1. Massacre site

Around 1902 a Siwash Indian name Coffee revealed to a white family who had befriended him the story behind the strange scar around his neck. As a boy, Coffee had been riding with a party of adult male Indians who had acquired a large amount of ?ire water·from a white man. Coffee was too young to drink, but the adults all got very drunk and belligerent. Then, just before the Indians started into the Moses Coulee near the area that would later be called Sage Brush Flat, they encountered a white man with his wife and three young children riding a wagon that was obviously filled with all their worldly goods. ?hey were quitting Washington, I think,·Coffee said, ?eading back to their homes in the east. They never got there...We killed the whole family. We scalped all of them ·father, mother, and three children. While the other braves were still drunk and reckless, they hung all five bodies in a tree beside the road.·

Coffee? narrative does not go into detail, but apparently they remained in the area for some time: ?hen somebody sobered enough to realize what we had done, and panic hit us. We took off at our best speed for British Columbia.·But avenging white men were already on their trail probably because, after looting the wagon of everything that interested them (translate rifle, ammunition, and food), the Indians overturned it and set it on fire.

All were captured and taken to Spokane where they were hanged from the Monroe Street Bridge. When Coffee? turn came, instead of letting him drop, they lowered him gently and let him strangle until he passed out. Then they hauled him up, revived him, and lowered him again. Three times they let him down and pulled him up. Then, since he was just a boy and did no actual killing, they let him go.

The poor doomed white family? wagon bearing all their worldly possessions including, no doubt, all their money, was left smoldering along the side of the road. Neither the Indians fleeing in panic nor the white men riding in vengeance gave it a second thought. There is a very good chance that the physical evidence of this grisly incident is still lying somewhere around Sagebrush Flat.

2. Lost mines and ledges

When the Jester Brothers found a rich gold deposit under a rock shelter northeast of Monte Cristo in Snohomish County in 1893, they headed straight for the saloon district in town to do a little celebrating. Just about the time that everyone in town had heard the story of their fabulous luck, the brothers got into a heated argument and ended killing one another. They had the final and cruelest jest because, although everyone in town had heard the brothers·drunken babbling about the rich gold ledge, no one was able to relocate it.

The same thing holds true for the rich deposit that Urho Immonen discovered in King County in the 1890s. Urho was not shy about telling people that his ledge of gold was in a niche under a dry waterfall about 11/2 day? hike from Index. However, when Immonen was killed in an accident, none of the prospectors who set out to rediscover his ledge could find it.

In the late 1800s, a miner in Mason County was known to have a rich placer deposit on a mountain stream somewhere in the upper Quilcene Valley near the headwaters of the Skokomish River. The miner died in 1911, and the location of his gold deposit has never been discovered. Although many have prospected along the Olympic Mountain streams in that area, no rich placers have been forthcoming.

In Pierce County, the prospector was known as ?haky Bill,·and the source of the gold nuggets he frequently brought into Mineral City was the Red Gulch in the Cascade Mountains. Exactly where in the Red Gulch was never determined. Although several people tried to follow ?haky Bill·to his diggings, the trail always disappeared around the west fork of the Silver Creek. One day ?haky Bill·himself disappeared, and the source of his gold nuggets has remained a mystery ever since.

An Indian chief named Kitsap supposedly had his own gold mine in Lewis County. The gold vein was said to be along a steep bluff on the side of a canyon near the source of the Greene Water River northeast of Mt. Rainier. However, another Indian who brought gold in Mossy Rock in the 1920s claimed the deposit was located at a place the Indians called Soldier Rock, which is believed to be near the headwaters of the Cispus River which is itself a tributary of the Cowlitz River.

The story of Pierre Rabaldo? lost gold mine has been told many times; but since it was found once, it may be found again if enough people keep trying. Rebaldo had a gold strike in the Cacade Mountains in the area around Bickleton in the late 1800s. In 1891 Rebaldo set out for his mine and never returned. In 1981, Amos White claimed to have found Rebaldo? mine 20 miles northwest of Trout Lake. White had some ore samples that assayed out to $3,000 a ton to prove his claim, but he was unable to retrace his steps and Rebaldo? mine was lost once again.

3. Lost Klickitat

One of the first questions one always has to ask regarding a lost gold mine story is: was there ever really a mine? Or was someone was simply using a secret gold mine as a cover story to explain away illegally acquired wealth. This happened quite often. There is a strong suspicion that even some of the most famous ?ost gold mines·weren? really mines at all ·but the Klickitat was real.

In 1877 the Wright family, who operated a mission to the Klickitat Indians in the area around Horseshoe Bend heard the story from the two people most intimately acquainted with the last Klickitat to know the location of the mine. The first was an alcoholic white renegade named Morgan. Morgan? Klickitat wife was the only one among her people who knew the exact location of the Indians· secret mine. Once a year she was charged with making a trip to this hidden location to gather the wire gold, slugs and nuggets. Morgan freely admitted marrying her for the express purpose of learning from her the location of the mine. He never succeeded. For years his wife avoided all of his attempts to follow her. It was during one of these attempts in 1875 that Morgan claimed she drowned while trying to elude him. After Morgan was killed in a fall from his horse, his daughter Maryann came to work for the Wrights. She told them that Morgan routinely brutally beat her mother in an attempt to learn the location of the mine and that most of the Indians assumed that he had eventually beaten the poor woman to death in the woods, but they had no proof as her body was never found. Maryann showed the Wrights a crude gold cross her mother fashioned for her out of some gold she had secreted past her abusive husband and confirmed for them the truth that no one among the Klickitat Indians now knew the location of the mine.

According to Mr. Morgan? story, the drowning of his wife took place in the Black Canyon area, and most treasure hunters use the mouth of the Black Canyon as a starting point for seeking the mine. But Maryann claimed her father was a liar, so the actual location of the Klickitat? lost mine could be anywhere in the Horseshoe Bend country.

In a 1955 article for True West magazine, Tom Wright stated: ?his is a true story as told to my family by the Klickitat Indians themselves.·I believe him.

4. Fruit jar gold

A Lewis County cache is hidden one mile north of Mary? Corner on the north side of the Jackson Prairie Highway. This is the former location of the old A.E. Young place. Young settled here in the late 1800s and accumulated a small fortune in gold coins before he died. After his death, Mrs. Young placed the coins in several fruit jars and buried them behind the barn. Mrs. Young lived on until 1934. Although she told family members about the cache before she died, her relatives searched in vain after her passing, and the gold was soon forgotten. Later the house and barn burned to the ground and the property was abandoned.

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

SOURCES:

Burks, J. Arthur. ?hite Man? Revenge.·True West magazine, August, 1955.

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

Wright, Tom. ?ost Mine of Klickitat.·True West magazine, December, 1955.