Treasure Hunting in Arizona

Treasure Hunting in Arizona

This treasure hunt involves a cache of gold nuggets that were buried along the Colorado River about 35 miles north of Yuma, Arizona.
The story involves four outlaws that were fleeing a robbery of an army payroll wagon. As they rode away they came to the Colorado River and swam their horses across at a point just below where the river makes a bend north towards the Arizona side.
They proceeded along the riverbank and came across a small cave where they decided to camp out for the night. One of the outlaws went down to the sandbar along the bank and dug a hole in it to recover some fresh water. The sand acted as a filter and allowed clear water to enter the hole.
As he was digging the hole he noticed what looked to be gold nuggets mixed in with the sand and gravel. He quickly called his partners down to the sandbar to confirm that what he had found was actually gold nuggets.
The outlaws then started searching for a possible vein that the gold nuggets came from and quickly found a vein of quartz close to where the sandbar was. The vein of quartz was the source of the gold nuggets, so they started picking out the quartz vein to accumulate more nuggets.
Just downstream from where the outlaws were camped was an Indian encampment at Yuma Wash. The outlaws made arrangements with the Indians to take care of their horses while they were mining.
Sometime later one of the outlaws went to the Indian encampment and started harassing one of the squaws. Her brave wasn’t having any part of that and confronted the outlaw. The outlaw pulled his gun and shot the brave. He then grabbed the horses and rode back to camp and told his partners what he had done. They quickly gathered up the gold nuggets and buried them in a saddle between two peaks above where they were mining. The saddle was a low area between the peaks.
They knew they needed to get away quickly as they believed the Indians would go down to Fort Yuma and report what had happened. They definitely didn’t want to face the cavalry after having recently robbed the payroll wagon.
After burying the cache of nuggets, they rode hard to get out of the area. That night as three of the outlaws were setting around their campfire and the fourth was setting on his horse, a posse came riding in.
The posse were looking for cattle rustlers, but the outlaws didn’t know that, and a gun battle ensued. The three outlaws around the campfire were killed and the fourth outlaw, who was on his horse, rode quickly away but not before catching a bullet in his hip.
He made it back to Missouri and stayed with his sister while he healed up. He told the story to his sister, her husband, and their son. He showed them a couple of gold nuggets he had in his pocket to prove his story.
The husband wanted to go back with the outlaw at that time to recover the nuggets. The outlaw said that there was an Indian uprising at that time which made it too dangerous.
As years wore on the outlaw and his sister’s husband died leaving her and the son. As times were financially bad for them the son talked his mother into letting him go look for the nuggets. The son came out to a ranch close to Yuma and made a deal with a rancher to pack him in for a few weeks. In the end the young man couldn’t find the cache of nuggets and he told the whole story to the rancher. He said that there was a pile of rocks that were supposed to help locate the nuggets. The rocks he believed had been moved and were now stacked around a sign along the river.
Over the years the rancher passed the story down until it was told to John, whom I mention in my book, “Random Tangents: Embracing Adventures in Life.”
This video will give you a good idea of the country surrounding the story along with some of the history during that time period.
For more treasure stories and videos go to my website at https://www.desertroamerpress.com/
Enjoy!