Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader (89 page)

How to Get There:
Marshfield, Indiana, is in Warren County, near the Illinois border in the west-central part of the state. The gold is probably somewhere in the vicinity, hidden under Indiana farmland.

Jesse James's gang stole gold bars worth more than $1 million and
buried them in the Wichita Mountains near Lawton, Oklahoma.

How It Got There:
During the 1870s, the gang staged a series of raids along the Texas–Mexican border, and in one of them took a caravan of gold bullion belonging to a Mexican general. The gang headed north into Indian territory with its loot and buried it in the Wichita Mountains.

Previous Searches:
Years later, with brother Jesse dead, Frank James bought a farm and settled down near Lawton, Oklahoma. He made no secret of the fact that he was using the farm as a base from which to search for that gold. He'd helped bury it, but the intervening years of dodging the law had dimmed his memory. He knew that they'd left a marker of pick heads and a code scratched on a bucket, but he couldn't find these clues. He was convinced that this fortune was within a few miles of his farm but after years of searching, found nothing.

In the 1950s, a man named Hunter Pennick dug up a brass bucket, two old pick heads, and an iron wedge. On the bucket was scratched an undecipherable code. Pennick dug numerous holes in all directions around his find, but discovered nothing more.

How to Get There:
Lawton is located in southwestern Oklahoma, about 80 miles from Oklahoma City. Ask local residents for the site of Frank James's old farm.

An old prospector apparently hid a washtub half full of gold dust and nuggets worth over $1 million near Hill City, in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

How It Got There:
In 1879 two prospectors named Shafer and Humphry picked out a claim in the Black Hills near Tigreville and began panning. They struck it rich and worked the 20-acre claim for years. One hole alone is said to have yielded 17 pounds of gold, while another hole—16 feet square in size—yielded over a pound a day. They put all their dust and nuggets in a big washtub, using a few pinches now and then to buy provisions. They agreed to split everything 50-50.

By the time the claim played out, their washtub was full and Humphry decided to return to his wife and kids in Ohio. He took his half and left, but Shafer stayed on. A confirmed prospector, he
staked out another claim farther down Newton Fork and worked it until the day he died.

Shafer had no known relatives, nor any friends. He spent his time alone working his claim, didn't drink or use tobacco, and never gambled. Townspeople said that his fortune must have been hidden somewhere near his claim. All traces of his old cabin are gone, but old-timers remember seeing its rotting remains along the road to Deerfield. Not a single nugget has ever turned up.

How to Get There:
Hill City is in southwestern South Dakota, about 30 miles southwest of Rapid City, not far from Mount Rushmore. Ask old-timers or the local librarian where Shafer's cabin was, along Newton Fork.

Gold worth anywhere from $5 million to $40 million was buried by French miners in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado in the late 18th century.

How It Got There:
Tales of incredibly rich gold mines being worked by the Spanish began to drift out of the West with the French fur traders in the late 18th century. Since the French felt that they had a claim on the area, they sent a party from New Orleans to find out what all the excitement was about.

The French traders finally reached the San Juan Mountains and were amazed to find them even richer than they were rumored to be. They set up camp and began working their first rich strike—without bothering to look up the Spanish.

The size of the French party and the amount of gold its members mined is in dispute, but everyone seems to agree that they buried the gold to keep it from falling into Spanish or Indian hands. The fields were so rich that the French stayed on through the first winter, even though it got so cold and the snow got so deep that mining was impossible. They wintered in what is now Taos, New Mexico, and returned to their mines in the spring. They continued this pattern for several years.

But trouble came in the form of American Indian raids. Perhaps the Arapaho began their raids because the French were friendly with the Utes, traditional enemies of the Arapaho. Perhaps the Spanish put them up to it because of complaints from the
señoritas in Taos about the Frenchmen's “love 'em and leave 'em” ways. Perhaps it was because the Spaniards had learned just how rich the French mines were and had decided that they didn't want anyone else to have all that gold. Whatever the reason, the French forces were soon decimated.

Lone Survivor:
Some accounts claim that the surviving French men had three hiding places for their gold. Others say that they dug a single shaft into the bedrock of Treasure Mountain, a tunnel full of death traps. They also dug a well nearby, according to this tale, and put a map showing the gold's location in a bottle, and dropped it to the bottom of the well. Trees in the area were marked with arrows pointing to the shaft concealing the gold.

The small French party suffered more attacks during their flight, and only one man—Remy Ledoux, the party's leader—survived. When he straggled into a French trading post on the Missouri River and spilled out his tale of fantastic riches in the mountains to the west, his countrymen scoffed. It was too much to believe. The treasure was soon forgotten.

