Joe t
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- Sep 23, 2015
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Does anybody know of any legends of Michigan, Ohio and Indiana, thanks
Where is the gold ?
- Thread starter Joe t
- Start date
KANACKI
Bronze Member
- Mar 1, 2015
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Hello T
Indiana.
1. Buried Treasures in Clark County
There are actually believed to be a few different types of buried treasure hidden in Clark County.
Josiah Hite was a counterfeiter in Charlestown during the 1800s. He was arrested, but managed to escape and was never seen in the area again. The cache of silver coins he had remains buried somewhere near his old home site in Charlestown.
The early Indians in the Charlestown area had a secret mind of gold and silver. The townspeople made every effort to follow them to find the mine, but were never successful. When the Indians moved to the west, they never told anyone where the gold and silver mine was.
2. Buried Treasures in Floyd County
A gang called the Reno Gang was believed to have caches of buried treasure somewhere in the Little Goss Cave.
Early Indians worked in a rich silver mine located somewhere on or near the Round Top Knob.
There was a large amusement park that operated from 1900 to 1940 on Rose Island. It was near the Six-Mile Road below New Albany on the Ohio River. There were thousands of people who went to this amusement park when it was open. It is a metal detecting gold mine. All sorts of treasures are hiding beneath the dirt!
A gang called the Reno Gang was believed to have caches of buried treasure somewhere in the Little Goss Cave.
Early Indians worked in a rich silver mine located somewhere on or near the Round Top Knob.
There was a large amusement park that operated from 1900 to 1940 on Rose Island. It was near the Six-Mile Road below New Albany on the Ohio River. There were thousands of people who went to this amusement park when it was open. It is a metal detecting gold mine. All sorts of treasures are hiding beneath the dirt!
3. A Large Amount of Money Buried in Adams County.
A racketeer was believed to have hidden a huge amount of money along the banks of the Wabash River during the prohibition period. The money is believed to be somewhere between Geneva and Berne.
4. . A Huge Stash Buried in Jackson County.
The Reno brothers were believed to have hidden $80,000 they stole during a train robbery in 1868 somewhere near their home in Rockford. They were also believed to hide another $98,000 they stole during a second train robbery as well.
5. Gold Coins Buried in Jefferson County
he Harris Farmhouse (now known as Bear Farm) is believed to have tons of gold coin caches hidden in various areas of the grounds. This area was used as a headquarters for smuggling slaves during the Civil War.
6. Gold Coins Buried in Knox County.
During the civil war, General John Morgan buried roughly $5,000 worth of gold coins. The coins are believed to be buried somewhere in the George Rogers Clark Historical Park.
7. 2,000 Cases of Buried Booze in LaPorte County.
Al Capone’s henchmen were able to hide 2,000 cases of whiskey which was worth roughly $300,000 in a cave located near Michigan City before they were gunned down. The entryway of the cave was sealed with explosives to prevent anyone from taking the cases.
8. Large Amount of Money Buried in Marshall County.
Gangster Jim Genna is believed to have buried a huge sum of money inside of a steel box underneath a pile of rocks in a pasture. Treasure hunters and FBI have not been able to find this money. It is believed to be off State Road 6 near Bremen somewhere.
9. Gold Bullion Buried in Martin County.
Indians are believed to have buried a number of figurines and a bunch of gold bullion off the State Road 150 overlooking the White River on Rocky McBride Bluff in 1810.
10. Tons of Money and Gold Buried in Vigo County.
There was a bank employee who embezzled roughly $95,000 in paper currency. He committed suicide after burying his pilfered fortune on a farm outside of Terre Haute.
Ohio
In addition to the normal places that one would metal detect for old coins, there are also several treasure tales associated with Ohio.
1. On a bluff that overlooks the Ohio River, about a mile northeast of Crown City, legend has it that riverboat pirates hid at least $24,000 in gold and silver coins and jewelry. The treasure is said to have been stolen from a riverboat back in 1876 and the bluff was frequented by pirates as a hideout.
2. A trove that dates back to the Revolutionary War is comprised of $25,000 in gold coins and is said to be buried one mile south of Minerva on the north shore of the Sandy River.
3. In 1913, a flood destroyed the vast majority of Dayton, and during this flood a good many personal caches were lost. Over the years however, many treasure hunters have been able to locate some of the items. There are most certainly still some treasures left to find here.
4. On the west bank of the Grand River approximately two miles from Lake Erie, near Fairport Harbor it is rumored that a treasure worth approximately $100,000 in gold bars is buried. The gold was stolen from a local bank and the robber announced on his deathbed that the gold was “three feet deep and 30 paces northwest of a large oak tree on the river bank.”
