Boy this brings back memories! I was born and raised near the little burg of Nicholson, famous for its railroad bridge, and grew up exploring the numerous caves that dot NE Pennsylvania. When I grew older, I was surprised to learn that the great majority of the caves are not known in any book or map! I spent many happy hours searching for Indian arrowheads in caves under the stone cliffs that overhang many of the Endless Mountains, usually without luck but it was great fun and learned to respect rattlers and copperheads too.
There are so many (all small, mind you) caves, no kidding here, that just about ten years ago I learned of one that is even within the town limits of Nicholson, that was less than 200 yards from the path I walked to school so many times and never knew of. The most impressive cave I got to explore was located north of Nicholson a few miles out of Harford (famous for their county fairs) in the hills; this cave was as large as an ordinary living room inside but you had to crawl to get in - the cave was used by ancestors of my brother's in-laws as a hide-out during the Civil War as they did not want to be drafted for the war! Unfortunately, most of the caves had all been explored before me by other boys who most likely found the relics like arrowheads, or at least those lying on the surface and easy to find.
The finds of gold in Pennsylvania are intriguing. Members of the Gold Prospectors Assn of America reported finding gold nuggets the size of dimes in the Susquehanna river during low water season, and although most all gold found in PA (except a single location, coincidentally a copper mine) is of glacial origins, it is not important how the gold got there if you are the lucky one to find it!
I did an article some years ago on a (locally) famous lost treasure that is hidden in a cave close to Nicholson too - an old shoemaker named Peters had misered his money and collected it in cans and jars, and hidden it in a cave that had to be within walking distance of the town since he had no car and could not drive - plus he was getting to be an elderly gent at that time. I recall hearing the story from his own lips as a boy, when we would visit his little shop (which was in his home, a home my brother later purchased and lived in) how he stashed away a tidy sum and all in silver and gold; he hinted that perhaps some boy from town would one day be lucky enough to find it. There was a theory floating among the local boys that Peters used the Nicholson bridge as a kind of landmark, sighting in off of one of the arches to locate the cave which was otherwise not easy to find, but I never heard Mr. Peters say this himself.
In the mid-1970s a THer found a stash of old jars and cans in a cave outside of town, and proclaimed that he had indeed found Peters treasure. However there are problems with his claim, on two important points - for one, the cave where he found his treasure cache was quite some distance out of town, probably too far for a little old man to have been hiking to and from in the evenings after he had closed up his shop. The other problem is in the dates on some of the coins he recovered, because they are dated AFTER Mr. Peters had passed away! Unless Peters was able to continue to collect money long after his death and carry them to the cave to hide them, what this lucky THer found was someone ELSE's cache. Then too, among the coins he found were a large percentage of copper pennies, the remainder being silver and the clad-crap coins we use even today; no gold coins. Mr. Peters never mentioned hiding copper pennies, only silver and gold.
My point here? I guess that I don't have one. The thread just reminded me of many happy hours of growing up, along with a personal search for a lost treasure hidden by a little old Italian immigrant shoe-maker named Peters (certainly not his original name, which would have been Italian) which in my opinion has never been found. Old caves are some of the most interesting places to explore and search for treasures, you never know what you will find - from ancient Indian pottery and stone tools & weapons to treasures hidden by eccentrics, that could be worth Very interesting thread, I look forward to reading more.
Oroblanco
"By all means marry, if you get a good wife, you will be happy; if you get a bad one, you will become a philosopher." --Socrates
