Lost treasure stories abound around Tybo

      Located eight miles off U.S. Highway 6 in central Nye County, Tybo was as lively a mining camp as any in the state in the 1870s. Like many Nevada camps, Tybo has its share of lost treasure stories.
      The citizens of Tybo were reputed to be distrustful of banks. They were more inclined to bury their money than entrust it to institutions that could be robbed any day of the week. How many of these caches were lost or forgotten is not known with any certainty, but surely something is still out there.
      Another lost treasure story concerns a gambler who happened into town on a payday weekend in 1876 and picked up some $3,000 in gold coins in a marathon poker game. There was talk around town that he had used a marked deck and several men were said to be planning to waylay him when he departed.
      The rumors got back to him and he had the driver of the Belmont stage stop in Kiln Canyon, just out of town. Walking out through the sagebrush with his money in a canvas sack, he returned empty-handed a few minutes later, telling the driver that he would be back when he thought it was safe. Three days later, he was shot and killed in a Belmont saloon.
      There is also the story of the Portuguese charcoal contractor who followed the tradition of burying his profits rather than banking them. He did well in the charcoal business, hiring Chinese laborers to cut pinyon and juniper and operate his kilns. In June 1877, he did not return from Tybo where he had gone to hire more laborers. When his men investigated, they found him on the ground next to the road into town, dead of a broken neck, having apparently been thrown by his horse.
      He had no local relatives and several parties of men came out to the kilns in subsequent weeks to look into his supposed fortune. The woodcutters said that he would ride out to the northwest every few days and be gone less than an hour. They suspected that some $5,000 in gold coinage was buried out there somewhere, but later searches turned up nothing.
      Both the gambler's cache and the lost Portuguese charcoal profits have never been reported found, so there is a chance they are still somewhere in the vicinity.
      When I visited Tybo about 30 years ago, a brick store still stood, as did a long wooden building that appeared to have been a freight depot. There was also one resident still working a mining claim and serving as a caretaker and watchman for the town. Mine shafts riddled the area and the nearby charcoal kilns were somewhat intact. The road in from U.S. 6 was decent, passable with a passenger car, but those desiring to visit today should be prepared for anything, as is always the case in Nevada.
     
      Phillip I. Earl is curator of history for the Nevada Historical Society.