Michigan
1. At the end of the French and Indian War, France ceded the Great Lakes and the Northwest Territory to England. Twenty years later, by the Treaty of Paris in September 1783, England granted the Northwest Territory to the United States. A part of that grant became the state of Michigan which was admitted to the Union in 1837.
The French had monopolized the fur trade for over a hundred years, from about 1620 to 1725, before the British began to offer any competition. Thousands of dollars worth of furs were shipped to France. Most of the fur traders spent their earnings for whiskey and supplies, but there were a few thrifty trappers and government agents who buried or hid their savings.
Sometimes during raids into New York, Pennsylvania and the Illinois-Ohio country, Indians would carry gold and silver with other loot back to their villages around the Lakes. Since money had no value to them, it was lost, buried, hidden or thrown away.
Sixty-eight out of the eighty-six counties in Michigan have shown evidence of free gold and silver has appeared in several places. Also, the state has numerous ghost towns.
2. During Pontiac’s Uprising in 1763, Alexander Henry, an English trader, was captured by the Indians. Henry had made friends with the Hippewa Chief Wawatam before the uprising. After the Indians fortified Mackinac Island, Wawatam helped Henry escape the stockade, where all the English prisoners were being kept before being killed.
Wawatam took Henry to a cave in a sandstone cliff. While he was spending the first night in the cave, Henry discovered a large pile of human bones, skulls and curious objects.
The next day, Wawatam managed to ransom Henry from the other Indians so that he would not be recaptured and killed. When Henry told about the cave, a band of curious Indians went to see the place for themselves. It was a new discovery for these people, who had often camped on the island. Even the oldest tribesmen could not account for the cave or its contents.
Some of the Indians remembered their tribal story of a great flood and supposed that island dwellers had taken refuge in that high cavern, where they were caught by the rising water and drowned.
Alexander Henry left Mackinac Island with Chief Wawatam and never returned. It is a certainty that the superstitious Indians never bothered the cave. From a treasure hunter’s point of view, there are several questions that are unanswered.
What were the curious objects Henry saw? Apparently the skeletons were not Indian or the Indians with Henry would have known about them. Who were these people? Since the bones were in a dry cave, they could have been there for centuries. Were they the remnant of a race that predated the Indians? I can learn of no mention of this cave or its contents since Alexander Henry visited it in 1763. If nothing more, an interested treasure hunter, in finding this cave in the sandstone cliffs of Mackinac Island, could uncover something of an important historical nature.
3.From the 1880’s until 1902, a man named Porter Pritchard lived on a small 30-acre island in Higgins Lake in Roscommon County. Pritchard became known as the Hermit of Higgins Lake. No one knew why Porter isolated himself all those years. It was thought that he had murdered his wife and was hiding out, although no authorities ever checked on him.
The most widely accepted story is that Pritchard was a bounty jumper during the Civil War. Men were paid from $300 to $500 to take the place of any man that did not want to serve in the Union army. It is believed Pritchard used this method for three years to collect bounties in seven different states. If this is true, he came to the island with considerable money.
No one ever saw him spend any money except for food and tobacco. The money that Pritchard is believed to have, has to still be on the island because his body was found in 1902, in the dugout he used for a home. The money that was believed to be buried with his body was not found. Since this is a small island, it would be a good place for a treasure hunter to spend a vacation searching for this missing cache.
4. One of the most blood-thirsty Indians in American history was an Ottawa named Chief Pontiac. He always returned to Acole Island in Orchard Lake, in what is now Oakland County, Michigan, after a raid or foray into English territory. Local legend has told for years that Pontiac buried a fortune in booty he obtained in raids against the white settlers in Pennsylvania and Virginia on this island. This is highly possible, since Pontiac learned early in life of the white man’s greed for gold and silver.
His orders to his warriors were always the same during a raid, “Take what you want, burn everything else and kill the prisoners.” Since Pontiac made dozens of raids during his war on the whites, called Pontiac’s Uprising, it is probably that he buried a large quantity of loot on Acole Island.
5. In 1874, Michigan’s biggest industry was logging. In August of that year, a gang of desperados laid to wait for the stagecoach carrying $74,000 in gold to a large lumber camp in the area near Benton Lake. The robbery came off as planned and the thieves made good their escape.
The bandits, knowing that the lumberjacks would soon be on their trail, decided to bury the gold until the news of the robbery had died down. They selected a site between two tree stumps on the north shore of Benton Lake. There they put the money into an old cast iron stove, dug a deep hole, and buried the whole thing.
