Lost Rhoades Mine
Verdict summary
PinPoint Treasure lists Lost Rhoades Mine as unrecovered — no verified recovery has been published. Mormon-era gold from a Ute-guarded mine in the Uinta Mountains — supposedly the source of LDS Church gold reserves. A source-origin review has not been completed for this case, so the earliest traceable teller is UNKNOWN. The published search constraint is Uinta Mountains, Utah (Ute Tribal land likely). Estimated value is reported as stated by its source: Multi-billion in gold (claimed).
Thomas Rhoades supposedly mined gold from a Ute-guarded site in the Uinta Mountains for Brigham Young in the 1850s. The mine's exact location remains unknown. Ute tribal claims complicate any modern search.
Case overview: estimated value Multi-billion in gold (claimed); current status unrecovered; era 1850s–1860s.
Search area: Uinta Mountains, Utah (Ute Tribal land likely)
Best modern approach: Document research only. Most candidate areas are tribal land requiring explicit permission.
Evidence and provenance: Period LDS Church records reference Rhoades gold; Brigham Young correspondence; Ute tribal oral history confirms guarded site; Multiple unexplored Uinta adits.
Legal notes: Uintah and Ouray Reservation — entry without tribal permission is criminal trespass.
Source origin: a source-origin review has not been completed for this case, so the earliest traceable teller is recorded as UNKNOWN.
Why this case is worth researching: Lost Rhoades Mine pairs a documented historical event with an unrecovered-cache claim, which is what the PinPoint Treasure pipeline is built to test — cross-referencing archival sources, geology, mining records, and 1-meter LiDAR terrain where coverage exists. Every claim on this page carries an evidence grade, and grades are never raised to fill a gap.
Recommended workflow for the Lost Rhoades Mine case: (1) read the primary sources and establish which of them are independent of each other, (2) run the cipher engine on any coded material, (3) scan the highest-probability bounding box with LiDAR where coverage exists, (4) cross-check anomalies against NDVI vegetation stress and iron-oxide satellite signatures, and (5) confirm land status before any field work.