The Silver Madonna and Other Tales of America's Greatest Lost Treasures

by W. C. Jameson

  Robert Jones was an enlisted man in the U.S. Army and was assigned to a communications division at Fort Huachuca in southeastern Arizona during the months leading up to World War II. During his stay there, the summer daytime temperatures rose to well over 100 degrees. On one of his days off, Jones decided to seek some relief from the heat by hiking and exploring the shady oak and pine canyons of the nearby Huachuca Mountains. Accompanied by a friend, he drove into Huachuca Canyon along a very old and seldom used dirt road.

  Arriving at a point where the road had washed out, Jones parked his car and the two men continued up the canyon on foot along a shadowed trail. Now and again they spotted deer in the forest, squirrels and blue jays in the trees, and chipmunks among the rocks. Wary of rattlesnakes known to inhabit the area, they proceeded with caution.

  As the two men made their way up the canyon, Jones noted changes in the color of the rock near the base of the rock wall. A large pile of loose rubble appeared to be talus from a former mining operation. Jones searched the area near the wastes but could not see evidence of a mine shaft. Curious, he climbed up the talus slope for a closer look. As Jones was walking along a short stretch of the canyon atop the talus, the ground suddenly gave way beneath him and he dropped thirty-two feet into an almost vertical shaft.

  Stunned and slightly injured, Jones called out to his companion. By the time his friend arrived, Jones realized he had fallen into an old mine shaft, one that had been covered over sometime in the distant past. From where he sat at the bottom of the drop, Jones could see that the shaft leveled off and continued laterally into the bedrock of the mountain.

  Responding to Jones’s request, the friend retrieved a small flashlight from the vehicle and dropped it down to him. Pointing the narrow beam, Jones followed it into the passageway for twenty yards, eventually arriving at a low-ceilinged, rectangular chamber that had been excavated out of the rock and reinforced with hand-laid stones, mortar, and timbers. Jones, who was five feet seven inches tall, could barely stand upright in the chamber.

  Employing the dim illumination of the flashlight, Jones explored the chamber. As he approached one of the walls, he saw that stacked along its length were what he determined were gold and silver ingots. They were twenty inches long and he estimated there were two hundred of each. He picked up one of the gold bars and hefted it. He estimated that it weighed fifty pounds.

  Near the center of chamber, Jones encountered two large wooden tubs. Each one, he explained later, was “as big as three washtubs.” One of the tubs was filled to the top with gold nuggets, the other half full with gold dust. A short distance from the tubs he found a large glass jar. Examining it in the glow of the flashlight, Jones saw that it contained what he thought was a message. With great care, he withdrew what he later described was a rolled up sheepskin on which was Spanish writing and a crude map. Unable to understand any of it, Jones placed it back into the jar and returned it to where he found it.

  Jones was in the chamber for almost an hour when the flashlight began to fail. With difficulty, and with the help of his friend, he managed to climb out of the shaft. Excited, Jones told his companion what he had found inside the old mine shaft. He described what he estimated to be an incredible fortune in gold and silver ingots. As they hiked back to the location where the car was parked, the two friends made plans to return to the site and carry away as much of the gold and silver as they could manage.

  Later that same afternoon when they returned to the military base, Jones and his friend sought out the company commander. After arranging a meeting, Jones explained what he found in Huachuca Canyon. The captain refused to believe any of what the sergeant told him and after a few minutes dismissed him. The two enlisted men sought help from other officers, but were unable to convince any of them of the existence of the treasure.

  The following day, Jones related his adventure and discovery to First Sergeant Matt Venable. Years later when Venable was interviewed about his connection to the Huachuca Canyon treasure, he recalled that both Jones and his friend were exceptional soldiers and never known to exaggerate. After listening to Jones’s tale, Venable made a recommendation to military authorities that they consider investigating the claim. No action was taken.

  Discouraged, Jones and his friend decided to bide their time and wait for the appropriate opportunity to return to the canyon and retrieve the gold and silver. The next weekend, they made their way back to the site and determined that it lay within the boundaries of the military reservation. While there, they covered the opening with logs and branches to keep others from finding it. On a nearby tree, Jones made two slashes. Using a rock hammer, he scraped his initials on a granite boulder it was necessary to pass in order to get to the opening of the concealed mine.

  Jones and his friend intended to undertake a retrieval operation as soon as possible. They identified digging and mining equipment necessary to accomplish their goal. They lay awake nights talking about what they would do with the treasure once they recovered it from the old mine. When they finally fell asleep, their dreams were of wealth.

  The plans had to be postponed. A few months later, war was declared and Jones and his friend were transferred out of southeastern Arizona. Jones was shipped to the Pacific and his friend sent to the African-European theater. Within a few days of arriving at his new assignment, Jones’s friend was killed. A short time later, Jones was severely wounded in a firefight on Wake Island. He spent several months recovering.

  The need for medical treatment, therapy, and the financial difficulties it entailed kept Jones from returning to Huachuca Canyon. Eventually, he was discharged from the army and was given a small pension. He and his wife moved to Dallas, Texas, where she was employed as a nurse at the Dallas Medical Center.

