K
Kentucky Kache
Guest
Hayden's money is still somewhere in the canyon (NV)
In the far reaches of northeastern Nevada lies what remains of an old stagecoach station. Located along Ellison Canyon between Warm Springs and Ely, Nev. In 1915 the stage station was the temporary home of Old Man Hayden and his Indian housekeeper after he sold his cattle ranch which was located near the mouth of the canyon. What makes this story truly remarkable is the fact that Hayden hid $17,000 in gold and silver coins inside two heavy canvas sacks somewhere between the stage station and the mouth of Ellison Canyon where his ranch had been located.
In 1938, long-time treasure hunter, Ken Marquiss, had saved enough money from one of the many heavy construction jobs he had worked on in the desert lands near Blythe in eastern Riverside County, California to buy a new metal detector, to legalize an old car and to finance a trip to the Nevada ghost camps. Ken teamed up with a Nevada man by the name of Paul Irwin who had some good leads to buried treasures in addition to having a lot of friends in Nevada where they could count on some good, home-cooked meals.
While the cache of gold and silver coins is not of royal size, it is one of the best authenticated treasure cache stories to come out of Nevada. And, if it were not for a man-killing mule, there would be no lost cache story. At today? prices, the cache is worth at least $250,000.
The story was told to Ken by Frank Vanover, a Duckwater, Nev., rancher who was the brother-in-law of Paul Irwin, who said that back in the old days, around the turn of the century, a man named Hayden was ranching over at the mouth of Ellison Canyon. Old Man Hayden had an Indian housekeeper, a one-way purse of respectable size and a real contempt for banks and paper money.
Somewhere along about 1913 or 1915 (Paul couldn't remember which) Hayden sold his spread for $10,000 cash, in gold coin, and a few head of cattle to a man named Owen Cazier from the Currant Creek country. Since Cazier wanted to take possession right away, Hayden needed a place to stay for awhile. The old stage road from Hamilton to Pioche used to run through Ellison Canyon, and about 11 miles above the Hayden spread was an old abandoned stage station that would make a snug home for a squatter. Hayden made some repairs to the old stage stop and started moving his household goods up from his ranch using a wagon drawn by a team of mules.
Finally, only one wagon load of household belongings and 20 head of cattle were all that remained to move. On the morning of the last day at the old place, just before breakfast, Hayden went out to the barn and corral, which was located in an encircling lava cove behind the house, and dug up several tin lard cans containing his life? savings. After breakfast, he placed the coins inside two heavy canvas bags. As he did so, he showed the money to his housekeeper and told her that he had saved almost $17,000 in hard money, adding that, now, they had enough money to take care of themselves for the rest of their lives!
Hayden then parked the wagon, with a couple of empty water barrels in it, in front of the house, put the mules in the barn and told his housekeeper that she should pack all the extra dishes, pots and pans and so forth in the barrels while he drove the cattle up to the new place on horseback. He explained that he would be back that evening and that, early the next morning, he would dismantle the stove, bed and table and that they would make the final move by wagon.
He made certain his Winchester was securely in its scabbard, hung the money bags on the saddle horn, covered them with a slicker and started moving his herd up the canyon. The housekeeper kept busy all day with packing.
That night, after Hayden had returned from the stage station and while they were finishing their supper, she asked him if the money was safe. He replied, You're damned right it is! Nobody is gonna find that money where I hid it! To this day, he seems to have been absolutely right.
The next morning, he dismantled the table and chairs, packed the bed, and while the housekeeper washed dishes and waited for the cook stove to cool, he went to harness the mules.
There was still plenty to do before the final move, as there always is in such cases, and the housekeeper set about cleaning up the kitchen and packing what few things remained, along with washing the dishes. When Hayden did not return, she went searching for him and found him face down in the filthy corral. As Frank Vanover said, one of those mangy mules had planted a shoe right between the horns of that old tightwad.
The housekeeper was beside herself, weeping and crying all the way to a neighbor's ranch house; however, there wasn't a thing the rancher could do. Hayden was buried near Ely. After the funeral the housekeeper returned with her relatives and spent weeks searching for Hayden's money without success. She died some years later as poor as a church mouse.
Paul Irwin and Ken Marquiss made two tries for Hayden's cache in the fall of 1938, but both times they were run out by fierce snow storms, the kind that are common in that part of Nevada. In those days, the old rock walls of the stage station were still head-high and a portion of the log rafters were to be found in the rubble on the floor. They cleaned out the old stage stop and used Ken's metal detector to search for the cache in case it was buried below the floor of the old station. They also searched the ruins of several old buildings and corrals in the area, finding horseshoes, keg loops, candlesticks, parts to stoves and all kinds of trash, but no money bags.
