miners, killing John Poston and two German workers. But they were unable to locate Juanito? buried gold.
For a number of years after this, the war arrows of the Chiricahua Apaches discouraged further search for the treasure. It is believed to lie buried somewhere near the mine.
SOURCES:
An Album of Maps to Lost Treasure. Printed as an annual in 1961 by Charlton Publications, Darby, Conn.
Directory of Arizona Minerals. State Bulletin No. 3, Federated Writers Project for Arizona.
Newsweek magazine. Oct. 12, 1959.
Pen Pals. A publication devoted to treasure hunting, June 1964.
Posted on: February 25, 2011, 04:20:38 PM
The Official Ft Huachuca link has moved to it's musuem site.
Even has a picture of Jones and the treasure map he drew.
Here it is:
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http://www.huachucamuseum.com/exhibit5/PDFS/jonesgld.pdf
Posted on: February 25, 2011, 04:44:27 PM
The Official Ft Huachuca link has moved to it's musuem site.
Even has a picture of Jones and the treasure map he drew.
Here it is:
You are not allowed to view links.
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http://www.huachucamuseum.com/exhibit5/PDFS/jonesgld.pdf
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