Don Leon Trabuco had a home near the city of Puebla, Mexico. There, Trabuco owned vast parcels of land and ranches. He was also a banker and operated several successful businesses in Puebla. When he met Elliot at the hotel, Trabuco, along with his aides, were expensively dressed. All were very polite, and all spoke English as though they had been educated in the United States. It was rumored that Trabuco was descended from the original Spanish conquistadores who conquered Mexico centuries earlier. It was also told that he was the head of a large, prominent, and extremely powerful family that controlled the politics and economics throughout much of the region where he lived.
As Trabuco spoke, one of his assistants handed Elliot a flight map of an area near Puebla where one of Trabuco’s large ranches was located. Here, Trabuco told the pilot, he was to land his plane and pick up a cargo of gold ingots. After leaving the ranch, Elliot was to fly an evasive pattern back to New Mexico and land at a remote airstrip near a small isolated mesa located a few miles northwest of the town of Shiprock. The assistant pointed out fuel stops along the return route.
Trabuco told Elliot that if he were pleased with his compensation this would be the first of several trips, and that ultimately a total of seventeen tons of gold was to be delivered to the designated site over a period of several weeks. For his efforts, Trabuco told Elliot he would be paid forty thousand dollars in cash. He also informed him that this, and any future business conducted between the two men, was to be kept secret.
Elliot thought about the proposition. Mentally, he calculated how many planes he would be able to purchase and how he could improve and expand his crop-dusting business. Following a few minutes of deliberation, Elliot agreed to the arrangement. Smiling, Trabuco told Elliot to fly his plane to the Puebla ranch the next day. He then handed the pilot twenty-five hundred dollars in cash.
Late afternoon of the following day, Elliot landed his plane and pulled to a stop at the end of a short landing strip near the Trabuco ranch house in Mexico. Within seconds, a number of uniformed guards carrying machine guns met him and instructed him to stand to one side while they monitored the loading of a number of heavy gold ingots into the plane by three laborers. This done, Elliot was shown his quarters and fed dinner.
The next morning after breakfast, Elliot took off and flew the prescribed route back to New Mexico. During the 1930s, eluding the border patrol and other law enforcement authorities was a simple task. This done, he eventually landed his plane at a tiny, rough and rocky makeshift landing strip adjacent to the specified mesa.
By the time Elliot cut his engines, a brand-new pickup truck was driven to the side of the plane. From the cab stepped Don Trabuco himself and two of his assistants. This time, Trabuco was dressed in work clothes: khakis, a safari jacket, and high-topped boots. Elliot noted that there were several shovels and other excavation tools in the bed of the truck.
Elliot was ordered to stand several yards away from the planes as the two assistants unloaded the gold and placed it in the back of the truck. The gold, explained Trabuco, was to be driven to a secret location atop the mesa, wrapped and sealed with wax, and buried. Trabuco informed Elliot he would be contacted within the next few days regarding the next pickup and delivery of gold. The two men shook hands. As Elliot took off and made the turn to head back to Midvale, he observed the vehicle carrying the gold ingots laboring up a narrow and switch-backing rock and dirt road that led up the steep incline toward the top of the mesa.
During the next several weeks, Elliot made a total of sixteen trips to Puebla and back. He estimated he had transported a total of 350 gold ingots, each of which he guessed weighed one hundred pounds.
Elliot grew curious about where the gold was being buried atop the mesa. After his plane was unloaded following one of his deliveries, he took off and circled the mesa twice as he gained altitude, eventually orienting his Cessna in a northwesterly direction toward Midvale and home. As the plane approached the mesa from the southeast, Elliot cut the engines and glided over the flat-surfaced landform in search of Trabuco’s pickup truck. Gazing out the window, he finally spotted it near the western edge of the mesa. Even from this high altitude, he could see three men excavating what appeared to be a shallow trench.