Ken returned by himself in the fall of 1954 and 1957 with a new Jeep station wagon, a new camping outfit and a new and much better metal detector. Both times he was run out by foul weather in the form of sleet and heavy snow. In 1957, the storm was so bad that a nearby rancher, Jess Gardner, took pity on Ken and let him stay in one of his line cabins at the narrows below the stage station until he dried out. Ken continued his search for a couple more days, working in a rain slicker and with a plastic covered detector.
Today, Ellison Canyon is overgrown with sagebrush whose undergrowth can be a problem with larger search coils of the kind often used to search out buried caches. Other possible hiding places include the many rock crevices throughout the canyon, whose numbers defy imagination. The old-timers claim no one has ever found the cache and few have searched using metal detectors as this is a little-known treasure story. Hayden's money is still somewhere in the canyon.
If you want to try your luck with a good detector, the location is not hard to find, although the weather, even in the summer months, can be miserable. About 24 miles southwest of Ely, along Highway 6, is a dirt road that branches off toward the northwest where a Forest Service sign reads, Ellison Ranger Station. Back in the late 30s, when Ken Marquiss searched for the cache, there was a little bar and café across the road from the Forest Service sign that was called the Cove on the Preston Road junction. The café sat almost exactly where Hayden's old ranch house once was.
A couple of miles up the dirt road to the ranger station, you will go around Jess Gardner's main ranch buildings, and at 8.7 miles from the paved road you will come to a windmill and cattle guard marking the Forest Service boundary. Ellison Canyon narrows at this point and the road climbs up the right-hand side of the gorge. At a point 1.9 miles above the windmill, in a little clump of scrub willows and briars on the right, the north side of the road are the remains of the old stage station.
This is the hub of the search area, and after you arrive, you are on your own. The cache could be buried or hidden up and down the canyon on either side of the old stage station. They say that Old Man Hayden was a slick old coot, he really loved his money, and it could be hidden almost anywhere!
In the far reaches of northeastern Nevada lies what remains of an old stagecoach station. Located along Ellison Canyon between Warm Springs and Ely, Nev. In 1915 the stage station was the temporary home of Old Man Hayden and his Indian housekeeper after he sold his cattle ranch which was located near the mouth of the canyon. What makes this story truly remarkable is the fact that Hayden hid $17,000 in gold and silver coins inside two heavy canvas sacks somewhere between the stage station and the mouth of Ellison Canyon where his ranch had been located.
In 1938, long-time treasure hunter, Ken Marquiss, had saved enough money from one of the many heavy construction jobs he had worked on in the desert lands near Blythe in eastern Riverside County, California to buy a new metal detector, to legalize an old car and to finance a trip to the Nevada ghost camps. Ken teamed up with a Nevada man by the name of Paul Irwin who had some good leads to buried treasures in addition to having a lot of friends in Nevada where they could count on some good, home-cooked meals.
While the cache of gold and silver coins is not of royal size, it is one of the best authenticated treasure cache stories to come out of Nevada. And, if it were not for a man-killing mule, there would be no lost cache story. At today? prices, the cache is worth at least $250,000.
The story was told to Ken by Frank Vanover, a Duckwater, Nev., rancher who was the brother-in-law of Paul Irwin, who said that back in the old days, around the turn of the century, a man named Hayden was ranching over at the mouth of Ellison Canyon. Old Man Hayden had an Indian housekeeper, a one-way purse of respectable size and a real contempt for banks and paper money.
Somewhere along about 1913 or 1915 (Paul couldn't remember which) Hayden sold his spread for $10,000 cash, in gold coin, and a few head of cattle to a man named Owen Cazier from the Currant Creek country. Since Cazier wanted to take possession right away, Hayden needed a place to stay for awhile. The old stage road from Hamilton to Pioche used to run through Ellison Canyon, and about 11 miles above the Hayden spread was an old abandoned stage station that would make a snug home for a squatter. Hayden made some repairs to the old stage stop and started moving his household goods up from his ranch using a wagon drawn by a team of mules.
