Buried Treasures Of California

Collects legends of buried treasure in California, including the lost San Miguel treasure, the canyon of lost gold, and the lost Dutch Oven mine.

Nothing stirs the imagination quite so much as the lure of hidden treasure. Stories of buried chests laden with gold and jewels, or hidden stashes of gold coins, combine the allure of fabulous riches with the excitement of adventure. A good legend of treasure is like a "perfect storm" for a creative imagination.Avid treasure hunters know and casual treasure hunters soon learn that the rich nuggets found while hunting for treasure may not be gold-ore, but legends and stories that will inspire and delight generations, while sometimes connecting us to deeply personal histories of the real people behind the stories.This is not a guide that points out where to dig. Let this be your guide to the beginning of a search for more information. Many of the sites indexed on the map are on private property or state lands that require official permission to access. Most reasonable people would conclude that if the exact location of buried or hidden treasure was known and obvious, the treasure would no longer be there. The map points us to the "vicinity" of the legend, either where the legend originates from, or where it points to, our best effort is made to indicate the most important places that relate to the legends of the treasures.

Each of these popular Thomas Penfield guides lists sites in a state by county and recalls stories of treasure reported to have been hidden there. A separate section of each book lists the best metal detector sites in each county.

Through 30 revived tales of wealth and splendor, readers will be tempted to throw some supplies into a backpack like the forty-niners of yore. Although numerous stories of lost gold and silver veins are abundant, they in no way represent all of the wealth hidden in California's folklore. California's mountains, deserts, beaches and cities are all emcompassed in this collection.

The tale begins over three-hundred years ago, when the Fair People—the goblins, fairies, dragons, and other fabled and fantastic creatures of a dozen lands—fled the Old World for the New, seeking haven from the ways of Man. With them came their precious jewels: diamonds, rubies, emeralds, pearls... But then the Fair People vanished, taking with them their twelve fabulous treasures. And they remained hidden until now... Across North America, these twelve treasures, over ten-thousand dollars in precious jewels, are buried. The key to finding each can be found within the twelve full color paintings and verses of The Secret. Yet The Secret is much more than that. At long last, you can learn not only the whereabouts of the Fair People's treasure, but also the modern forms and hiding places of their descendants: the Toll Trolls, Maitre D'eamons, Elf Alphas, Tupperwerewolves, Freudian Sylphs, Culture Vultures, West Ghosts and other delightful creatures in the world around us. The Secret is a field guide to them all. Many "armchair treasure hunt" books have been published over the years, most notably Masquerade (1979) by British artist Kit Williams. Masquerade promised a jewel-encrusted golden hare to the first person to unravel the riddle that Williams cleverly hid in his art. In 1982, while everyone in Britain was still madly digging up hedgerows and pastures in search of the golden hare, The Secret: A Treasure Hunt was published in America. The previous year, author and publisher Byron Preiss had traveled to 12 locations in the continental U.S. (and possibly Canada) to secretly bury a dozen ceramic casques. Each casque contained a small key that could be redeemed for one of 12 jewels Preiss kept in a safe deposit box in New York. The key to finding the casques was to match one of 12 paintings to one of 12 poetic verses, solve the resulting riddle, and start digging. Since 1982, only two of the 12 casques have been recovered. The first was located in Grant Park, Chicago, in 1984 by a group of students. The second was unearthed in 2004 in Cleveland by two members of the Quest4Treasure forum. Preiss was killed in an auto accident in the summer of 2005, but the hunt for his casques continues.

This large, easy-to-use volume lists the works of more than eleven hundred different authors, covering thousands of stories of lost mines and buried treasures supposedly located in fifteen Western and Southwestern states and in Mexico. In addition to being a boon to those adventurers who are tempted to search for lost mines and buried treasures, it will be an important basic research tool for historians, geologists, geographers, anthropologists, archaeologists, and folklorists, and it will be useful in identifying the man treasure hoards and mining claims all the way from the Lost Adams Diggings in Arizona to the Stagecoach in Wyoming. The information given in this important bibliography was acquired through perusal of an unusually large number of books, newspapers, magazines, unpublished manuscripts, deposits in private and public libraries, holdings of various historical foundations, and governmental records and archives. The task took Mr. Probert three full years of steady, patient work. Many of these stories of lost mines and buried treasures have resulted in the discovery of some that are rarely acknowledged, largely because, as Mr. Probert points out, "those who have been so fortunate as to find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow have deemed it wiser and much safer to keep their own counsel" -- Book jacket.

Explains how to use a modern metal detector to find buried treasures, discussing types of detectors, detector operation, and types of treasure, and identifies a variety of sites in each of the fifty states.