There are over 500 known caves in West Virginia

1. The following excerpt from U.S. Army OR Series I, Vol. XLIII/1 S#91 are interesting in light of a long standing legend that Confederate raiders pursued by Union troops buried a cache of stolen treasure along the Potomac River near Cherry Run. The dispatches are dated October 14 and October 15, 1864, and are excerpted in the order in which they are found in the records:

To Brigadier General Stevenson:

A part of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad between Martinsburg and Harpers Ferry is broke by Moseby? guerrillas who may attack other parts of the line...Colonel Cahil has just arrived from Winchester today with 350 men, escort for 270 wagons... ?eneral Wm. H. Steward

To General Steward:

You will send out your trains this morning and add to it the train the escorts that just came in. ?rigadier General Stevenson

To Brigadier General Stevenson:

Will start paymaster on noon train east with guard of 150 men. Will start wagon trains as soon as loaded, probably about two o?lock. General Torbert has ordered Captain Gortsen to remove the dismounted camp to Hagerstown and send all of the officers and mounted men of his command to the front. ?eneral Wm. Steward

To General Steward:

Hold on to your train until tomorrow morning. I shall send you this evening 325 cavalry to go with your escort. ?rigadier General Stevenson

To Major General Cook:

General: The train (passenger) was captured the night before last at Duffield Station. Two paymasters are said to have been on board. One lost $60,000. ?obert P. Kennedy, Adjutant General

After the raid the grill was apparently split up. Later that same day, General Stevenson sent the following dispatch to Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War: Telegraphed you last night that Moseby? men who had burned the train succeeded in making escape the Shenandoah with prisoners and booty. The few that crossed below the Monocacy were routed at Adamstown and driven across the Potomac...

Later dispatches paint a picture of two days of mass confusion with guerrillas and Union cavalry wearing out their horses up and down the Potomac and Shenandoah. Nothing in the Union dispatches ties the lost payroll to the alleged cache at Cherry Run, but it sure seems possible ?ven very possible.

Confederate soldier John H. Alexander, who participated in the raid, later said that in addition to the $60,000 payroll, the guerrillas captured over $100,000 worth of gold. The greenbacks of the payroll were divided among the men immediately after the raid. General Moseby refused his share. An elated John H. Alexander received $2,200 in new, uncut sheets of various denominations ·more money than he had ever had in his entire life. Alexander does not say what became of the gold.

2. West Virginia came into being during the Civil War as a sort of rebellion within the rebellion. After the first few years of conflict, the new state found itself split by stalemated Federal and Confederate lines. Operating behind the Union lines were numerous bands of what the Confederates called guerrillas and the Yankees called ?orse-stealing, murdering, bushwhackers.·The bushwhackers did steal horses and a good deal of other plunder. They were also known to be guilty of kidnapping, murder, and brutal mutilation.

Although some of the groups, such as McNeill? Raiders in the South Branch Valley, were, in fact, detached units of the Confederate Army ·others, such as the Black Stripe Company in Logan County or the Moccasins in Calhoun County, were answerable to no one but themselves. It has never been proven that any of the plunder taken by groups like these was ever used to support the Confederate cause. Certainly it is fair to speculate that a good deal of the booty was cached for the personal use of the bushwhackers.

In 1862 Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes issued orders to his Ohio regiment to begin vigorous patrolling: ·..to ascertain the hiding places of these bushwhackers, and when found...all men who can be identified as of the party will be killed, whether found in arms or not.·Or ·as one of Hayes·soldiers put it ·?e do not take prisoners if we can help it.·

Under conditions like these, it is not surprising that stories of bushwhackers·caches in West Virginia are both numerous and vague. McNeill? Raiders are thought to have hidden some of their plunder in the vicinity of Willow Hall in Hardy County (the home of Captain David McNeill), as well as various other sites in the Potomac region. The Black Stripes may have made caches along the Coal Mud and Guyandot Rivers. Other bands operated in various pockets throughout the state, including the Birch Mountain country in Braxton, Nicholas, and Webster Counties. Local research and a little luck might pay off very handsomely in these areas.

3. An unsubstantiated story claims that Confederate raiders buried $300,000 captured from a Union patrol near Rock Cave in the vicinity of the junction of Bear Camp Run and the Buckhannon River. This may be another version of the better documented story of a Union payroll hidden along the river near Buckhannon in 1863. In this story, a Confederate soldier named Bill Taylor revealed that a Confederate patrol ambushed a small party of Federal troops hauling a wagon and killed them all. After the engagement it was discovered that the wagon had a false bottom and papers on the dead Union officer indicated that the wagon had, indeed, been hauling the Federal payroll. A search was made and some empty boxes were discovered nearby, but the payroll could not be located and the Confederates continued with their mission.

1863 saw a lot of see-sawing back and forth of the Confederate and Union lines, and Bill Taylor has been positively identified as a Confederate soldier who fought in West Virginia. So this story comes better documented, but it is by no means proved.

4. A small Union payroll (about $6,000) was allegedly lost under similar circumstances in 1864 in Logan County. In this case a Union patrol carrying a payroll to troops stationed on the Tug Fork of the Sandy River were ambushed near Chapmanville just after crossing the Guyandotte River. In this engagement two of the Union soldiers survived and were sent back to the Confederate camp as prisoners where they informed the officer in charge that the money ·$6,000 in gold ·had been hastily buried during the fight. The officer took no action on this information and the money was never recovered.

5. The following information was provided by Robert A. Gwin, an Oklahoma resident who was born in Gauley Bridge, W. Va.,

?uring the Civil War, Gauley Bridge was shelled by Confederate cannon from the top of Cotton Hill Mountain. The main target was the covered bridge across Gauley River and the ferry across the New River. Federal troops crossed New River, climbed the side of Cotton Hill Mountain, and chased the Confederate troops away. During the pursuit, the Confederates were hampered by the cannon which was holding them back, so they unhitched the cannon and gave it a shove into a small ravine. The cannon is still there. Squirrel hunters will occasionally stumble across the gun and plan to return at a later date to retrieve it, only to discover they can? find it and that the only reason they found the cannon in the first place was that they were lost.

In the early 1950s Boy Scout Troop 87 under the supervision of Mr. Beaver climbed Cotton Hill Mountain and discovered a couple of cannon shells which they brought home as trophies. Both shells were about four or five inches in diameter and 12 inches long and had what looked like a copper cap inside the fluted area at the base. Years later, I was told that it was still a ?ive·shell, and I have seen shells like that at the museum at Fort Sill, Okla. The hollow fluted area was supposed to create a spin while it was flying through the air, and after the shell exploded there would be more shrapnel.

During the war, concerned citizens of Gauley Bridge were afraid of an invasion by the Confederate Army, so they pooled all their valuables and buried them on Conley Hill. I don? know if the valuables were ever recovered. Gauley Bridge in located in Fayette County on U.S. Route 60 about 40 mile east of Charleston, W. Va.·

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

SOURCES:

Stern, Philip Van Doren. Secret Missions of the Civil War. Rand McNally & Co., 1959.

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

U.S. Army records

Williams, John Alexander. West Virginia. W.W. Norton Company, 1976.