Finally, only one wagon load of household belongings and 20 head of cattle were all that remained to move. On the morning of the last day at the old place, just before breakfast, Hayden went out to the barn and corral, which was located in an encircling lava cove behind the house, and dug up several tin lard cans containing his life? savings. After breakfast, he placed the coins inside two heavy canvas bags. As he did so, he showed the money to his housekeeper and told her that he had saved almost $17,000 in hard money, adding that, now, they had enough money to take care of themselves for the rest of their lives!
Hayden then parked the wagon, with a couple of empty water barrels in it, in front of the house, put the mules in the barn and told his housekeeper that she should pack all the extra dishes, pots and pans and so forth in the barrels while he drove the cattle up to the new place on horseback. He explained that he would be back that evening and that, early the next morning, he would dismantle the stove, bed and table and that they would make the final move by wagon.
He made certain his Winchester was securely in its scabbard, hung the money bags on the saddle horn, covered them with a slicker and started moving his herd up the canyon. The housekeeper kept busy all day with packing.
That night, after Hayden had returned from the stage station and while they were finishing their supper, she asked him if the money was safe. He replied, You're damned right it is! Nobody is gonna find that money where I hid it! To this day, he seems to have been absolutely right.
The next morning, he dismantled the table and chairs, packed the bed, and while the housekeeper washed dishes and waited for the cook stove to cool, he went to harness the mules.
There was still plenty to do before the final move, as there always is in such cases, and the housekeeper set about cleaning up the kitchen and packing what few things remained, along with washing the dishes. When Hayden did not return, she went searching for him and found him face down in the filthy corral. As Frank Vanover said, one of those mangy mules had planted a shoe right between the horns of that old tightwad.
The housekeeper was beside herself, weeping and crying all the way to a neighbor's ranch house; however, there wasn't a thing the rancher could do. Hayden was buried near Ely. After the funeral the housekeeper returned with her relatives and spent weeks searching for Hayden's money without success. She died some years later as poor as a church mouse.
Paul Irwin and Ken Marquiss made two tries for Hayden's cache in the fall of 1938, but both times they were run out by fierce snow storms, the kind that are common in that part of Nevada. In those days, the old rock walls of the stage station were still head-high and a portion of the log rafters were to be found in the rubble on the floor. They cleaned out the old stage stop and used Ken's metal detector to search for the cache in case it was buried below the floor of the old station. They also searched the ruins of several old buildings and corrals in the area, finding horseshoes, keg loops, candlesticks, parts to stoves and all kinds of trash, but no money bags.
Ken returned by himself in the fall of 1954 and 1957 with a new Jeep station wagon, a new camping outfit and a new and much better metal detector. Both times he was run out by foul weather in the form of sleet and heavy snow. In 1957, the storm was so bad that a nearby rancher, Jess Gardner, took pity on Ken and let him stay in one of his line cabins at the narrows below the stage station until he dried out. Ken continued his search for a couple more days, working in a rain slicker and with a plastic covered detector.
Today, Ellison Canyon is overgrown with sagebrush whose undergrowth can be a problem with larger search coils of the kind often used to search out buried caches. Other possible hiding places include the many rock crevices throughout the canyon, whose numbers defy imagination. The old-timers claim no one has ever found the cache and few have searched using metal detectors as this is a little-known treasure story. Hayden's money is still somewhere in the canyon.
If you want to try your luck with a good detector, the location is not hard to find, although the weather, even in the summer months, can be miserable. About 24 miles southwest of Ely, along Highway 6, is a dirt road that branches off toward the northwest where a Forest Service sign reads, Ellison Ranger Station. Back in the late 30s, when Ken Marquiss searched for the cache, there was a little bar and café across the road from the Forest Service sign that was called the Cove on the Preston Road junction. The café sat almost exactly where Hayden's old ranch house once was.
A couple of miles up the dirt road to the ranger station, you will go around Jess Gardner's main ranch buildings, and at 8.7 miles from the paved road you will come to a windmill and cattle guard marking the Forest Service boundary. Ellison Canyon narrows at this point and the road climbs up the right-hand side of the gorge. At a point 1.9 miles above the windmill, in a little clump of scrub willows and briars on the right, the north side of the road are the remains of the old stage station.
This is the hub of the search area, and after you arrive, you are on your own. The cache could be buried or hidden up and down the canyon on either side of the old stage station. They say that Old Man Hayden was a slick old coot, he really loved his money, and it could be hidden almost anywhere!
Bad or good you decide. The GOOOOOD news is in the same book I found another very reasonable sounding account of some burried loot.So more archives to dig through.This one is quite obscure so I`m hoping. NVRADAR
