Here ya go Tibbs
Monahans Sandhills Treasure
Lying near the point where corners of Winkler, Ector, Crane, and Ward Counties all come together in West Texas can be found an expanse of sand dunes rising out of the otherwise gravelly and creosote bush-littered floor of the Chihuahuan Desert. From an airplane, this expanse of sand appears much like an island. So unique and spectacular are these dunes that they have become Monahans Sandhills State Park, a travel destination that receives thousands of visitors each year. Little do the visitors to this park know that, as they hike and play across the dunes, somewhere just a few inches below the surface near a spring lies buried the remains of some forty wagons along with 477 twenty-pound gold ingots, a lost treasure that would be worth nearly $30 million if found today.
In 1873 preparations were being made for a wagon train journey from Yuma, Arizona, to St. Louis, Missouri. The party of travelers consisted of several dozen families of Dutch descent, all of whom journeyed to California years earlier to seek their fortunes in the gold fields of that rich and prospering state.
They did, indeed, find their fortunes, for each of the families were successful in gleaning riches from the gold-laden rock matrices of the California Rockies as well as the numerous streams that coursed through the area. The gold was mined, panned, smelted, and accumulated until it was decided that enough had been earned to place toward the establishment of a Dutch farming community near the Missouri-Illinois border.
The finest wagons, horses and oxen were purchased for this long trip, and into several of the wagons were loaded the gold bars along with all of the families' possessions. It was late September, and the Dutch families were growing more eager with each passing day to begin the long trek to the east.
Travel was often difficult: Floods, storms, drought, hostile Indians, and sometimes outlaws slowed the pace of the travelers, and it was nearly three months later that the wagon train finally forded Horsehead Crossing on the Pecos River in Texas. Only minutes after the crossing, the leader of the party, a man named Daniel Flake, spotted several mounted Indians watching the wagon train from a nearby rise. Flake rode toward the Indians in an effort to determine if they were friendly or not. When he was about fifty yards from their position, however, the Indians turned and galloped away along an adjacent ravine. Flake had gotten close enough to identify them as Comanches, one of the most feared tribes in North America and one that continually attacked and killed settlers and travelers they chanced upon in their territory. Following the brief encounter with the Indians, Flake doubled the guard.
For the next few days, Comanches were often observed watching the wagon train from a distance, but when Flake or other riders attempted to approach them, they simply rode away, gradually fading into the landscape.
Flake was harboring a bad feeling about the continuous presence of the Comanches and confessed to one of the stock handlers that he had recurring premonitions of disaster.
Travel remained slow and tedious, and it was a few days later when the wagon train finally passed through the tiny settlement of Monahans, Texas, a community that consisted of little more than ragged tents and brush shelters. Here, a scout rode up to Flake and reported that just beyond the settlement and among a huge cluster of sand dunes he found a freshwater spring. It was there Flake decided to camp for the night, and he and the scout led the party in that direction. As they traveled, Flake noticed some Indians watching them from horseback from a rise in the ground some 200 yards away. Flake counted over 150 of them. He also noted that they were all carrying bows and lances at the ready.
Around two hours later the wagon train entered the expanse of sand dunes. The hills of shiny, light-colored grains of sand extended to the east and north as far as Flake could see, and some of the dunes were dozens of feet high. The tall dunes, along with the soft, yielding sand, made travel quite difficult. Horses and oxen found that moving through the soft and yielding sand was far more exhausting than the hard-packed desert floor they had grown used to. The wheels of the heavy wagons sometimes sank into the soft sand clear up to the axels, necessitating the efforts of men and additional draft animals to pull them out. As the Dutchmen fought the challenge of these sandy obstacles on their way to the freshwater spring, the Comanches were slowly walking their stout ponies closer and closer to the wagon train. Presently, they sat nearly motionless on horseback only forty or fifty yards away and watched as the Dutchmen struggled with the wagons.
It was well after sundown when the party finally reached the spring. Flake ordered the men to arrange the wagons in a protective circle should the Indians decide to attack. At the same time he instructed the women and children to fill the water barrels from the shallow pool at the spring.
It was a bright waxing moon that night, and as Flake and several of the Dutchmen stood guard, they could see the Comanche riders slowly and deliberately circling the campsite. Throughout the night the Indians rode in an ever-widening circle until just before dawn when they quietly disappeared.
