The Willie Douthit Story (Part 1)
If we have any chance of understanding Willie Douthit’s story, I believe it behooves us to know as much about Willie’s background and who he is as possible.
I will break Willie’s timeline into several posts over the next few days so please be patient. Even then, it will still be a work in progress since I have a couple of unanswered letters outstanding and plans for pursuing additional parts of the story.
Background:
Willie Douthit was supposed to have found a cave of gold bars in 1929 in the Caballo Mountains of New Mexico. As the story goes, a few years after finding the gold, Willie left New Mexico and went to California where he changed his name to Larry Foreman and spent the remainder of his years. He died very wealthy in San Diego.
According to one version of the story passed on by Mike McChesney, Willie showed up out of the blue at Victorio Peak during Operation Goldfinder in 1973 and made himself known. Had it not been for that, we might have never known that he changed his name to Larry Foreman and resided in California, etc. This information allowed us to follow the trail of Willie.
The Gold House books, by John Clarence, are the foundation for the Victorio Peak story and they provide a plethora of sources that cannot be found anywhere else. Great Books! I may disagree with many of John’s conclusions but in no way would I slam his books! The Willie Douthit story is a very small appendage to the Victorio Peak story.
The Timeline:
A treasure story in which the finder ends up rich, seems to be a story worth researching. It certainly isn’t typical! Hence my interest.
I have paraphrased several paragraphs from Gold House, Book 1, The Discovery, Page 3 and Page 46 by John Clarence and I hope I haven’t strayed anywhere and changed any meaning. If I have, I apologize!
In the 1930’s a man named Willie Douthit found a fortune in gold in a cave somewhere in the Caballo Mountains. Willie Douthit was born poor in 1908 in Midland, Texas and died wealthy.
In 1933 Willie left New Mexico for California and took a fortune in gold bullion with him.
When Willie died in 2001 at the age of 83, he left an estate of over $3,500,000.00, not including the more than one million dollars a lady friend ran off with, the gold Willie buried and never recovered, nor what a partner, Buster Ward, had taken with him when he moved to California.
The alleged large estate owned by Willie, upon his death, had to come from somewhere and had to be dispersed after his death. There is surely a paper trail.
This account looked like a good place to start researching and building a timeline for Willie Douthit.
What follows is what I would call a condensed version of Willie’s timeline. It is only a small portion of the research that includes well over one hundred associated relatives, numerous sources, etc.
I’m sure many will feel that the timeline could be condensed even further and not lose much but there may be a few who like the details.
Garry
If we have any chance of understanding Willie Douthit’s story, I believe it behooves us to know as much about Willie’s background and who he is as possible.
I will break Willie’s timeline into several posts over the next few days so please be patient. Even then, it will still be a work in progress since I have a couple of unanswered letters outstanding and plans for pursuing additional parts of the story.
Background:
Willie Douthit was supposed to have found a cave of gold bars in 1929 in the Caballo Mountains of New Mexico. As the story goes, a few years after finding the gold, Willie left New Mexico and went to California where he changed his name to Larry Foreman and spent the remainder of his years. He died very wealthy in San Diego.
According to one version of the story passed on by Mike McChesney, Willie showed up out of the blue at Victorio Peak during Operation Goldfinder in 1973 and made himself known. Had it not been for that, we might have never known that he changed his name to Larry Foreman and resided in California, etc. This information allowed us to follow the trail of Willie.
The Gold House books, by John Clarence, are the foundation for the Victorio Peak story and they provide a plethora of sources that cannot be found anywhere else. Great Books! I may disagree with many of John’s conclusions but in no way would I slam his books! The Willie Douthit story is a very small appendage to the Victorio Peak story.
The Timeline:
A treasure story in which the finder ends up rich, seems to be a story worth researching. It certainly isn’t typical! Hence my interest.
I have paraphrased several paragraphs from Gold House, Book 1, The Discovery, Page 3 and Page 46 by John Clarence and I hope I haven’t strayed anywhere and changed any meaning. If I have, I apologize!
In the 1930’s a man named Willie Douthit found a fortune in gold in a cave somewhere in the Caballo Mountains. Willie Douthit was born poor in 1908 in Midland, Texas and died wealthy.
In 1933 Willie left New Mexico for California and took a fortune in gold bullion with him.
When Willie died in 2001 at the age of 83, he left an estate of over $3,500,000.00, not including the more than one million dollars a lady friend ran off with, the gold Willie buried and never recovered, nor what a partner, Buster Ward, had taken with him when he moved to California.
The alleged large estate owned by Willie, upon his death, had to come from somewhere and had to be dispersed after his death. There is surely a paper trail.
This account looked like a good place to start researching and building a timeline for Willie Douthit.
What follows is what I would call a condensed version of Willie’s timeline. It is only a small portion of the research that includes well over one hundred associated relatives, numerous sources, etc.
I’m sure many will feel that the timeline could be condensed even further and not lose much but there may be a few who like the details.
Garry
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