Historians say the gold is still in the iron stove, waiting for someone to find it. Experts estimate the value of the gold cache to be almost a half-million dollars today.
The general location is easy enough to find but there are some difficulties involved. Benton Lake is still there on the left side of Highway 37, driving north. The lake is also south of Baldwin and west of the hamlet of Brohman. The problems are largely due to the time lapse. The two stumps are no doubt rotted away, and the shoreline of the lake may have changed.
6. This came from the magazine “Inside Michigan” in July 1953. “In the early autumn, of an unknown year, the Chippewas decided to fortify themselves in a lakeside position where they thought the Menominees with whom they had trouble would be most likely to attack. This was in the northern part of Benzie County, at the mouth of the Platte River.
“By spring the Menominees had not come across Lake Michigan from what is now Wisconsin to fight, so the Chippewas decided to cross the lake in canoes and take the Menominees by surprise.
“Before they embarked, however, the chief took all the money that the tribe owned, two copper kettles full, carried it alone over the brow of a nearby hill, and buried it in a spot that only he knew.
“The Chippewa warriors then launched their flotilla of canoes and crossed to the Wisconsin side of Lake Michigan. In Green Bay, however, a sudden storm capsized their small craft, and all of the warriors drowned.”
This is an authentic story that could very well pay someone to investigate.
7. In 1823, Nicholas Biddle, president of an eastern banking concern, induced a group of investors to build cities along good harbors in Michigan. One of the planned cities was Port Sheldon, in Ottawa County. The plan was to create a city the size of Chicago, at a cost of $200,000,000. A railroad spur started the town, along with a large hotel with gambling halls but the project went bankrupt in 1837.
In 1839, a mob of investors planned a raid on the hotel to collect their money from Biddle. He learned of the planned and is said to have buried a quarter million dollars in a well near the hotel. The raid did not materialize, but Biddle was afraid to touch the buried money and reportedly died without revealing its hiding place. I have investigated this location thoroughly and can find no record of this cache having been found.
8. Michigan’s most noted train robber was John Smalley, known as the Whiskered Train Robber. Most of his train holdups and other crimes were committed outside the state of Michigan, but he made his home in Clare County.
It wasn’t until after his death, at the hands of a sheriff’s posse that his true identity was learned. It is not known how many robberies Smalley and different members of his gang committed during a several year period, but it is believed to have been considerable.
Smalley was visiting his girlfriend, Cora Brown, in McBain, Missaukee County, when the house was surrounded by a posse on the night of August 25, 1895. When asked to surrender, Smalley refused. After his girlfriend and her mother fled out a rear door, the posse began shooting into the cabin. Smalley was hit several times and died with a gun in each hand. He was buried in the McBain Cemetery.
The question has been asked many times, where was the estimated $1,000,000 that Smalley accumulated during the several years of train and other robberies. I believe that local research could payoff on this one.
9. Shortly after the Chicago fire, a part of the vast plunder taken during the three-day tragedy was brought in boxes to Leelanau County in a small schooner and buried by a group of five men. In 1871, that part of Michigan was sparsely settled, and the region offered an ideal spot for such an undertaking.
It is recorded fact that during the great Chicago fire, October 8-10, 1871, looters made away with an estimated five to twenty million dollars worth of goods and valuables. It is believed by most authorities that most of the stolen property was taken away by boat rather than overland, and if the repeated stories are true, none of the Chicago treasure has ever been admitted found and should still be where it was hidden. Part of this loot is believed buried on Leelanau County’s peninsula near Northport.
10. Gold has been found in 68 of the counties in Michigan. For those interested in searching, some of the best areas are: near Allegain in Allegain County; on the Antrim River in Charlevois County; on the Boyne River in Emmett County; near the town of Walton and on the Rapid River in Kalkasak County; on the Little Sable and Mainstee Rivers in Mainstee County; near Howard City and Greenville in Montcalm County; on the Muskegon River in Newaygo County; near the town of Whitehall and on the White River in Oceana County;; near Grand Haven in Ottawa County; near the towns of Burr Oak and Marcellus in St. Joseph County; near West Summitt in Wexford County; on Ada Creek in Kent County; on the Maple River in Ionia County; in the area of Birmingham in Oakland County; around Iron Mountain in Dickenson County; and near Harrisville in Alcona County. It could pay to pan any stream in these counties.
11. Here is information on a mystery ship in Lake Michigan that was supposedly carrying over $30,000,000 in gold. One of the most persistent rumors of sunken treasure is that of the Poverty Island wreck of an unidentified vessel which sank off Escanaba carrying a load of $4,500,000 in gold bullion. If Lake Michigan does hold this ship, it has the richest treasure in the Great Lakes. If legend is true, this nameless vessel was sailing from or to Escanaba. Its gold was being transported in five chests sent by a foreign power to help finance the outcome of the Civil War, in whose favor, however, nobody knows.