  The rehabilitation required by his wounds occupied Jones for the next eleven years. Despite everything, he remained crippled. Unable to exercise, Jones gained weight and had extreme difficulty getting around. During this time he returned to Huachuca Canyon several times, but he was unable to perform the work necessary to retrieve the treasure. In time, he formally appealed to the U.S. Army for assistance, but in every case he was informed he would not be allowed to dig for treasure on a military reservation.

  In 1959 Jones sought an audience with Major General F. W. Moorman, who was the post commander of Fort Huachuca at the time. Unlike the officers he spoke with before, Moorman believed Jones’s story. He examined Jones’s military record and discovered he had been a competent and reliable soldier. Moorman arranged to have two military psychiatrists interview and evaluate Jones. Both reported that the subject was likely telling the truth about what he claimed he discovered in the old mine shaft. With this information, along with other documents supporting Jones’s credibility, Moorman approved his application to attempt a recovery of the treasure believed to lie within the old mine shaft in Huachuca Canyon. A period of two weeks was granted for the project.

  Jones formed a small company to administer and oversee the recovery attempt. Each member was to share in the wealth that was retrieved. On the morning of the first day of the allotted period, the group entered Huachuca Canyon. The participants followed Jones, who limped his way along the route using a cane, and eventually came to the boulder where he had caved his initials eighteen years earlier. Nearby were found the two slashes he made on the tree. A few minutes later, Jones was standing atop the logs and branches and other forest debris he and his friend had laid across the opening of the old mine. The material was pulled away, and moments later two of the team members descended into the shaft.

  As they climbed down into the shaft, the men noted that it was clearly manmade and at least two hundred years old, maybe more. Halfway down they encountered a problem. Since Jones climbed out of the vertical shaft nearly two decades earlier, a portion of it had collapsed, filling the bottom with tons of rock. The treasure recovery team was now faced with the huge task of removing large and heavy rock in order to gain access to the treasure chamber. The
equipment they carried with them was not up to this task. After returning to Fort Huachuca, Jones petitioned the military for permission to bring some heavy excavation equipment into the area in order to remove the rock fill. The army agreed to his plan but only at his own expense.

  On hearing of Jones’s plight, Moorman took pity on him and authorized the use of a military bulldozer that was brought to the site. With the bulldozer, much of the talus was cleared away and the opening of the shaft enlarged. Approximately half of the rock debris that had accumulated in the bottom of the shaft was removed. At that point, however, the diggers encountered another problem, a serious one. The remainder of the vertical shaft was not only filled with boulders but also with water, making further excavation difficult to impossible.

  The operation was halted. Jones preoccupied himself with formulating alternative plans, but by the time he had come up with a new strategy for recovering the treasure, his allotted time had expired and he was ordered to vacate the canyon.

  During the month of September 1959, Jones and his team returned to Fort Huachuca to attempt to negotiate another attempt at recovering the treasure. His request was granted, and Jones ordered a drilling rig to be transported to the site. With the rig, he succeeded in boring a hole into the main chamber where the gold and silver were stored. Jones reasoned that if water was located here then it could be pumped out through the hole while the debris filling the shaft was removed. As water pumps were being hooked up to generators, two bulldozers worked to enlarge the shaft and remove the boulders blocking the team’s access. It would just be a matter of time, Jones was convinced, before they would reach the gold and silver ingots.

  When another dozen feet of rock debris had been cleared from the entrance, another problem arose—water began seeping in at a faster rate. More pumps were brought to the site and work continued around the clock for the next three days and nights.

  To the dismay of the engineer and geologist on the team, the seeping water was causing minor cave-ins in the old and highly weathered granite. The situation had become so dangerous that the recovery attempt was abandoned. Jones retreated to consider other strategies.

  During the lull in the digging, Jones brought in another professional geologist to consult on the project. Following an inspection of the site, he agreed that they were digging into a manmade shaft, most likely one that had been excavated by early Spanish miners in this area. The geologist also declared the site unsafe and recommended the area be abandoned and sealed off.

  Jones was not to be deterred, and after all of the equipment and personnel were removed from the area, he began to consider other options. By now, however, the activity in Huachuca Canyon and the revelation of the possibility of a huge treasure being found there attracted the attention of newspaper and television reporters from around the country. They arrived in large numbers to cover the progress of the recovery operation. As their numbers swelled in the canyon, military officials grew concerned about safety and security and threatened to terminate any and all excavation activity.

  As reporters swarmed into the region, a representative from the U.S. Treasury Department arrived at the site and announced that he was empowered to assume possession of any and all treasure that might be recovered. Following an inventory of the hoard, he said 60 percent of whatever was found would go directly to the government. Jones would be eligible to receive the remaining 40 percent but it would be taxed.

  Two weeks later, a large crane with a clam shovel was transported to the site. With the crane, another five feet of debris was removed. At this point, the workers encountered an exceptionally large boulder that had become wedged tight at the bottom of the shaft near the point where it went from vertical to horizontal. In order to reduce the resistance, a hole was bored into the rock and stuffed with explosive material. The subsequent blast created more problems than it solved—tons of adjacent rock were dislodged and collapsed into the shaft, completely refilling it. According to the consulting geologist, it was likely that the chamber containing the gold and silver ingots had also collapsed.

