Mormon Gold Coins

Fountain Green?  What a beautiful place.  I love Fountain Green and that whole area.  I did a lot of work down there ten or so years ago and really loved being there.  But I?ve only been through a couple times since.  I got lost once east of there and stuck up to my axles in mud?my map showed the road was paved.  Once I got chased by a black bear south of there, well I?m not sure he actually chased me but when I saw him, I set a 3 minute mile getting out of there!  And it sounds a lot better if I say he was chasing me. I?m not really a treasure hunter but travel to remote areas all over the west, and the locals I work for share all kinds of stories and legends and for some reason, I always wind up hearing about lost treasure or Spanish mines.  I first saw George Thompson?s ?Some Dreams Die?, way back in the early 80?s.  A friend was captivated with it and showed it to me.  I started reading and realized I already had heard most of the stories in there and what?s more, I?d been to most of the places he mentioned.  I wondered if I?d been working and digging just inches from some buried cache or forgotten treasure.  Even in high school, I found 12 old mines hiking in the Wasatch mountains east of my home near Little Cottonwood Canyon.  One of them was huge, thousands of feet of tunnel all chiseled into dark Granite following a white vein of sugar quartz laced with wire gold.  You could see the vein in the roof of the tunnels and in some parts of the old mine the vein was a foot wide.  I took a sample of the ore home and showed my Dad but he said there wasn?t enough gold there to make it worth refining, so the old mine was just a place to explore and have fun.  But at today?s prices who knows what some of that ore might be worth.  Unfortunately, my little brother found some old sweaty dynamite in there and brought a stick of it home.  That brought up the cops and the bomb squad and the Sheriff closed off the whole area and they blew up the explosives.  It made the news and within days there were hundreds of treasure hunters and rock hounds combing the area looking for our mine, which really wasn?t that well hidden.  Even today the huge tailings dump is quite noticeable to the trained eye (except big houses block the view from the highway) even though it is overgrown with scrub oak and pines.  Sadly, a couple guys found the mine and used explosives to open the vein.  Instead, they caved in the entrance and got hurt and trapped.  My little brother heard the blast and found the entrance collapsed and could hear the guys yelling for help behind the rocks.  He called for help and it was a big deal with excavators digging and rescue crews waiting to see if they were alive.  Again it made the news but it really made the County Sheriff mad to be up there twice in a weeks time so they came back after the rescue and blasted the entrance closed.  Way back then, we were slim enough to get into another entrance on the other side of the mountain, just an air hole but a viable entrance.  My Brother claims it?s still there.  I?d really like to get some of that ore and have it assayed because there is still a lot of it down there.  I was up there just recently and found they have built houses within 500 feet of the old entrance and there is no way in, except to hike in from a mile or so south but this summer, we?re going to try it.  I?ll need to lose a few pounds, maybe 70 (it?s all muscle?really!) to get down that hole so if you?re a wiry, skinny sort, you may want to join me.

Anyway?I really get to rambling?my Great Grand Dad kept daily journals for Brigham Young.  During high school I stayed and worked at my Great Aunt?s home in Southern Utah for a short while one summer.  Instead of watching TV after dinner, we?d all sit in the family room and talk and tell stories until late into the night.  Mostly we?d just listen to her.  She had quite a life growing up in the wilds of Utah.  She had Grandpa?s journals. (He must have been my Great, Great, Great, Grand Dad because he was her Grand Father.  O.K. I?m not good with genealogy, even though I?m a Mormon?so shoot me.)  They were dark blue, leather bound and looked like volumes of the Britannica Encyclopedia, big and 2? thick each.  There were 4 or 5 of them all hand written with beautiful script.  She would read interesting excerpts from them, one of which was the story of the Mormon Mint Robbery.  While intrigued, I never pursued it.  After reading the story in Thompson?s book nearly ten years later, I decided to visit her and take a closer look at those journals.  But I never got the chance.  The year after her funeral I contacted my step uncle, whom she?d married later in life.  He?d taken all her land and the animals and the ranch house and told me my cousin in California had taken most of her personal belongings and books.  I barely knew this cousin and it took a couple years to run her down.  She knew all about the journals but sadly, donated them to someone?she wasn?t sure who.  My Aunt?s place was like a museum with lots of antiques and my cousin donated most of her stuff to places like the State Historical Society, the L.D.S. Church, museums etc.  She thought the journals went to the Utah State Historical Society.  But thorough research on my part has led to all dead ends?they just don?t have them.  My Mother thinks they were given to the Daughter?s of the Utah Pioneers but they don?t keep very good records and I have found nothing there either.  I?m still looking in my spare time, which means maybe once a year.  Grandpa?s telling of the robbery was different than Thompson?s version and all of his writings were very detailed.  I?m sure if the Baldwin?s remains were indeed found, as Thompson claims, the journals would give us the most specific information on place and time, meaning a very good place to start a search.  But I?m afraid we?d need Fisher?s helicopter and specialized equipment to find it.  I have a buddy who is a Colonel in the Air National Guard commanding attack helicopters.  He showed me videos they took in Afghanistan and how they located underground bunkers of munitions with GPR and infra-red, and then blew them to shreds.  Now that kind of equipment could surely find the Baldwin loot, if we can get close enough and if it exists.  And if we could get that army helicopter we could sure have a lot of fun with those smart missiles and 30mm machine guns.  I just love hunting Jack Rabbits in the desert!