One theory is that the gold came from England by way of Canada and was to be shipped across Lake Michigan, taken by land to the Mississippi River, and then sent south to aid the Confederate cause.
The opposition learned of the cargo and attacked the ship. Hoping to recover the gold later, its guards chained the chests together and dumped them overboard. No one had yet been able to identify the gold-laden ship, though it has been referred to on several of the Great Lake shipwreck lists. The missing cargo could be worth as much as $35 to $40 million today.
12. Fort Michilmackinac was built by the French about 1715, in what is now Emmet County, Michigan. British troops captured the fort in 1761. On June 2, 1763, during Pontiac’s uprising, Chippewa Indians overran the fort. They killed most of the British soldiers and held the fort for over a year. During the battle the British soldiers are supposed to have buried, inside the fort, the large amount of gold and silver they had accumulated in back pay. This fort was abandoned after 1781 and soon reverted to wilderness. As far as can be learned, the gold and silver were never recovered.
13. This little known cache of $1,300 may not seem like a large treasure to search for until it is remembered that $400 of that money was in gold coins and the rest in silver, all dated 1920 or earlier.
This money was never recovered after six men robbed the Farmers State Bank of Grass Lake, Michigan, on July 29, 1920, and buried the money on, or in the vicinity, of Mack Island.
On the evening of that day, four men entered the bank and tied up two officials and two bank customers with fishing line. The bandits then proceeded to stuff over $69,000 into cloth bags. Making a clean getaway with their driver and lookout man, the gang headed for Mack Island, about five miles south.
When the robbery was reported shortly after it happened, word was sent to Laragee at Jackson, the county seat. After arriving at the bank, a deputy sheriff named Worden noticed the fish line that was used to tie up the captives. He knew that some out of town fishermen were staying at Wolf Lakes, which formed Mack Island. Playing a hunch, Worden took several men and headed for the island to check on the fishermen.
Upon reaching the island, Worden noticed Ted Harris, a known criminal, on the second floor of the tenant house. When Worden wanted to enter Harris’ room, he was refused permission. Becoming suspicious, Worden insisted, and Harris, standing to one side, jerked the door open. A hail of bullets came through the opening. Worden was killed instantly and a deputy named Verl Kutt was seriously wounded.
Two of the gangsters dropped from the rear second story window of the building and escaped into a swamp. Harris broke loose and fled into another swamp nearby. Two others of the gang gave up and the sixth bandit had been shot several times during the hail of lead from the room and was unable to move.
A few weeks later, when al of the gangsters had been captured and were taken for trial, the judge, because of their reputation and the murder of the two deputy sheriffs, gave two fo the gang double life sentences and the rest ten to twenty years for bank robbery and murder. A bank audit showed that $69, 851 in bonds, gold and silver coins, currency ad securities had been taken during the bank robbery. All of this was recovered except $1,300.00 in gold and silver coins, which has to still be hidden near where the tenant house stood on Mack Island, because the gangsters had not left he island. It isn’t likely that any of the gang returned, after long prison terms, for only $1,300.00. Mack Island is located about five miles south of Grass Lake, between Big and Little Wolf Lakes. The tenant house and original buildings are gone now, and there are new homes in the area, but with the price of gold coins today, this cache would still be worth investigating.
Information of these treasure legends are available on line and like with many treasure legends, many will turn out to be just legends. Others will have more truth to them and some perhaps a diligent researcher who prefers not to be spoon fed research might discover an interesting clues to discovering treasure.
So wheres the gold my friend? Ya staring into it.
Kanacki
Indiana.
1. Buried Treasures in Clark County
There are actually believed to be a few different types of buried treasure hidden in Clark County.
Josiah Hite was a counterfeiter in Charlestown during the 1800s. He was arrested, but managed to escape and was never seen in the area again. The cache of silver coins he had remains buried somewhere near his old home site in Charlestown.
The early Indians in the Charlestown area had a secret mind of gold and silver. The townspeople made every effort to follow them to find the mine, but were never successful. When the Indians moved to the west, they never told anyone where the gold and silver mine was.
2. Buried Treasures in Floyd County
A gang called the Reno Gang was believed to have caches of buried treasure somewhere in the Little Goss Cave.
Early Indians worked in a rich silver mine located somewhere on or near the Round Top Knob.
