Gold

1. El Dora in Hardin County was originally named ?l Dorado,·as the 1851 discovery of gold by John Ellsworth on his farm there produced a short-lived gold rush. The vein which supplied Ellsworth with his gold flakes was never discovered, and the name was later shortened. No one has looked for this particular gold vein in a long time; therefore, it is possible that with the use of modern equipment, enough gold could be located to give El Dora back its former name.

In 1857, O. M. Holcombe found some gold in the Iowa River near El Dora; and in 1877, gold was again discovered along the Iowa seven miles further north. In all three cases, the amounts discovered were not large enough to sustain a commercial operation, but that doesn? stop weekend prospectors from searching for the site of the next ?l Dorado··nor should it. In Clayton County, weekend prospectors have had some success finding gold in the streams near Strawberry Point.

Pearls

2. Fresh water pearls have been found along the tributaries of the Mississippi River at McGregor, Clinton, Davenport, and Mus-catine, and in numerous small streams throughout the state. It is a common misnomer that all fresh water pearls are valueless. Gem-quality fresh water pearls have been actively hunted in the United States since 1857 when Tiffany and Company paid $1,500 for a fresh water pearl taken from the river at Paterson, N.J. News of this incredible find generated a pearl rush on eastern rivers which gradually spread west.

A valuable pearl has a regular, smooth shape, a bright pearl lustre, a definite color or tint and an even, clear, blemish-free skin. Spherical, pear-shaped, or button-shaped pearls are the most valuable. The best pearls come from fast-running, sandy-bottomed streams. Pearling is a seasonal activity, generally taking place from June to October. The most common method is to slowly drag a series of lines called a ?row foot·behind a small boat; but a flashlight, sack, and a pair of hip boots are all that is really needed to participate. ?oggers·wading into shallow water at night can bag 25 to 100 pounds of fresh water mussels in an evening. Sometimes rakes and nets are used to scoop the shells from soft, muddy bottoms. Regular pearls, of which there are a great number (giving rise to the myth of the relative low value of fresh water pearls), come in three varieties: baroques, slugs, and seed pearls. The slugs, which are unattractive, are worthless. The seed pearls are of low or no value because of their small size. But the baroques do carry some value, although it is slight relative to a gem pearl.

Sapphires, bottles, and fossils

3. Some truly excellent gem quality sapphires have been taken from the gravels along the shore of Lake Okojobi in Dickenson County. Sapphires which, like rubies, are a form of corundun mineral can be blue, yellow, or violet, and are often asteriated, i.e. exhibit a star-like pattern. They are associated with schists, limestone, or igneous rocks. They are valued according to size, color, and freedom from flaws. Bottle prospecting is at its best near the site of the abandoned whiskey distillery at Haunton five miles south of Sabula on the Mississippi River in Clinton County.

In Marshall County, the limestone quarries near LeGrand have produced rare fossils of sea lilies and starfish that are famous throughout the country. One especially valuable piece found by rockhound B.H. Bean contains the fossilized remains of 183 starfish.

Fort Atkinson cache

4. Fort Atkinson was built in 1840 to protect peaceful Winnebago Indians transported from Wisconsin and Illinois from the more warlike Sak, Fox, and especially the Souix. The Souix continued to be a problem in the area well into the 1860s. As late as 1865 there is a report of Indians attacking a detachment transporting a payroll somewhere between Fort Atkinson and the present day site of Decorah a few miles to the northeast. During the fighting the pay master hastily buried a consignment of $7,000 worth of gold coins in case it became necessary to make a run for the fort. No one else bothered to mark the location of the cache, and when the engagement was over and it was discovered that the pay master had been killed, the gold became a lost treasure which has not yet been found.

This was the second payroll lost en route from Fort Crawford, Wis., to Fort Atkinson. The first payroll had been taken in an Indian attack in 1842 and was (according to an old Indian who had been a member of the war party) buried along Miner? Creek near Gullenburg in present day Clayton County.

The last recorded outbreak of Indian warfare in Iowa that I could track down, independent of treasure hunting sources, is the Spirit Lake Massacre in 1857. By 1862 Chief Little Crow had led most of the Souix in the midwest into North Dakota following the Indians·defeat at the Battle of Wood Lake, Minn. It would therefore seem to be unlikely that the Souix were attacking Army convoys near Decorah in 1865. However, it is possible that a band of renegades sought to take advantage of manpower problems created by the Civil War by attempting to steal the payroll. It would be wise to do a good deal of additional research before planning any kind of serious search for this treasure.

Bootleggers' cache

5. During Prohibition, the little town of Templeton in Carroll County was so proud of the coast-to-coast reputation of the bootleg rye whiskey made there, that a little brown jug was suspended across Main Street. Many large illegal stills were in operation in the surrounding countryside, and local moonshiners found themselves caught up in the same turf wars being fought by big city mobsters for control of the illicit trade. It is speculated that there may be a number of caches of ill-gotten loot in the area.

Even after Prohibition ended, many ex-bootleggers continued to cache their loot rather than keep bank accounts which might some day be subject to IRS scrutiny. In 1972 contractors razing a home in Des Moines which had once belonged to twice-convicted bootlegger Guilio Ferroni uncovered a $17,860 cache left behind when Ferroni succumbed to a heart attack in 1961.

Covered bridge loot

6. The late Michael Paul Henson once stated that just about ?very covered bridge has a treasure story·or two connected with it. Covered bridges were frequently used by travelers as places of refuge during a storm, and just as frequently gangs of highwaymen took advantage of the concealment offered by dark shadows the bridges cast at night. The two bridges that span the English Creek near Harvey in during the 1800s have been especially singled out by other writers as places where ?he unwary traveler was often robbed of his valuables as the wind whistled round the timbers, drowning any possible outcry.·

Cattlemen's coins

7. Around 1868, a wealthy cattle buyer was lured into an ambush in the vicinity of Siam eight miles south of New Market in Taylor County. The outlaws who set up the ambush killed the buyer and a young boy traveling with him and took possession of a heavy trunk containing a minimum of $90,000 worth of gold coins. Forty-seven years later, during an unrelated trial, a 77 year old man admitted his involvement in the robbery and murders and stated that the chests had been buried on the Old Klondike farm northwest of present day Siam on County Road N26 near Bedford along with the deposits from other robberies. The other caches supposedly equaled $12,000 and $50,000, respectively. A man named Anderson later located an iron box full of gold coins on this property, but it is not known which of the three reported caches he found.

Captain Hunt's caches

8. When Union Army Captain John Hunt was mortally wounded during a train robbery near the end of the Civil War, he confessed to the doctor tending him that he had buried excess gold left over after his purchase of a number of cavalry horses north of the city limits of Iowa City on a hill side that sloped toward the south where a small creek with a rock bottom passed the foot of the hill. It is thought by some that two local men, Walter Terrill and John Dostal, found at least some of this money. But both of them denied it, and these speculations were never proved.

Please Note: It is the responsibility of the treasure hunter to gain permission before detecting.

SOURCES:

Federal Writers Project: Iowa. Viking Press, 1938.

Gant, W.J. The Early Far West. Longman, Green & Co., 1931.

McFall, Russell P. Gem Hunters Guide. Thos. Y. Crowell Co., 1969.

Marx, Robert F. Buried Treasures of the United States. David McKay Co., 1978.

Terry, Thomas P. U.S. Treasure Atlas. Specialty Pub., 1985.