Hey, when I?m in the office waiting for calls, I have time to write?and bore you guys to death.  One more strange treasure coincidence while I?m waiting for my last call, then I?m gone.  Somewhere, I think in Thompson?s book, I read a story about a lost mine up above Currant Creek and realized I?d camped there, even seen the signs on the trees, years before but it was just another story and memory.  Last fall, I hitched a ride with a fellow up near Kamas and we became fast friends.  He started talking about the mountains, old legends etc.  I told him I knew a lot about some of that stuff.  He mentioned George Thompson and I told him I had sort of known old Goerge.  Then he blurted out ?well, I found the old mine on Currant Creek?.  He went on to tell me he is an amateur treasure hunter and followed some leads on old Spanish cannons in the area.  While on horseback, he and a buddy spotted something and started a dig and uncovered a very old huge wooden door, very well hidden, and sealed shut.  They were worried they were on either private or Indian land so took the GPS coordinates and hid it up again.  Once a proper claim is filed and the snow clears, we?re heading up!  Dang?last time I rode a horse, I got thrown, more than once, got a concussion and broke two ribs, animals don?t like me.  So I guess I?ll need that army helicopter again?maybe some good deer hunting way up there?


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Hey SPG1,
Wow, range fires, taking refuge in an old mine to save your lives, fire fighting planes and meeting up with the ATF boys!  Now that seems a fairly typical day for the average treasure hunter?  Do you carry a whip and have a scar on your chin?

Well I have to agree with you, the secret is in getting good information.  A good friend of mine and close colleague of George Thompson told me (back in the 80?s) that every story Thompson published was extremely well researched and the loot looked for by Thompson.  The stories of an ?old fellow? or a ?couple? who found bars of gold or the Golden Buddha statue out in Frisco were all George himself, those were his finds.  If you re-read ?Some Dreams Die? you?ll realize how much of the book is about George Thompson.  But the stories that are vague when it comes to credible dates, times, places etc. were all ongoing projects for him and he didn?t want his research to lead someone else to a monster find.  So he was intentionally vague and sometimes included misleading clues in his stories just to throw others off.  But I?m sure there are hundreds of weekend warriors who?ve hit the deserts or mountains armed with nothing more than Thompson?s book (or one like it) in one hand and a brand new metal detector in the other expecting to invest a couple hours in a search and come home with a million bucks!  But still, even then, it can be a lot of fun just getting out there.

Once or twice a year I take my family out for a day or two on a ?treasure hunt?.  We?ll base it on one of the Utah legends, usually up in the mountains (a whole lot nicer for the wife and kids than the desert) and then have a great time together.  We usually end up fishing on one of the high Uinta Lakes and the only treasure we find is having a lot of fun together.  Last fall we headed up to Blacks Fork Commissary, had a great time exploring the old buildings and speculating on what actually went on in that extremely remote little town a hundred years ago.  We ended up fishing and having a great dinner at a beautiful lake (with 2 million mosquitoes who also had a great dinner) and coming home through Wyoming about midnight with a few new dents in the Suburban and lots of smiles, but no gold.

I knew a guy who got so excited about one of Thompson?s stories about a lost payroll that he spent 500 bucks on new equipment and three days of work with another fellow and ended up digging a hole 6 feet deep, 12 feet wide out near Fish Springs.  I had no desire to go along but read the story and found a different version in another book at the library that clearly indicated the lost payroll could not have been anywhere near Fish Springs, even though the robbery was.  It took me 15 minutes to figure it out but my friend didn?t bother, one read of the story and the treasure bug bit.  He even made a long list of all the things he was going to buy with the loot, from a new house to a Corvette!  I?m not sure if his wife divorced him then or after his next escapade.  He did find a couple of old coins, a good bottle and an old brass button from a cavalry uniform but his digging buddy disappeared with everything!