There was a large amusement park that operated from 1900 to 1940 on Rose Island. It was near the Six-Mile Road below New Albany on the Ohio River. There were thousands of people who went to this amusement park when it was open. It is a metal detecting gold mine. All sorts of treasures are hiding beneath the dirt!
A gang called the Reno Gang was believed to have caches of buried treasure somewhere in the Little Goss Cave.
Early Indians worked in a rich silver mine located somewhere on or near the Round Top Knob.
There was a large amusement park that operated from 1900 to 1940 on Rose Island. It was near the Six-Mile Road below New Albany on the Ohio River. There were thousands of people who went to this amusement park when it was open. It is a metal detecting gold mine. All sorts of treasures are hiding beneath the dirt!
3. A Large Amount of Money Buried in Adams County.
A racketeer was believed to have hidden a huge amount of money along the banks of the Wabash River during the prohibition period. The money is believed to be somewhere between Geneva and Berne.
4. . A Huge Stash Buried in Jackson County.
The Reno brothers were believed to have hidden $80,000 they stole during a train robbery in 1868 somewhere near their home in Rockford. They were also believed to hide another $98,000 they stole during a second train robbery as well.
5. Gold Coins Buried in Jefferson County
he Harris Farmhouse (now known as Bear Farm) is believed to have tons of gold coin caches hidden in various areas of the grounds. This area was used as a headquarters for smuggling slaves during the Civil War.
6. Gold Coins Buried in Knox County.
During the civil war, General John Morgan buried roughly $5,000 worth of gold coins. The coins are believed to be buried somewhere in the George Rogers Clark Historical Park.
7. 2,000 Cases of Buried Booze in LaPorte County.
Al Capone’s henchmen were able to hide 2,000 cases of whiskey which was worth roughly $300,000 in a cave located near Michigan City before they were gunned down. The entryway of the cave was sealed with explosives to prevent anyone from taking the cases.
8. Large Amount of Money Buried in Marshall County.
Gangster Jim Genna is believed to have buried a huge sum of money inside of a steel box underneath a pile of rocks in a pasture. Treasure hunters and FBI have not been able to find this money. It is believed to be off State Road 6 near Bremen somewhere.
9. Gold Bullion Buried in Martin County.
Indians are believed to have buried a number of figurines and a bunch of gold bullion off the State Road 150 overlooking the White River on Rocky McBride Bluff in 1810.
10. Tons of Money and Gold Buried in Vigo County.
There was a bank employee who embezzled roughly $95,000 in paper currency. He committed suicide after burying his pilfered fortune on a farm outside of Terre Haute.
Ohio
In addition to the normal places that one would metal detect for old coins, there are also several treasure tales associated with Ohio.
1. On a bluff that overlooks the Ohio River, about a mile northeast of Crown City, legend has it that riverboat pirates hid at least $24,000 in gold and silver coins and jewelry. The treasure is said to have been stolen from a riverboat back in 1876 and the bluff was frequented by pirates as a hideout.
2. A trove that dates back to the Revolutionary War is comprised of $25,000 in gold coins and is said to be buried one mile south of Minerva on the north shore of the Sandy River.
3. In 1913, a flood destroyed the vast majority of Dayton, and during this flood a good many personal caches were lost. Over the years however, many treasure hunters have been able to locate some of the items. There are most certainly still some treasures left to find here.
4. On the west bank of the Grand River approximately two miles from Lake Erie, near Fairport Harbor it is rumored that a treasure worth approximately $100,000 in gold bars is buried. The gold was stolen from a local bank and the robber announced on his deathbed that the gold was “three feet deep and 30 paces northwest of a large oak tree on the river bank.”
Michigan
1. At the end of the French and Indian War, France ceded the Great Lakes and the Northwest Territory to England. Twenty years later, by the Treaty of Paris in September 1783, England granted the Northwest Territory to the United States. A part of that grant became the state of Michigan which was admitted to the Union in 1837.
The French had monopolized the fur trade for over a hundred years, from about 1620 to 1725, before the British began to offer any competition. Thousands of dollars worth of furs were shipped to France. Most of the fur traders spent their earnings for whiskey and supplies, but there were a few thrifty trappers and government agents who buried or hid their savings.
Sometimes during raids into New York, Pennsylvania and the Illinois-Ohio country, Indians would carry gold and silver with other loot back to their villages around the Lakes. Since money had no value to them, it was lost, buried, hidden or thrown away.
Sixty-eight out of the eighty-six counties in Michigan have shown evidence of free gold and silver has appeared in several places. Also, the state has numerous ghost towns.