  For another five days, men and machines labored to remove the additional rock. As they worked, they discovered that all traces of the original shaft had been obliterated. At this point, Jones was forced to abandon the project. Jones informed military authorities that he would attempt to acquire additional backing for another attempt at retrieving the treasure. The army decision makers, however, informed him that under no circumstances would he be allowed to dig in Huachuca Canyon again.

  In spite of the decree from the military, Jones continued to solicit investors and apply for permission to excavate for the treasure he knew lay under hundreds of tons of rock and rubble. A few months later he found an ally in the Post Inspector General, Colonel Ethridge Bacon. Bacon was convinced that the treasure Jones spoke of existed. Though he made several tries, Bacon was never able to convince his superiors that Jones should be granted permission for another attempt. Two years later, Robert Jones died in his sleep in Dallas.

  The search for the Huachuca Canyon treasure did not end with the death of Robert Jones. In 1975, the U.S. Army granted permission to Quest Exploration, a California-based treasure hunting company, to try to reach the cache of gold and silver. Quest employed state-of-the-art computerized sensing equipment to determine the location of the chamber described by Jones. During their search, however, Quest officials were informed by the army that any treasure recovered would be placed in escrow until all claims for it were settled in a court of law.

  After a week of working at the site, the Quest team abandoned the project; they were not satisfied with the recovery terms. Before leaving the area, they stated that whatever openings and passageways may have existed had most certainly caved in as a result of previous excavation and demolition work.

  After the Quest Exploration team left the site, the military closed off Huachuca Canyon and forbade access to treasure hunters. During a final sweep of the canyon, military policemen encountered a small mine shaft nearby in which were found several very old digging tools, a number of Spanish coins, and some glassware. When the find was reported, the officer in charge confiscated the items and instructed the MPs to keep the discovery secret.

  The official position of the U.S. Army is that the treasure cache described by Robert Jones does not exist. Unofficially, however, the military continued to attempt to recover the gold and silver as late as 1979. During the autumn of that year, a squirrel hunter who frequented the canyon observed army bulldozers and other heavy equipment working around the site of the old shaft that Robert Jones had fallen into thirty-eight years earlier.

  That Robert Jones stumbled into an old mine that contained a fortune in gold and silver ingots in Huachuca Canyon cannot be doubted; the evidence, along with his lifetime commitment to recovering the treasure, is overwhelming. Without a doubt, the mine was operated by the Spanish who were known to frequent this area. Evidence also shows that members of the U.S. military were convinced of Jones’s assertions regarding the treasure cache, even to the point of organizing their own attempt at recovering it. It is known that they invested significant time, energy, and resources into the attempt. Subsequent visitors to the site in Huachuca Canyon have observed that, despite their efforts, the army has never been able to penetrate the mass of rock in order to achieve access to the underground chamber. For all indications, it is apparent that the fabulous Huachuca Canyon treasure has never been recovered and still lies there today in the ruined chamber under tons of rock and rubble.

  7

  Seventeen Tons of Gold at Lost Mesa

  One of the largest caches of gold in the history of the United States is located on a mesa in a remote portion of the desert in San Juan County in the Four Corners region of northwestern New Mexico. During the mid-1930s, approximately seventeen tons of gold were flown in several trips to this region from deep in Mexico. The gold was delivered to and buried at the top of an isolated flat-topped mountain where it was to be held until
certain economic circumstances materialized. When such circumstances were not forthcoming, the parties involved in the caching of this incredible fortune were forced to abandon the site, never to return. According to all available information, the gold is still there. The principal difficulty related to locating and recovering it is in determining which mesa is the correct one. If found, the value of the gold would equal that of the treasury of a midsize nation.

  During the summer of 1933, William C. Elliot received an odd telegram at the office of the small crop-dusting service he owned and operated in Midvale, Utah, a few miles south of Salt Lake City. The telegram was from a man named Don Leon Trabuco and it was an invitation for Elliot to fly to a small landing strip near Kirtland, New Mexico, for a meeting. Elliot, who was known as Wild Bill among his pilot friends, had never heard of Don Trabuco, but the message informed him he was to be paid twenty-five hundred dollars for his troubles. He was also instructed to tell no one of the arrangement. The message carried neither information regarding the subject of the meeting nor an explanation as to why Elliot was selected to attend.

  Elliot was more than qualified as a pilot. A native of Salt Lake City, he had been employed as a stunt flyer for a circus, at one time owned a charter service, and was currently working as a crop duster helping Utah farmers fight the plague of crickets that was devastating much of the state’s agricultural productivity. Having never made much money at his flying enterprises, Elliot was lured by the large fee and agreed to make the seven-hundred-mile round trip.

  Two days later Elliot landed at the tiny Kirtland airstrip. As he was climbing out of his plane, he noticed a tall man in a dark suit walking toward him. The man was a Mexican. Without speaking, he handed Elliot a typed note. It was from Don Trabuco and carried instructions to meet him at the Kirtland Hotel. The Mexican motioned the pilot toward a waiting automobile.