Previous Searches:
In 1842 Ledoux's grandson, who had a map that he said came from his grandfather, organized an expedition of 40 men to search for the buried gold. The map, unfortunately, wasn't drawn to scale, and all the mountains in the San Juan range looked alike to the searchers. Worse, Grandpère Ledoux included false landmarks to throw off interlopers. The search party did find a fleur-de-lis scratched on a rock with an arrow underneath it and searched for days nearby with no luck.

Young Ledoux returned the following spring to continue his quest but drowned in the process. His body was recovered by a William Yule, who, many years later—while drinking—admitted he had Ledoux's map.

Another man, Asa Poor, obtained the map and eventually claimed that he had deciphered an inscription in one corner, which supposedly said: “Stand on grave at foot of mountain at six on a September morning, face east, where the shadow of your head falls you'll find the gold.”

Although these directions seem a little strange—your shadow falls the same way whether you face east, west, or stand on your head—Poor said that he found a grave that fit the map's description
and nearby found a sealed shaft that seemed to be a worked-out gold mine. Snowslides and avalanches had greatly changed the mountainside over the years, and no traces of the hidden gold could be found.

How to Get There:
Treasure Mountain is located in the San Juan Mountains of southwestern Colorado, in Rio Grande County, between Summitville and Wolf Creek Pass. It's about 100 miles east and a little north of Durango, the nearest sizable town, off Highway 160.

A copper box full of at least $80,000 in gold coins is buried in the Kiamichi Mountains near the present community of Cloudy, Oklahoma.

How It Got There:
Captain T. M. (name unknown) and his Indian wife lived in the Seven Devils Mountains (now the Kiamichis) around the turn of the 20th century. Over the years, the captain had hoarded $80,000 worth of gold coins and in his old age he decided to put them in a safe place.

He put his money in a large copper box and buried it somewhere near his cabin. A few years later, he died. He hadn't told his wife exactly where the box was hidden, but she had watched him whenever he went to fetch money from it. She said that he sometimes would head north and return from the east, and sometimes he'd head east and return from the north.

Unfortunately, in her old age the captain's wife couldn't remember exactly where their cabin had been. Or perhaps she was reluctant to discuss the gold with other people. At any rate, she said that the cabin had stood on a low hill a half mile west of a certain rocky ledge. Local residents say that there used to be a cave near this cliff, but it has never been found.

How to Get There:
Cloudy, Oklahoma, is near the Texas-Arkansas-Oklahoma border, in Pushmataha County. Ask local residents where Captain T. M.'s old settler's cabin used to stand, or try the library's newspaper clipping file.

“As long as you're thinking anyway, think big.”
—Donald Trump

You're not done yet:

Here are the answers
to the quizzes found on
pages 168
,
250
, and
416
…

…And info about how to be a part of the Bathroom Readers' Institute

(Answers from page 168)

1.
The third. Lions that haven't eaten in three years would already be dead.

2.
Sure you can: yesterday, today, and tomorrow!

3.
It's a wolf pack.

4.
It's a game of Monopoly.

5.
Freeze them first. Take the ice blocks out of the jugs and put them in the barrel. You will be able to tell which (frozen) water came from which jug.

6.
The letter
e
, the most common letter in the English language, does not appear once in the entire paragraph.

7.
They're the remains of a melted snowman.

8.
The woman was a photographer. She shot a picture of her husband, developed it, and hung it up to dry.

9.
Charcoal.

10.
He is born in room number 1972 of a hospital and dies in room number 1952.

(Answers from page 416)

1. b)
Mandell was involved in a car accident in which she rear-ended another car. Arresting officer Tyrone Davis claimed she refused to sign the ticket he gave her and then “punched him in the arm and chest.” She said she was “just reaching for her dead husband's pen,” which she claimed the officer had stolen. She was handcuffed and, after refusing to walk, was carried to the police car. Mandell, who is five feet tall and weighs 90 pounds, later said, “It was very stressful, but the ladies in the cell with me were nice.”

2. c)
Mrs. Meckel actually shot two bucks that winter, one of them being the eight-point prizewinner, and won a hunting rifle
for her accomplishment. She had been watching them sneak around her backyard for weeks and kept a rifle handy just in case. When asked if she was known as a good shot, a local man said, “Oh yeah, you don't want to get on her bad side while you're within fifty yards of her.”

3. a)
After Barber's home was robbed four times in 18 months she surrounded the house with razor wire. Incredibly, police told her she had to take it down because of the danger to anyone trying to rob her. She refused. The police finally relented, but insisted that she at least put up signs warning intruders of the potential danger.

4. a)
Hulmes quit smoking at 84, lived without hot water until she was 94, lived alone until she was 98, and swore by her four daily pints of Guinness stout.

5. b)
Michetti was arrested, along with her 56-year-old boyfriend, for smuggling Ecstacy. She told airport police that she knew the pills were there, but she thought they were Viagra.