THIS WAS NEVADA: Phillip I. Earl

      Although much of contemporary Nevada depends on tourists hoping to strike it rich in the state's casinos, early-day Nevadans pursued many routes to riches. Among them were men who took up life as train robbers and highwaymen. As a consequence, the state is replete with lost or buried treasure legends.
      Somewhere along the north bank of the Truckee River, between Reno and Laughton's Hot Springs west of town, the site of the long-abandoned River Inn, is some $3,000 in gold coins and bullion hidden there by one A.J. "Jack" Davis, leader of a gang that heisted a Central Pacific Railroad express car Nov. 4, 1870. All were apprehended and ended up in the Nevada State Prison.
      Davis was released Feb. 17, 1875. On Sept. 3, 1877, he was shot and killed in the course of a stagecoach robbery at Willows, a stage stop some 40 miles south of Eureka. Whether he returned to reclaim the Truckee River loot in the interim period is not known.
      Davis had previously been involved in stage jobs in western Nevada, melting down the coin and bullion and claiming the proceeds came from his small mill in Six-Mile Canyon east of Virginia City. The canyon has thus been scoured for treasure over the years, to no avail, so far as we know. The Truckee River has been similarly investigated. Again, nothing.
      Not all treasures are lost, however. In October 1929, two prospectors, Walter Dowell and James Handel, stopped by the community of Aurora, long past the boom years and deserted. Deciding to rest, they parked their car on the street and took over a derelict adobe building. They knew of the story of a stage loot buried somewhere in town and began to rip up the flooring of the building in hopes of finding something. A half-hour later, they came upon a decayed wooden strongbox. Inside was a blood-stained canvas sack containing $5,000 in $20 gold pieces. The story was that the loot was the proceeds of stage jobs carried out by four men, John Dailey, William Buckley, John McDowell and James Masterson, who had been dispatched to the hereafter by a local lynch mob on Feb. 9, 1864.
      Robert Niccovich, a Goldfield miner, had a similar break in September 1936 when he found a dutch oven filled with 1,321 $20 gold pieces in the ruins of the old Downer Brothers assay office.
      Goldfield has other lost treasure stories, such as 20 sacks of high-grade gold ore valued at $1,000 each that were reportedly buried in a mine dump between Goldfield and Diamondfield. The two men who buried them in 1910 later died and the treasure may be out there somewhere to this day. And then there is the story of the two safes containing hundreds of gold coins which were washed down a gully west of town by a flash flood that struck the community on Sept. 3, 1913. They were covered by mud and have never been located, so far as we know.
      Charles Bryson, a Winterset, Iowa, farm boy, was one of the fortunate few who actually carried off a treasure. He had been an attendant at a Denver mental hospital in 1872. One of his charges was a young man who rambled on about a stagecoach holdup near Hamilton in Nevada. Bryson listened to his description of how the man and a companion had buried the loot near Eureka, $8,000 in bars of bullion, and he decided to check it out. In September 1872, he arrived in town. Renting a carriage, he proceeded north up Eureka Canyon to the site of the abandoned Roslin Furnace. From there, he followed more specific directions. After an hour's work with pick and shovel, he was rewarded with the discovery of a strongbox. He loaded it on the carriage and hauled it to Palisade where he sent it on east to Iowa the next day. A few weeks later, shortly after his return home, he used his newfound fortune to claim the hand of Alice M. Barrett and to purchase a farm adjoining her father's for $4,000 cash.
      One of the oddest lost treasure stories concerns the famed Donner Party of 1846. George Donner is supposed to have buried some $10,000 in gold somewhere near Alder Creek, northeast of Truckee, Calif. This cache has never been located and there is good reason to believe that it was dug up and stolen after Donner's death.
      There are also stories of other caches by party members. In May 1891, Edward Reynolds found a five-franc silver piece while fishing on the northeast corner of Donner Lake. He and a companion located a sack of coins a few days later that were identified as having been buried by Elizabeth Graves, a Donner party member. The story hit the newspapers nationwide, but local residents, including several Nevada editors, had another spin. They claimed the coins were owned by the late Judge John Keise and that his son-in-law, editor Charles F. McGlashan of the Truckee Republican, set up the "find" to promote interest in another edition of his book on the Donner Party and to create some publicity for Truckee.
     
     Phillip I. Earl is curator of history for the Nevada Historical Society.