2. During Pontiac’s Uprising in 1763, Alexander Henry, an English trader, was captured by the Indians. Henry had made friends with the Hippewa Chief Wawatam before the uprising. After the Indians fortified Mackinac Island, Wawatam helped Henry escape the stockade, where all the English prisoners were being kept before being killed.
Wawatam took Henry to a cave in a sandstone cliff. While he was spending the first night in the cave, Henry discovered a large pile of human bones, skulls and curious objects.
The next day, Wawatam managed to ransom Henry from the other Indians so that he would not be recaptured and killed. When Henry told about the cave, a band of curious Indians went to see the place for themselves. It was a new discovery for these people, who had often camped on the island. Even the oldest tribesmen could not account for the cave or its contents.
Some of the Indians remembered their tribal story of a great flood and supposed that island dwellers had taken refuge in that high cavern, where they were caught by the rising water and drowned.
Alexander Henry left Mackinac Island with Chief Wawatam and never returned. It is a certainty that the superstitious Indians never bothered the cave. From a treasure hunter’s point of view, there are several questions that are unanswered.
What were the curious objects Henry saw? Apparently the skeletons were not Indian or the Indians with Henry would have known about them. Who were these people? Since the bones were in a dry cave, they could have been there for centuries. Were they the remnant of a race that predated the Indians? I can learn of no mention of this cave or its contents since Alexander Henry visited it in 1763. If nothing more, an interested treasure hunter, in finding this cave in the sandstone cliffs of Mackinac Island, could uncover something of an important historical nature.
3.From the 1880’s until 1902, a man named Porter Pritchard lived on a small 30-acre island in Higgins Lake in Roscommon County. Pritchard became known as the Hermit of Higgins Lake. No one knew why Porter isolated himself all those years. It was thought that he had murdered his wife and was hiding out, although no authorities ever checked on him.
The most widely accepted story is that Pritchard was a bounty jumper during the Civil War. Men were paid from $300 to $500 to take the place of any man that did not want to serve in the Union army. It is believed Pritchard used this method for three years to collect bounties in seven different states. If this is true, he came to the island with considerable money.
No one ever saw him spend any money except for food and tobacco. The money that Pritchard is believed to have, has to still be on the island because his body was found in 1902, in the dugout he used for a home. The money that was believed to be buried with his body was not found. Since this is a small island, it would be a good place for a treasure hunter to spend a vacation searching for this missing cache.
4. One of the most blood-thirsty Indians in American history was an Ottawa named Chief Pontiac. He always returned to Acole Island in Orchard Lake, in what is now Oakland County, Michigan, after a raid or foray into English territory. Local legend has told for years that Pontiac buried a fortune in booty he obtained in raids against the white settlers in Pennsylvania and Virginia on this island. This is highly possible, since Pontiac learned early in life of the white man’s greed for gold and silver.
His orders to his warriors were always the same during a raid, “Take what you want, burn everything else and kill the prisoners.” Since Pontiac made dozens of raids during his war on the whites, called Pontiac’s Uprising, it is probably that he buried a large quantity of loot on Acole Island.
5. In 1874, Michigan’s biggest industry was logging. In August of that year, a gang of desperados laid to wait for the stagecoach carrying $74,000 in gold to a large lumber camp in the area near Benton Lake. The robbery came off as planned and the thieves made good their escape.
The bandits, knowing that the lumberjacks would soon be on their trail, decided to bury the gold until the news of the robbery had died down. They selected a site between two tree stumps on the north shore of Benton Lake. There they put the money into an old cast iron stove, dug a deep hole, and buried the whole thing.
Historians say the gold is still in the iron stove, waiting for someone to find it. Experts estimate the value of the gold cache to be almost a half-million dollars today.
The general location is easy enough to find but there are some difficulties involved. Benton Lake is still there on the left side of Highway 37, driving north. The lake is also south of Baldwin and west of the hamlet of Brohman. The problems are largely due to the time lapse. The two stumps are no doubt rotted away, and the shoreline of the lake may have changed.
6. This came from the magazine “Inside Michigan” in July 1953. “In the early autumn, of an unknown year, the Chippewas decided to fortify themselves in a lakeside position where they thought the Menominees with whom they had trouble would be most likely to attack. This was in the northern part of Benzie County, at the mouth of the Platte River.
“By spring the Menominees had not come across Lake Michigan from what is now Wisconsin to fight, so the Chippewas decided to cross the lake in canoes and take the Menominees by surprise.
“Before they embarked, however, the chief took all the money that the tribe owned, two copper kettles full, carried it alone over the brow of a nearby hill, and buried it in a spot that only he knew.
“The Chippewa warriors then launched their flotilla of canoes and crossed to the Wisconsin side of Lake Michigan. In Green Bay, however, a sudden storm capsized their small craft, and all of the warriors drowned.”