When Elliot made his final delivery, he was invited to another meeting with Trabuco at the Kirtland Hotel. There, he was paid the forty thousand dollars in cash that was promised. He was also informed by Trabuco that in the event that the gold was eventually sold at a specified profit in the future he would be given a significant bonus.
For the next several years, Elliot kept up with the rising and falling prices of gold and observed that the stated expectations of Don Trabuco were never met. Elliot was disappointed, for he looked forward to the bonus he thought he would receive.
One evening, Elliot was reading the newspaper when he spotted an article that described how Don Leon Trabuco and several other prominent Mexican businessmen had been charged with corruption and conspiracy to murder. They were tried, found guilty, and sent to prison. For the next several months, Elliot attempted to keep himself informed of the situation in Mexico and occasionally received news that was provided by contacts he had in the area. One evening on returning home from a crop-dusting job, he received the news that Don Trabuco had died in prison.
Elliot was convinced that the seventeen tons of gold he delivered to the landing strip at Kirtland was still buried atop the remote mesa. He was determined to travel to the area and retrieve it for himself at the first available opportunity.
Time passed, and opportunities were not forthcoming. Elliot’s newly expanded crop-dusting business, along with a charter flying service he started, was making significant profits and kept him busy. As a result, he found it difficult to leave long enough to attempt to retrieve the gold.
Years passed, and World War II broke out. The patriotic Elliot enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps. With his flying experience, he was sent immediately to the war theater in England. In December 1944, Elliot was reported missing in action. Two months later it was discovered that his plane had been shot down. He and his copilot were killed.
As far as can be determined, by 1950 all of the principals involved in caching the seventeen tons of gold atop the isolated mesa in northwestern New Mexico were either dead or far away in Mexico. According to some people who Elliot took into his confidence and told about the massive treasure, it likely still lies atop the mesa buried in the shallow trench.
Because so few people were aware of the existence of this incredible treasure cache, only a handful of adventurous individuals have undertaken a search for it. All were unsuccessful. The mesas found in northwestern New Mexico are rarely, if ever, visited and explored.
Elliot left no notes or maps related to the treasure, apparently trusting everything to memory. Most of the information about this multimillion-dollar cache came from sparse information that Elliot shared with a small number of friends.
What is known is that, while the mesa that houses this fabulous treasure is not the largest in the area, it still covers hundreds of acres. Other than that, the only other concrete information available is related to the fact that the treasure is still buried on the western end.
8
The Lost Treasure of Cancino Arroyo
Cancino Arroyo is a winding, often deep gully located in Rio Arriba County in north-central New Mexico between the tiny town of Tres Piedras and the Rio Grande. There exists a compelling tale of dozens of gold ingots believed to be worth millions of dollars buried under a few feet of sand and gravel at the bottom of this arroyo. All who possessed intimate details of this lost treasure are long dead, though some of their offspring claim to have an idea of the general region where the treasure might be found. Well over a century of erosion and deposition, along with the soft, porous bottom of the arroyo, has hampered recovery operations that have been undertaken during the past decades.
Tres Piedras is a small village located about twenty-five miles from the Rio Gra
nde. In this region, a number of deep, water-eroded arroyos wind their way from the higher elevation to the historic river. Water flows in these arroyos ephemerally, the result of occasional rains that visit the area. Most of the time, however, they are dry.
This tale has it origins in Cimarron, New Mexico, on August 9, 1880. Cimarron is located sixty miles east of Tres Piedras. A man named Porter Stockton, along with a companion named West, became embroiled in a dispute that ended in a gunfight. Stockton, a local ne’er-do-well with a reputation for robbery and murder, killed two men. Knowing he was in serious trouble, Stockton, accompanied by West, mounted his horse and fled westward to a hideout in Gallegos Canyon not far from Tres Piedras.