During the night three of the Dutch elders approached Flake and voiced their concerns about the possibility that the Indians knew about the gold they transported and wanted to steal it. They suggested a plan to the wagon train leader wherein the ingots would be buried at this particular site and the wagon train would continue on to Missouri. When the time was right and the Indian menace removed from this region, appointed members of the group would return and retrieve the gold. Despite Flake's assurances that the Comanches cared little or nothing for gold, the elders insisted. When it was clear they were not going to retreat from their proposal, Flake agreed to let them unload the gold ingots from the wagons and bury them in several large excavations just inside the circle of wagons.
As dawn slowly broke over the eastern horizon the next morning, Flake, who remained awake and worried the entire night, was pacing the margins of the campsite, looking for signs of the Indians. Within minutes he spotted one-a lone rider carrying a lance sitting astride his horse atop a dune some 40 or 50 yards away. As Flake watched the Indian, the rest of the camp began to stir as the travelers awakened and began thinking about breakfast. Fires were being started and horses and oxen being attended to.
As the Dutch bustled about, the lone Comanche slowly raised his lance, and within seconds he was joined by what Flake estimated to be another 200 Indians, all armed with similar lances, bows, arrows, war clubs, and even a few rifles.
As Flake was considering approaching the Indians to parley, the relative quiet of the early morning was shattered by a piercing war cry. Seconds later the Comanches were thundering down the dunes toward the circle of wagons, their war cries ringing through the air and mixing with the screams of the frightened travelers.
As the women and children ran for the shelter of their wagon and as the Dutchmen searched for and loaded their rifles, the Comanches were upon them, dashing about the camp on horseback within the circle of wagons. Shooting, slashing, and stabbing their way through the panicked travelers, the Indians fought fiercely for 30 minutes until all members of the wagon train-men, women, and children-were dead.
When the last of the migrants were scalped, the Comanches began looting the wagons, taking bolts of cloth, cooking pots, clothes, and other items deemed important. Unwanted goods were thrown to the ground. A group of warriors cut the harness and reins from the stock and began herding them away toward the north.
By noon the wagons had all been looted and set afire, and the last of the Indians had ridden away, joining the main band that traveled northward. The afternoon desert winds were already stirring the sand grains on the desert floor, blowing them up against the destroyed wagons and the scattered and mutilated bodies of more than 100 Dutch. Buzzards that had been circling high in the sky were now descending in ever-tight spirals toward the corpses lying on the blood-soaked sand.
The gold ingots, their total weight estimated to be as much as 10 thousand pounds, lay just below the shifting sand in several individual caches, unseen by the Indians, they would remain there for a long, long time.
With the passage of decades the ever shifting winds eventually closed in upon and covered the remains of the wagon train. Travelers to the fresh water spring occasionally told of finding what appeared to be an old wagon plank or a piece of harness, but none were aware of the tragedy that had occurred here during the early part of 1874.
Other than availing themselves of the cool waters of the spring, travelers in this region had little reason to pass through these sand hills. The first formal expedition to enter this area was led by one Arthur Hayes, a retired US Army colonel and a prominent judge in this part of West Texas. Hayes undertook such expeditions from time to time to evaluate the surrounding region and assess its possibility for grazing of livestock.
The Hayes expedition, led by a scout named Robert Brown, entered the Monahans sand hills and set up camp at the freshwater spring, now called Willow Spring. While encamped here, Hayes and members of his party found several charred pieces of milled timber similar to the kind used to construct wagons. They also found some wagon wheels and several fittings lying about partially buried in the sand. On closer examination, they found several dozen human skeletons. Some of the skulls had been obviously smashed by heavy instruments, and stone arrowheads were occasionally found embedded in several of the limb bones. After piecing together the evidence encountered at Willow Spring, Hayes tried for several years to solve the mystery of the destroyed wagon train and it's members, but he passed away before learning the truth. In Hayes' wake, other researchers analyzed the information and eventually concluded the site contained the remains of a long lost wagon train that left Yuma, Arizona in 1873, and never showed up at it's intended destination in Missouri.
Several years later one of the researchers found an old newspaper clipping describing the formation of the party of Dutch travelers and told of the precious cargo of 477 gold ingots. Excited by the prospect of finding the treasure, the researcher returned to the site near Willow Spring only to find that it had been once again covered over by the shifting sands of the desert. He was unable to find anything.
Since the connection was finally made between the massacre of the Dutch travelers near Willow Spring and the huge amount of gold bars they were carrying, hundreds of hopeful treasure hunters have arrived at Monahans Sandhills State Park over the years to try to find this impressive treasure. Now and then another piece of wagon fitting or leather harness is found, discoveries that convince the searchers they are in the right place. To date, however, the gold has never been found.
:lol: 8)