This is an authentic story that could very well pay someone to investigate.
7. In 1823, Nicholas Biddle, president of an eastern banking concern, induced a group of investors to build cities along good harbors in Michigan. One of the planned cities was Port Sheldon, in Ottawa County. The plan was to create a city the size of Chicago, at a cost of $200,000,000. A railroad spur started the town, along with a large hotel with gambling halls but the project went bankrupt in 1837.
In 1839, a mob of investors planned a raid on the hotel to collect their money from Biddle. He learned of the planned and is said to have buried a quarter million dollars in a well near the hotel. The raid did not materialize, but Biddle was afraid to touch the buried money and reportedly died without revealing its hiding place. I have investigated this location thoroughly and can find no record of this cache having been found.
8. Michigan’s most noted train robber was John Smalley, known as the Whiskered Train Robber. Most of his train holdups and other crimes were committed outside the state of Michigan, but he made his home in Clare County.
It wasn’t until after his death, at the hands of a sheriff’s posse that his true identity was learned. It is not known how many robberies Smalley and different members of his gang committed during a several year period, but it is believed to have been considerable.
Smalley was visiting his girlfriend, Cora Brown, in McBain, Missaukee County, when the house was surrounded by a posse on the night of August 25, 1895. When asked to surrender, Smalley refused. After his girlfriend and her mother fled out a rear door, the posse began shooting into the cabin. Smalley was hit several times and died with a gun in each hand. He was buried in the McBain Cemetery.
The question has been asked many times, where was the estimated $1,000,000 that Smalley accumulated during the several years of train and other robberies. I believe that local research could payoff on this one.
9. Shortly after the Chicago fire, a part of the vast plunder taken during the three-day tragedy was brought in boxes to Leelanau County in a small schooner and buried by a group of five men. In 1871, that part of Michigan was sparsely settled, and the region offered an ideal spot for such an undertaking.
It is recorded fact that during the great Chicago fire, October 8-10, 1871, looters made away with an estimated five to twenty million dollars worth of goods and valuables. It is believed by most authorities that most of the stolen property was taken away by boat rather than overland, and if the repeated stories are true, none of the Chicago treasure has ever been admitted found and should still be where it was hidden. Part of this loot is believed buried on Leelanau County’s peninsula near Northport.
10. Gold has been found in 68 of the counties in Michigan. For those interested in searching, some of the best areas are: near Allegain in Allegain County; on the Antrim River in Charlevois County; on the Boyne River in Emmett County; near the town of Walton and on the Rapid River in Kalkasak County; on the Little Sable and Mainstee Rivers in Mainstee County; near Howard City and Greenville in Montcalm County; on the Muskegon River in Newaygo County; near the town of Whitehall and on the White River in Oceana County;; near Grand Haven in Ottawa County; near the towns of Burr Oak and Marcellus in St. Joseph County; near West Summitt in Wexford County; on Ada Creek in Kent County; on the Maple River in Ionia County; in the area of Birmingham in Oakland County; around Iron Mountain in Dickenson County; and near Harrisville in Alcona County. It could pay to pan any stream in these counties.
11. Here is information on a mystery ship in Lake Michigan that was supposedly carrying over $30,000,000 in gold. One of the most persistent rumors of sunken treasure is that of the Poverty Island wreck of an unidentified vessel which sank off Escanaba carrying a load of $4,500,000 in gold bullion. If Lake Michigan does hold this ship, it has the richest treasure in the Great Lakes. If legend is true, this nameless vessel was sailing from or to Escanaba. Its gold was being transported in five chests sent by a foreign power to help finance the outcome of the Civil War, in whose favor, however, nobody knows.
One theory is that the gold came from England by way of Canada and was to be shipped across Lake Michigan, taken by land to the Mississippi River, and then sent south to aid the Confederate cause.
The opposition learned of the cargo and attacked the ship. Hoping to recover the gold later, its guards chained the chests together and dumped them overboard. No one had yet been able to identify the gold-laden ship, though it has been referred to on several of the Great Lake shipwreck lists. The missing cargo could be worth as much as $35 to $40 million today.
12. Fort Michilmackinac was built by the French about 1715, in what is now Emmet County, Michigan. British troops captured the fort in 1761. On June 2, 1763, during Pontiac’s uprising, Chippewa Indians overran the fort. They killed most of the British soldiers and held the fort for over a year. During the battle the British soldiers are supposed to have buried, inside the fort, the large amount of gold and silver they had accumulated in back pay. This fort was abandoned after 1781 and soon reverted to wilderness. As far as can be learned, the gold and silver were never recovered.
