1. Castle Grand loot

One of the many rustlers who traveled the Great Out law Trail was the Circleville, Utah youth named George Leroy Parker. In later years Parker, the son of a Mormon bishop, would adopt the name ?utch Cassidy·and establish what Pinkerton archives would call the ?rain Robber Syndicate,·and what the rest of the world would call the ?ild Bunch.·

Cassidy was a consummate planner and, unlike many other outlaws who did not survive long, always took the precaution of setting up relays of fresh horses along the escape route. Pinkerton Informant No. 85 reported that after the robbery of the bank at Winnemucca, Nev., Cassidy had four fresh horses waiting at a small ranch three miles beyond Lost Soldier? Pass, then ?he boys rode all that day and cached their money and changed their clothes and separate, each going his own direction to meet later.·The take from the Winnemucca job was said to be $31,000 in $20 gold coins, $1,200 in $5 and $10 gold coins, and the balance in currency.

This might sound like a mouth-watering haul to a treasure hunter, but a professional like Cassidy preferred paper money. Instead of using the haul from the Winnemucca job to finance his trip to South America as intended, the ?ild Bunch·proceeded to rob the Great Northern Express Train at Wagner, Mont., of $40,000 worth of unsigned bank notes which the outlaws simply signed themselves. When Cassidy and Sundance arrived in Buenas Aires they deposited $12,000 worth of paper gold notes in the local bank.

No one knows what became of the gold from the Winnemucca bank job, but Cassidy and other ?ild Bunch·riders are thought to have numerous caches around the Sheep Canyon in Dagget County as well as nearby Brown? Hole and Robber? Roost further south.

On April 21, 1897, Butch Cassidy and Elza Lay grabbed E. L. Carpenter, the paymaster of the Castle Gate Mining Company on the stairs that led from the crowded store below to his office upstairs. While boisterous miners shuffled about below, Cassidy and Lay relieved carpenter of $8,000 in currency, $700 in gold, and $100 in silver coins. They escaped by vaulting into the saddles of their horses below.

Various local legends have the loot being hidden at Buckhorn Flat in Emery County about ten miles southeast of Castle Gate or in the vicinity of Brown? Hole, but in reality only the gold is unaccounted for. The silver was dropped as the bandits fled town. The currency kept the whiskey flowing for days for all the camp followers back at Brown? Hole, though either Cassidy or Lay may have cached some of it there. The gold, which was heavy to carry and didn? spend as well, was probably cached en route. Prior to the job Cassidy hid some fast getaway horses on a ranch belonging to a man named Neibauer just outside of Price in Carbon County. This might be a good place to look for a cache point.

2. Stagecoach stops

Something was always happening at a stage stop. They make great treasure hunting sites. Here is a partial listing. Box Elder County: Collingston a/k/a Hampton, five miles northeast of Garland.

Morgan County: Dixie Station a/k/a Carson House Station, five miles southwest of Echo, just over the top of Hog Back Summit.

Summit County: Needle Rock Station, five miles northeast of Wahsatch on the state line; Echo Station a/k/a Castle Rock Station at the head of Echo Canyon.

Tooele County: Tooele Station, two miles northwest of Tooele; Burnt Station, just southwest of Clifton; Round Station, just southwest of Burnt Station; Lost Spring Station, ten miles north of Callao; Simpson Springs Station, between Camp Floyd and Virginia City; Riverbed Station, five miles southwest of Simpson Station near the county line; Faust? Station, 18 miles west southwest of Camp Floyd and Faust; East Rush Station, five miles west southwest of Fairfield on the County Line.

Wasatch County: Hank? Station in a canyon three miles west northwest of Kimball Junction; Kimball Station, just north of Kimball Junction.

Juab County: Boyd? Station, ten miles east southeast of Callao; Black Rock Station, seven miles east of Fish Springs.

3. Lost Dutch George

In 1828 fur trapper Tom Smith was wounded in the leg by an Indian bullet. With gangrene just around the corner, Smith requested that his companions cut off his leg. When none of them volunteered to serve as surgeon, Smith began to hack away at the offending limb with his hunting knife. Milton Sublette finished the job and wrapped the stump in an unlaundered hunting shirt. Smith survived and had his friends carry him to the Valley of the Green River in Utah to winter quarters among the Ute Indians. While there, he carved himself a wooden leg and became ?eg-leg Smith.·

The following spring ?eg-leg·was on the Virgin River still getting used to the artificial limb when a member of the party named Dutch George arrived in camp with some blackened metallic stones bearing flakes of yellow metal which he thought might be gold. Senior trapper Ewing Young declared the metal copper, but it was a moot point as Dutch George could not relocate his find. When ?eg-leg· arrived in San Francisco later that year, he had a pocketful of similar stones which he claimed to have picked up about 40 to 50 miles northeast of San Diego. Naturally it turned out to be gold and, over the years, many legends have sprung up about the Lost ?eg-leg·Mine. But as ?eg-leg?·friend, Major Horace Bell, proclaimed, ?eg-leg·Smith was ?he most superlative liar that ever honored California with his presence.·

Treasure hunters might fare better looking for the Lost Dutch George Mine along the Virgin River in Washington County near the Arizona/Utah border.

4. Echo Canyon

Sometimes it happens that a relatively small area has so many treasure stories associated with it that even though it has been heavily searched, it just seems to keep on giving. This seems to be the case with the region around the mouth of the Echo Canyon. When the old Overland Express Building at Weber Station was dismantled in 1931, numerous artifacts and gold coins were discovered within it walls.

The Rachet outlaw gang operated in the area in the 1800s, and some of their loot is thought to be hidden nearby. During the razing of a defunct gas station in 1931, seven bodies were discovered buried under what had once been a saloon in the boom camp that sprung up in 1868. Numerous gambling houses and tent brothels were erected at that time for the purpose of separating railroad workers from their pay, and was usually the case in boom towns, mysterious disappearances were commonplace and robbery a fact of life. Echo City, two miles to the northeast, was also a wide open town in 1868, with more than 50 false front buildings and the requisite number of stories of murder and hidden caches. When the jail was torn down, gold coins were found hidden in the rock walls of one of the cells.

The loot from a stage robbery in the 1860s is thought to be hidden near the mountain hideout of the two bandits six to nine miles east of Weber Station. One bandit was killed and the other died in prison.

An old Spanish mine is thought to be located somewhere near Henefer.

Loot from a series of stagecoach robberies is presumed hidden on an old stock ranch 11 miles east of the station; while in Echo Canyon itself, the stage road, just west of Cobblestone Hill, was the scene of numerous stagecoach crashes during the winter months.

5. McCarty cache

In 1910, a fast-fading George McCarty revealed the existence of a $100,000 cache half way between Robber? Roost and Nine Mile Canyon. The site of the cache was a pot hole speckled mesa along the Outlaw Trail. Each member of the gang chose his own individual pot hole, filled it with whatever jewelry and money he chose, and disguised it with whatever camouflage he could devise. They never got the chance to return to the mesa. The man McCarty told about the caches was a bit skeptical that the loot would still be there after all those years and put off searching long enough for World War I to intervene. After the war he made a half-hearted effort to find the mesa, but soon lost interest.

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

SOURCES:

Florin, Lambert. Ghost Towns of the West. Promontory Press, 1993.

Horan, James D. Desperate Men. G.P. Putnam Sons, 1949.

Myers, John. The Death of the Bravos. Little Brown Co., 1962.

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