The two outlaws eventually crossed the Rio Grande and, after reaching the opposite bank, noted that storm clouds were forming in the northwest. After they had traveled another two miles a light rain began falling. For the rest of the day, the rain grew in intensity, making travel difficult. By nightfall, a raging storm struck the area and the dense rainfall reduced visibility to only a few feet. Much of the trail the two men were following was washed out and they soon found themselves lost. Seeking shelter, Stockton and West turned into a deep arroyo and followed its winding course, hoping it would come out on higher ground.
Unknown to Stockton and West, three riders were less than an hour behind them on the same trail. Like the two outlaws, these three men were lost and in search of shelter from the storm. Trailing behind the three men were two heavily laden mules on lead ropes, each one carrying a fortune in gold ingots. Weeks earlier, these same men had followed directions they had derived from an old and faded parchment map and located a large cache of Spanish gold hidden in an abandoned mine shaft far to the southwest in Arizona. After loading as many ingots as their leather panniers could hold, the trio set out on the long journey to their homes in Colorado, where they intended to sell the treasure and make plans to return to the cache and retrieve the remainder. They were less than one hundred miles from their destination when they were caught in the heavy storm.
Since none of them had visited that part of New Mexico before, the three newcomers became confused and disoriented when the trail they were following was washed away. Spotting the now vague tracks of Stockton and West, who had passed that way a short time earlier, and believing the riders must be familiar with the terrain, the trio turned into the arroyo and followed them.
As Stockton and West traveled up the arroyo, they noted that it grew deeper and narrower, the vertical walls stretching sixty feet high in some places. The normally dry stream bed accommodated a fast-moving current, and the roiling silt and sand bottom was nearly one foot deep and making travel difficult. Noting that the current was getting stronger and the water rising, Stockton suggested they turn around and return to the opening of the arroyo and seek a safer route. As the two outlaws retraced their path, occasional flashes of lighting illuminated the walls of the arroyo.
On rounding a bend in the channel, Stockton and West came face-to-face with the three riders who were making their way up the gully. Stockton assumed the men were part of a posse sent to capture or kill him and West. He yanked his revolver from its holster and fired, charging into the riders as he did so. West followed him.
The surprise encounter rendered the three riders stunned and helpless. Before they could regain their composure, all were lying dead, their bodies partially covered by the rising waters of the arroyo. Stockton and West also shot and killed the three horses and two mules, then fled as fast as they could toward the mouth of the arroyo and on to Gallegos Canyon.
Stockton and West, mistaking the three strangers for lawmen, were unaware that they had just ridden away from a fortune in gold.
As the two outlaws disappeared into the storm, the heavy rain continued to fall and dense sheets of runoff from the nearby slopes flowed into the numerous channels that fed the Rio Grande several miles away. Within an hour after the killing of the three men, Cancino Arroyo was inundated with a raging flash flood, with the surging water rising several feet up the vertical walls. These waters, carrying a heavy load of sediment, washed over the dead men, horses, and gold.
The morning following the intense storm, the high desert around Tres Piedras was bathed in sunshine and cleansed air. Two Mexican sheepherders—an old man and a young boy—awoke from their storm-ravaged sleep. The limb- and grass-thatched lean-to in which they lived afforded scant protection from the downpour of the previous night. As the old man hung blankets out to dry and looked over at the herd of sheep entrusted to his care, he remarked to the boy that he thought he had heard gunfire during the night.
Two hours later, after making certain that none of the sheep were missing, the old man walked over to the rim of Cancino Arroyo and looked into the deep, shaded channel. A stream of water several inches deep still flowed along the bottom, and as the old man’s eyes grew accustomed to the shadows below, he spotted what he thought were the bodies of three men and several horses partially submerged in the sand.
