are taken from James M. Deem's How to Hunt Buried Treasure
of all kinds
have stolen money and, fearing capture, buried it to speed their escape. They
intended to come back to recover it later, when the coast was clear. Sometimes
their plans were thwarted by a long prison term and a failing memory. Others
were killed before
they could return. As a consequence, many criminal treasures have yet
to be found.
reported treasure was buried in 1862 by a gang of
bandits who stole more than $100,000 in army payroll money.
As with most treasure tales, this
story has many versions,
including the one that follows.
robbers were already notorious for crimes they had
committed in Sacramento, California, in 1847. By 1862,
though, they had moved to eastern Colorado and were
lives as farmers, sheepherders, or cattle ranchers.
Still, they decided to join together
for one last robbery: a poorly
guarded U.S. Army payroll headed for Denver.
They planned their final robbery carefully, intending to divide the
money and head east, most likely to
plans were ruined, however, when they found that the stagecoach was
accompanied by four armed guards. They grabbed the payroll, but only two of
the gang survived the shoot-out and they
were quickly pursued by a posse. Rather than travel with such a heavy
quantity of gold coins, the two robbers decided to bury them. A few miles east
of Clifford, Colorado, they dug three shallow trenches in a circular
formation. They filled the trenches and packed the earth on top to make it
look as if three people had been buried in shallow graves. A rock resembling a
tombstone was placed on each mound. On two of the stones, they chiseled their names
and the date "1847." They carved the word "unknown"
on the third stone. Exactly why they went to
the trouble of preparing three graves is unknown,
but perhaps they hoped that the posse
would think they
had been killed in a gunfight. Finally, at the center of the circle,
they dug a large hole in which they buried their loot in three Dutch ovens.
Then they departed.
one would ever have known about the treasure if a
stranger from Chicago had not come to Clifford in 1884 and
found a place to stay with sheep rancher James Will. The man spent most
of his time walking through the barren prairie east of town. When he could not
find whatever he was looking for, he
related the story of the payroll robbery and the two surviving bandits
to James Will and left town for good.
Will nor most of Clifford's residents put much stock
into the tale — until May 1931, when George Elkins
found a stone inscribed "1847"; some words also seemed to be carved
in the stone, but exposure to the elements
had made them illegible. Treasure seekers dug far and wide but did not
discover any cache — or the other two stones — in the area.
in November 1934, another stone was found by Tom Hatton. This stone read:
"D. Grover and Joseph Fox-Lawe — Aug. 8, 1847." People assumed
that these were the names of the two robbers, but more treasure hunting did
not turn up the gold.
one of the robbers may have returned and found the money, many people believe
that the stolen payroll is still buried
near Clifford. According to author Perry
Eberhart, who has written about the cache, a careful
treasure hunter might find the metal pots containing a fortune in gold
on one of the hills that lie east of Clifford.
course, anyone finding the treasure would be unable to keep it legally. But
this hasn't stopped many treasure
trackers from trying.
on Criminal Treasure
property belongs to the original owner, if there is proof connecting
the property to the robbery. If someone finds the Clifford treasure,
the U.S. Army would be able to claim the payroll legally as long as it
could prove that the coins were part of that payroll. In one recent
case, a boy in Cleveland, Ohio,
who found close to $100,000 in currency buried in his backyard, was
not allowed to keep it because the serial numbers on the
bills indicated that it had been part of the loot in a bank robbery;
the money was returned to the bank.
©James M. Deem.
Originally published in How
to Hunt Buried Treasure (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1992). All rights