13. This little known cache of $1,300 may not seem like a large treasure to search for until it is remembered that $400 of that money was in gold coins and the rest in silver, all dated 1920 or earlier.
This money was never recovered after six men robbed the Farmers State Bank of Grass Lake, Michigan, on July 29, 1920, and buried the money on, or in the vicinity, of Mack Island.
On the evening of that day, four men entered the bank and tied up two officials and two bank customers with fishing line. The bandits then proceeded to stuff over $69,000 into cloth bags. Making a clean getaway with their driver and lookout man, the gang headed for Mack Island, about five miles south.
When the robbery was reported shortly after it happened, word was sent to Laragee at Jackson, the county seat. After arriving at the bank, a deputy sheriff named Worden noticed the fish line that was used to tie up the captives. He knew that some out of town fishermen were staying at Wolf Lakes, which formed Mack Island. Playing a hunch, Worden took several men and headed for the island to check on the fishermen.
Upon reaching the island, Worden noticed Ted Harris, a known criminal, on the second floor of the tenant house. When Worden wanted to enter Harris’ room, he was refused permission. Becoming suspicious, Worden insisted, and Harris, standing to one side, jerked the door open. A hail of bullets came through the opening. Worden was killed instantly and a deputy named Verl Kutt was seriously wounded.
Two of the gangsters dropped from the rear second story window of the building and escaped into a swamp. Harris broke loose and fled into another swamp nearby. Two others of the gang gave up and the sixth bandit had been shot several times during the hail of lead from the room and was unable to move.
A few weeks later, when al of the gangsters had been captured and were taken for trial, the judge, because of their reputation and the murder of the two deputy sheriffs, gave two fo the gang double life sentences and the rest ten to twenty years for bank robbery and murder. A bank audit showed that $69, 851 in bonds, gold and silver coins, currency ad securities had been taken during the bank robbery. All of this was recovered except $1,300.00 in gold and silver coins, which has to still be hidden near where the tenant house stood on Mack Island, because the gangsters had not left he island. It isn’t likely that any of the gang returned, after long prison terms, for only $1,300.00. Mack Island is located about five miles south of Grass Lake, between Big and Little Wolf Lakes. The tenant house and original buildings are gone now, and there are new homes in the area, but with the price of gold coins today, this cache would still be worth investigating.
Information of these treasure legends are available on line and like with many treasure legends, many will turn out to be just legends. Others will have more truth to them and some perhaps a diligent researcher who prefers not to be spoon fed research might discover an interesting clues to discovering treasure.
So wheres the gold my friend? Ya staring into it.
Kanacki
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Hillbilly Prince
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Kanacki, could you provide more info? 
KANACKI
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Hillbilly Prince
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Left myself open for that one.
Kanacki
Your post was thorough, informative, and useful. I saved it. Just wish Joe had asked about Missouri.
bb4me7
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Indiana has great gold in Morgan-Monroe State Forest, Owen-Putnam State Forest, and Brown county tributaries away from private land. Lots of awesome streams with good sized glacial placer and occasional pickers!
Oroblanco
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Well heck Crow you didn't leave much for us to add there - thanks buddy!
There is one I can add, it is mentioned in the Jesuit Relations of the Jesuits in French Canada; one of the priests had hired workmen to dig a foundation for a mission in what is today Michigan, and the workmen struck a vein of gold. The priest lied to the workmen when they asked if this were gold, and told them it was 'natural brass' and worthless, to prevent the men getting gold fever. The location of this small church is not known to me but further research could pay off, and as far as I know it was later abandoned and/or burned. There is no 'natural brass' by the way, although some tiny crystals of a natural alloy are being proposed as a mineral it is not recognized as such. The Jesuit Relations are or were online (Free) it would perhaps pay off to research it further.
Good luck and good hunting, I hope you find the treasures that you seek.
Oroblanco
There is one I can add, it is mentioned in the Jesuit Relations of the Jesuits in French Canada; one of the priests had hired workmen to dig a foundation for a mission in what is today Michigan, and the workmen struck a vein of gold. The priest lied to the workmen when they asked if this were gold, and told them it was 'natural brass' and worthless, to prevent the men getting gold fever. The location of this small church is not known to me but further research could pay off, and as far as I know it was later abandoned and/or burned. There is no 'natural brass' by the way, although some tiny crystals of a natural alloy are being proposed as a mineral it is not recognized as such. The Jesuit Relations are or were online (Free) it would perhaps pay off to research it further.
Good luck and good hunting, I hope you find the treasures that you seek.
Oroblanco
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