If, someday, I find Grandpa?s journals, (or any credible source of good information) then maybe we can do a real hunt for the Baldwin loot.  Until then, I think I?ll just hope to find something glimmering in the water while fishing the upper Weber and finding it?s a couple hundred old Spanish Gold Bars!  Oh wait a minute?you?re the Spanish gold guy?well I?ll give you a call when it happens.

Speaking of Spanish gold, another rambling story seems in order.  A number of years ago I did some work up near Soapstone, I noticed an abandoned water tank half buried in the ground but thought nothing of it until a friend asked me if I had any leads on old water tanks.  I made some inquiries and was told the tank was free for the taking with one hitch, under no circumstances could we do any digging on the site not even with shovels.  I contacted the ranger station and met with one of the head Forest Service honcho?s at the site.  He gave us permission to bring in a trailer and a crane to lift the tank out but we had to keep everything on the access road 40 to 50 feet from the tank.  So we got a telescoping crane and supported the boom midway with a fallen tree we cut to length and it worked like an engineers dream.  We had the tank out and loaded on the trailer in a few hours.  We tried to backfill the hole by pushing rocks and dirt in by hand and I noticed several, maybe 15 or 20 small dirty reddish bricks had been pulled up with some tree roots on one side of the tank.  I thought it odd that bricks would be there but figured they must have had something to do with leveling the tank 40 years earlier when it was installed.  At any rate, I didn?t think long about the small bricks.  We still had work to do.  As part of our deal with the Forrest Service, we agreed to remove about 400 feet of old pipe that ran to and from the tank and the only way to get it out was to cut it up with hack saws.  It was early winter and snowing heavily as we finally got the pipe loaded and our equipment out of there.  They closed the highway for winter the next day.  A while later, I realized I?d left a hacksaw up there and figured I?d have to wait until summer to get it.

When early summer rolled around, I was excited to get back up there, not for my saw but to look at those bricks again.  Over the winter, my son heard about someone finding an old Spanish gold bar while deer hunting at Soapstone and he jokingly asked me how many I?d found.   Suddenly, I remembered the small dirty red bricks and the more I thought about it, the more those small bricks turned to Spanish Gold Bars!  I did some research, found the story of the deer hunter and other stories of many finds on Soapstone and Lightning Ridge and by the time the highway opened up I was pretty much a millionaire, in my mind.  I was up there in my jeep the day the highway opened but couldn?t get in on the access road.  Having no patience, I resorted to snow shoeing, confidently ignoring all the signs of a heart attack.  With the bold persistence of any soon to be millionaire, I trudged into the deep snow, stopping only to rest, every 10 feet or so, or get a drink every 5 feet or so, or to pass out...whenever.  In only 5 or 6 hours time, I had nearly covered the entire distance of nearly a mile and my quarry came into full view.  Nearly running through the trees and snow I covered the last hundred feet in under an hour and there, before me found the hole where the tank had been?under 5 feet of snow.  So I made it back to the jeep before midnight and waited another month to try again.  By this time I only had to hike in a couple hundred feet.  The deep snow was nearly gone?and so were the bricks, every last one of them.  I dug around for quite awhile to no avail, whatever those bricks were, I would never know but somebody out there does.  As I looked through the pine trees, sweat (and tears) clouding my vision, I saw in the sunlight a glimmer just down the mountain.  My hopes rekindled, I ran to the spot and found?my lousy hack saw, rusty blade but shiny frame.  So I didn?t go home empty handed and I have this nifty story to tell while a recently retired Forest Service Ranger is probably laughing at me from a private island somewhere on the Great Salt Lake.
P.S.  I wish I had 28,000 bucks to blow, but I think I'd do it in Belize rather than Peru. Aren't they both near Scotland? I have a hard time figuring Provo from Orem! Oh and I don't live in Scipio that too is anouther fabulously boring story, I'm in the south end of S.L. Valley.

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I have been down the same roads of research as leibstandarte. This looks like a myth. But it's such a compelling myth that I still have leads I am trying to research.
The coins might not have been too pure but thier value now is worth the search!

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