W. C. Jameson - Treasure Hunter: A Memoir of Caches, Curses, and Confrontations

Treasure Hunter

Other books by W.C. Jameson

Buried Treasures of America Series

Buried Treasures of the American Southwest

New Mexico Treasure Tales

Buried Treasures of Texas

Colorado Treasure Tales

Buried Treasures of the Ozarks

Buried Treasures of the South

Buried Treasures of the Appalachians

Buried Treasures of New England

Buried Treasures of California

Buried Treasures of the Atlantic Coast

Buried Treasures of the Rocky Mountain West

Buried Treasures of the Great Plains

Buried Treasures of the Pacific Northwest

Buried Treasures of the Mid-Atlantic States

Lost Mines and Buried Treasures of Arizona

Lost Mines and Buried Treasures of Old Wyoming

Lost Mines and Buried Treasures of Arkansas

Lost Mines and Buried Treasures of Missouri

Lost Mines and Buried Treasures of Oklahoma

Lost Mines and Buried Treasures of Tennessee

Texas Tales of Lost Mines and Buried Treasures

Lost Treasures in American History

Legend and Lore of the Guadalupe Mountains

Buried Treasures of the Ozarks and Appalachians

Lost Mines and Buried Treasures of the Guadalupe Mountains

Lost Mines and Buried Treasures of the Big Bend

Floridas Lost and Buried Treasures

Lost Mines and Buried Treasures of the Civil War

The Silver Madonna and other Tales of Americas Greatest Lost Treasures

Finding Treasure: A Field Guide

Outlaw Treasures (audio)

Buried Treasures of the Civil War (audio)

Beyond the Grave Series

The Return of the Assassin, John Wilkes Booth

Billy the Kid: Beyond the Grave

Billy the Kid: The Lost Interviews

Butch Cassidy: Beyond the Grave

John Wilkes Booth: Beyond the Grave

Books on Writing

Hot Coffee and Cold Truth: Living and Writing the West

Notes from Texas: On Writing in the Lone Star State

Want to Be a Successful Writer? Do This Stuff

An Elevated View: Colorado Writers on Writing

The Seven Keys to Becoming a Successful Writer

Poetry

I Missed the Train to Little Rock

Open Range: Poetry of the Reimagined West (Edited with Laurie Wagner Buyer)

Bones of the Mountain

Food

Chili from the Southwest

The Ultimate Chili Cookbook

Fandango Cookbook

Fiction

Beating the Devil

Eulogy

Other

Unsolved Mysteries of the Old West

A Sense of Place: Essays on the Ozarks

Ozark Tales of Ghosts, Spirits, Hauntings, and Monsters

Treasure Hunter

A Memoir of Caches, Curses, and Confrontations

Second Edition

W.C. Jameson

TAYLOR TRADE PUBLISHING

Lanham Boulder New York London

Published by Taylor Trade Publishing

An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc.

4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706

www.rowman.com

16 Carlisle Street, London W1D 3BT, United Kingdom

Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

Copyright 2014 by W.C. Jameson

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jameson, W. C., 1942

Treasure hunter : a memoir of caches, curses, and confrontations / W.C. Jameson. Second edition.

pages cm

ISBN 978-1-58979-992-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-1-58979-993-6 (electronic) 1. Jameson, W. C., 1942- 2. Adventure and adventurersSouthwest, NewBiography. 3. Treasure trovesSouthwest, NewFolklore. 4. Treasure trovesMexico, NorthFolklore. 5. TalesSouthwest, New. 6. TalesMexico, North. 7. LegendsSouthwest, New. 8. LegendsMexico, North. 9. Southwest, NewBiography. I. Title.

GR108.5.J36 2014

398.20979dc23

2014015120

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

For Laurie

Contents

Introduction

Never More Alive Than When on the Hunt

Treasure! Its out there. Its whispering to me.

Anonymous

For over five decades I have been a professional treasure hunter. During dozens of quests to locate lost mines and buried treasures, I have faced death and injury, broken national and international laws, neglected my family, and occasionally found fortune. There are not many of us left, those dreamers and wanderers who find excitement and satisfaction in remote and sometimes unmapped regions of the globe. We are dedicated to the search for something that may or may not exist. We are a breed of men addicted to danger, adventure, and the quest.

The lure of treasure has captivated mankind since earliest civilization, and men who wanted more out of life than the ordinary, those whose hearts and souls pulsed and throbbed with a sense of daring, went in pursuit. Indeed, Im convinced it was not so much the promise of wealth as it was the quest, the opportunity to journey to unknown lands, to confront obstacles and dangers, and not only to overcome and survive but to thrive in pitting ones skills and mettle against sometimes overwhelming odds.

The seekers of treasure have been with us for ages. Who can forget the mythical odyssey of Jason and the Argonauts in pursuit of the Golden Fleece? Who has not thrilled to the adventures that lay between the covers of Robert Louis Stevensons Treasure Island , H. Rider Haggards King Solomons Mines , or B. Travens The Treasure of the Sierra Madres ? Who could read J. Frank Dobies Coronados Children or Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver and not be compelled to gather up maps and expedition gear and go searching for a buried cache or lost mine? We cant seem to get enough of these stories. For men of adventure, this kind of quest is as much a part of the culture as food, music, and religion.

During my teenage years, I lived with the memory of finding a cache of gold ingots in the Guadalupe Mountains of West Texas. I remembered the heft and texture of the bullion in my hands as it was passed to me from a small cave by the men who found it. The experience possessed me as I relived it every day. As a result, I seldom paid attention in my school classes. While public school faculty droned on about some dull subject, I drew stick-men adventures on scrap pieces of paper. I stared out the window at the bright sunshine-illumined West Texas landscape, imagining expeditions I could be participating in rather than being confined indoors. In my reveries, I smelled the creosote bush and cactus flowers, felt the desert breeze of the Guadalupes, and relished the heat of the sun on my skin just like I did on that day I stood outside the treasure cave.

I flunked algebra my freshman year in high school and barely passed my other courses. Bored by boring teachers who made everything boring, my ears perked up only occasionally in English class when some bit of literature or poetry caught my attention, when some compelling tale such as Silas Marner unfolded and captivated me. I was entranced by the rhythms found in Miniver Cheevy by Edwin Arlington Robinson, and by the stories of Jack London such as White Fang and To Build a Fire.

Other than being a member of the football and track teams, I was a loner. The few friends I hung out with from time to time were loners too. What we had in common was our understanding of and craving for solitude, but their dreams, if they had any, seemed different from mine.