Famous Lost Treasures

A curated database of documented lost treasures, missing caches, and historically significant search targets across the United States and beyond.

This index currently holds 28 cases. Each page states the claim, the earliest traceable source for it, the evidence grade that source supports, the land status of any area involved, and — where the case has been through source review — the verdict.

Some of these cases are closed as LEGEND. Mexican Pocket, Rogers Lake, and the 1881 Canyon Diablo stagecoach gold all trace to a single Arizona pulp author, Gladwell Richardson, writing under pen names including Maurice Kildare, which made three retellings look like three independent sources. Those pages stay published with no search area and no coordinates, because a documented negative is a finding.

Other cases remain open with graded, partial evidence. The 1890 Walnut Grove Dam failure on the Hassayampa River is verified by contemporary newspaper coverage while the safe said to have been carried off in it is not. The Beale case retains a documented authorship finding after the surveyor-chain vault coordinate was retracted following a failed control test.

Coordinate precision on every page is clamped to the evidence grade, and below PRIMARY a constraint area is published instead of a pin. No page on this site promises a recovery.

Featured cases: The Beale Treasure; Canyon Diablo Stagecoach Gold (1881) — Closed as Legend; Lost Dutchman Mine; Forrest Fenn Treasure (Recovered Reference); Victorio Peak / Doc Noss Gold; Dent's Run Confederate Gold; Lost Rhoades Mine; Lost Blue Bucket Mine.