AUTHENTIC STORY OF THE “PEGLEG” AND 21 OTHER STORIES OF FABULOUS LOST MINES! Author Howard D. Clark, a Kansas native, had an extensive career in journalism with appointments including managing editor for the Farm Press Publications of Chicago, Illinois; staff writer for a number of business papers; and statistical and analytical specialist for other periodicals and concerns. This background, plus extensive travel on the Pacific Coast, fitted him particularly well to undertake the writing of this book. Lost mine legends make up a large section of Western folklore. In this collection he has made a sincere effort to present only the most important and best authenticated of them all. He has also had the invaluable assistance of Ray Hetherington, an unquestioned authority in the field of Western Americana. Much of the source material used herein was collected by Mr. Hetherington through thirty years of extensive research. First published in 1946, this collection of lost mine legends is considered among the most complete and factual of any ever assembled.

Two subjects continue to fascinate people—the Old West and a good mystery. This book explores and examines twenty-one of the Old West's most baffling mysteries, which lure the curious and beg for investigation even though their solutions have eluded experts for decades. Many relate to the death or disappearance of some of the best-known lawmen and outlaws in history, such as Billy the Kid, Buckskin Frank Leslie, John Wilkes Booth, The Catalina Kid, and Butch Cassidy. Others involve mysterious tales and legends of lost mines and buried treasures that have not been recovered—yet.

Arizona's history is liberally seasoned with legends of lost mines, buried treasures, and significant deposits of gold and silver. The famous Lost Dutchman Mine has lured treasure hunters for over a century into the remote, treacherous, and reportedly cursed Superstition Mountains east of Phoenix. Gold and silver bars discovered in Huachuca Canyon by a soldier stationed at nearby Fort Huachuca just before World War II remain inaccessible despite years of laborious attempts at recovery. Outside the town of Yucca, bandits eager to make a fast getaway buried a strongbox filled with gold, unaware they wouldn't survive the pursuit of a law-enforcing posse to recover their plunder. And somewhere in the Little Horn Mountains northeast of Yuma lies an elusive wash containing hundreds of odd gold-filled rocks. Selected from hundreds of tales passed down from generation to generation since the days of the gold-seeking Spanish explorers, the tales included here are among the most compelling that Arizona has to offer.

The 32 tales from the area containing the backbone of America include The Gold Behind the Waterfall (Arizona), The Treasure of Deadman Cave (Colorado), Lava Cave Cache (Idaho), Henry Plummer's Lost Gold (Montana), The Curse of the Lost Sheepherder's Mine (Nevada), Lost Train Robbery Loot in Cibola County (New Mexico), Eighty Ingots in Spanish Gold (Utah), and Lost Ledge of Gold (Wyoming). As Jameson points out in his introduction, the Rocky Mountains still have many remote areas, ....

This large, easy-to-use volume lists the works of more than eleven hundred different authors, covering thousands of stories of lost mines and buried treasures supposedly located in fifteen Western and Southwestern states and in Mexico. In addition to being a boon to those adventurers who are tempted to search for lost mines and buried treasures, it will be an important basic research tool for historians, geologists, geographers, anthropologists, archaeologists, and folklorists, and it will be useful in identifying the man treasure hoards and mining claims all the way from the Lost Adams Diggings in Arizona to the Stagecoach in Wyoming. The information given in this important bibliography was acquired through perusal of an unusually large number of books, newspapers, magazines, unpublished manuscripts, deposits in private and public libraries, holdings of various historical foundations, and governmental records and archives. The task took Mr. Probert three full years of steady, patient work. Many of these stories of lost mines and buried treasures have resulted in the discovery of some that are rarely acknowledged, largely because, as Mr. Probert points out, "those who have been so fortunate as to find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow have deemed it wiser and much safer to keep their own counsel" -- Book jacket.

Collects legends of buried treasure in California, including the lost San Miguel treasure, the canyon of lost gold, and the lost Dutch Oven mine.