He called the boy over, and the two scrambled down a steep but negotiable bank of the arroyo and walked up to the grisly scene. Cutting open one of the leather packs that had not been completely buried, the sheepherder withdrew an eighteen-inch-long object that he believed to be a piece of iron. Curious, he sliced open the remaining packs only to find more of the same. Having no need for such metal, the herder tossed them to the ground. On an impulse, he stuck one of them in his sash, determined to keep it until such time as he might find a use for it. Finding nothing of value, the herder and the boy climbed back to the rim of the arroyo and returned to the job of caring for the sheep. As the old man passed the lean-to, he withdrew the piece of metal and tossed it inside amid his few belongings.
Later that afternoon, the rains returned. They were lighter than the previous day but lasted well into the night. That evening as the man and boy attempted to keep the cook fire going under the primitive lean-to, Cancino Arroyo was the scene of another flash flood. This time, with waters nearly ten feet deep, the stream raced and crashed along the bottom from wall to wall, sweeping away or covering everything in its path.
Around midmorning of the following day, Dolores Cancino, a rancher and owner of the sheep in the care of the old man and boy, arrived with supplies for the two herders. As he unloaded food and other items, the old man told the rancher what he had found at the bottom of the arroyo. When he had completed his report, he handed Cancino the piece of metal he retrieved. Cancino hefted the ingot, and scraped away at the surface with his thumbnail. A look of surprise washed over him as he realized the object he was holding was composed of almost pure gold.
After assigning the boy to watch over the sheep, Cancino and the old sheepherder returned to the bottom of the arroyo. Wading through the two-feet-deep water, they dug into the mud in an attempt to relocate the bodies of men and animals and the packs of gold. They found nothing. After returning to the top, Cancino decided to spend the night at the camp and make another attempt at finding the gold the next morning when he was certain the flow of water through the arroyo had ceased altogether.
Just after sunrise, Cancino and the old man were back in the arroyo, probing and digging in the sands but finding nothing. Cancino finally decided that the high-velocity waters of the flash flood of the previous night had carried away the corpses of men and animals as well as the packs of gold. Cancino rode a horse along the rim of the arroyo searching the stream bed for some sign. After traveling thirty yards he spotted one of the dead horses partially buried in the sand. Moments later he made his way to the bottom and found two more horses and a mule. The bodies of the three men were nowhere to be seen. None of the gold ingots were found.
One week later, Cancino drove his wagon to Santa Fe and turned the ingot over to a friend who agreed to have it assayed. When the report came in, it stated that the bar was composed of a high grade of gold and cast in a manner associated with early Spanish miners. The assayer said the ingot was worth just over two t
housand dollars.
Over the next several months, Dolores Cancino explored up and down the bottom of the arroyo that bore his name but found nothing. When rains came and runoff flooded the bottom of the arroyo, Cancino would hurry to the area in hopes that the surging waters would wash away quantities of sand and silt and expose more of the gold ingots, but he had no luck.
In 1881, Cancino met Steve Upholt, a man with considerable mining experience. He told Upholt about the gold ingots he believed were lying under sand at the bottom of the arroyo and asked for his help in retrieving them. Upholt surprised Cancino by telling him that the gold was likely in the exact same place where it was originally dumped and that it had undoubtedly sunk several inches into the soft and yielding bottom of the arroyo. Upholt explained that when certain sands become saturated with water, they become unstable and turn into quicksand. Anything heavy, such as a gold ingot, would almost immediately sink to some depth below the surface.
Before the afternoon was over, Cancino and Upholt formed a partnership dedicated to a search for the gold. Two months later, Upholt arrived at the sheep camp near the rim of Cancino Arroyo and spent several days walking up and down the stream bed. Since the time the three unknown riders were killed and the gold dumped, a number of flash floods tearing through the narrow channel had created changes in the bottom and caused portions of the walls to collapse, all causing Upholt to believe the gold would be covered with more sand than he originally thought. This added to the difficulty of recovery, he explained. Furthermore, the configuration of the arroyo’s channel had been modified to the degree that the old sheepherder could not be certain of the exact location of his original discovery of the bodies and the gold.
The Silver Madonna and Other Tales of America's Greatest Lost Treasures Page 7