busy.baci
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Every time I hear or read something mentioning gold my attention goes immediately towards it. My eyes pupils get wider, my ears start to eliminate the background noise and do get a bit longer, my mind gets sharper and ready to process. I do focus all my being towards that news or sight . I have not idea why it does happen something like this to me, I believe it is an innate instinct like a bio signal telling me to be very attentive towards that precious metal.
Gold.
According to the Myth Story of the US Civil War, a gold shipment of 26 gold bars, weighing 50 pounds each got lost during it's transport.
"It’s a mystery going back more than 140 years. Many have searched, but no one has found the millions of dollars in gold lost during the Civil War in Elk County. Now, one treasure hunting team from Clearfield says it knows where the gold is. The story dates back to around the battle of Gettysburg in 1863. According to legend, Abraham Lincoln ordered a gold shipment to help pay Union soldiers and the route for the shipment came right through Elk County.
The soldiers transporting the gold made it to Ridgway and St. Mary’s, but after that they disappeared — except for the wagon train’s guide, a man known only as Conners."
Really interesting. All that gold in bars was supposed to be used to pay the Union soldiers. But how? Were they planning to converted it into $? Or they were to pay them in standard coins of gold? I'm perplexed, but let's see more about this story according to another article of Mysterious Universe.
$54 million in Lost Gold From the Civil War May Have Been Found
"Here's how this gold war began, according to a Pittsburg Post-Gazette article about a 1983 story in Lost Treasure magazine. In June 1863, President Lincoln ordered two wagons with false bottoms to carry anywhere from 26 to 52 gold bars weighing 50 pounds each from Wheeling, West Virginia, 400 miles north to Pennsylvania to pay the Union troops stationed there. To avoid Confederate troops, Union troop leader Lt. Castleton was ordered to first travel to Harrisburg and then to the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia. According to the legend, none of Castleton’s group of eight cavalrymen and one guide named Connors knew about the gold."
"That’s where the bad news begins. Castleton got the fever (not a good thing in those days) and Connor took over for a while. Still feverish, Castleton took over and made a number of course changes, including a plan to build a raft and float down the Susquehanna River to Harrisburg. Also while feverish, Castleton made the mistake of telling the troops about the gold. After a rest stop in St. Mary’s PA, they headed towards Driftwood. The gold never made it and various conflicting accounts of what happened confounded ever finding it. One version had all but Connor getting killed by robbers. Another had the group split up because of Castleton’s fever, with the lieutenant’s group taking the gold and disappearing."
"In 1975, amateur fortune hunters, now called Finders Keepers USA, claim they heard about the gold from a ‘mysterious stranger’ and began looking, using a map he drew for them. In November 2004, they claim to have found a fire pit in Dents Run where human skeletons were allegedly discovered in 1876. Because it was in a state park, they were told to stop looking. Dennis Parada, founder of Finders Keepers, claims he used a metal detector to determine there was a large amount of metal about eight feet down at the site. According to most news accounts and his website, he’s been fighting for the right to dig there ever since."
How could they have so irresponsible is beyond me. With all that precious cargo they sent just 8-9 soldiers with a Lieutenant to escort it and thought that it was all good, nothing bad would happen. They really did miscalculated their odds.
The treasure hunters Finders Keepers tell the whole story on their website, mentioning that they were given a map about the potential location of the lost gold in 1975. I'll quote just bits of it because it's long and I recommend giving it a full read for a better understanding of what happened.
"Over the years many treasure hunters have looked for it. In 1975 I was given a map that show were the gold was hidden, so we went to the site in Elk Co. Pa. and found nothing and gave up. For 19 years I kept telling my friends about the lost gold hunt we were on and one of my friends ask me if I could still find the same site and this time check it out with the newest metal detectors. So in Nov. 04 we went to the site that was on the map and we started finding artifacts from the civil war period. We then notified the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources about what we found and they ask that we bring everything to them so they could send everything to the Museum Commission in Harrisburg."
"The Museum Commissions response was that there was no truth to the story about a Lost Civil War Gold shipment and everything we sent them wasn't even close to the age of the civil war period. But we had everything looked at by local experts before we sent everything to the state and some of the artifacts were from the 1860s and we found proof of the story to be true."
"So we returned to the site with a GPL metal detector and we had 8 hits on iron and 2 on gold. If the gold bars were buried in iron boxes and they were now rusted open this would explain the readings. Again we took the new info to a state representative and the answer was show us the gold. We now believe the state wants us to dig the gold so they can take it away from us. We were told that if any gold was found it would belong to the Federal Gov. and Finders Keepers may get something but the state would get nothing."
So the treasure hunters were actively prohibited to excavate the site throw bureaucratic means and their evidence wasn't deemed as satisfactory, also in the meantime the FBI was to be notified. Hhmmm very interesting but there is more to it in the Smithsonian Magazine about Jim Burke, Executive Director of the local Mt. Zion Historical Society.
Was the FBI Searching for Lost Civil War Gold in Pennsylvania?
"The FBI offered few details about what it was doing in the area. In a statement, the agency said only that it was “conducting a court-authorized excavation” and “nothing was found.” But Bridget McClure of NBC-affiliate WJAC reports that Dennis and Kem Parada, owners of the treasure recovery service Finders Keepers, were present at the excavation."
"But Parada’s theory about the gold has long been met with skepticism from state officials and local historians. On the Finders Keepers website, Parada posted a 2005 letter from Pennsylvania's Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, which said that analysis of the purported Civil War artifacts at Dents Run revealed the objects to be “hunting camp debris” that dated to the 1880s at the earliest."
“There exists no credible evidence,” the letter reads, “to support any conclusions that a lost Federal gold bullion shipment from the Civil War was ever located on State Forest lands in the vicinity of Dents Run, PA.”
"Jim Burke, executive director of the local Mt. Zion Historical Society, tells Brandon Griggs of CNN that he undertook his own search for the lost gold, even hiring a private investigator to comb through government records in Washington, D.C."
Could this Mr Burke be somewhat important for denying the existence of lost gold bullion? Perhaps, who knows.
The treasure hunter are suspicious that during the excavation of the site in early 2018 the FBI might have taken the gold and declared that there was nothing to find.
Treasure hunters doubt FBI’s word on dig for Civil War gold
An FBI tent at the base of a hill where investigators were conducting an excavation for Civil War-era gold. (Bridget McClure/WJAC via AP)
"Even so, “I know they found gold,” she declared. “I know they found it, and they’re being sneaky.”
"Heather Selle, who lives in nearby Weedville, said she was getting her kids ready for school on the morning of the second day when she spied a convoy of FBI vehicles driving past — including two large armored trucks."
“There was too many people involved, there was too much hush-hush, and there’s been too much seen,” said still another resident, Garrett Osche, whose garage was used as a staging ground for the FBI’s initial foray to the Dents Run area weeks before the dig. “Why do you close the road down if you’re not loading something out? If you’re not sneaking something, why do you need to do what they did?”
Finder Seekers were not allowed to observe and be present at the excavation, they were escorted and confined into their trucks and during the late afternoon the excavations were stopped by the FBI, raising even more suspicion. The next day they declared officially that there was no gold to be found anywhere.
Links which add material to this story:
Gold.
According to the Myth Story of the US Civil War, a gold shipment of 26 gold bars, weighing 50 pounds each got lost during it's transport.
"It’s a mystery going back more than 140 years. Many have searched, but no one has found the millions of dollars in gold lost during the Civil War in Elk County. Now, one treasure hunting team from Clearfield says it knows where the gold is. The story dates back to around the battle of Gettysburg in 1863. According to legend, Abraham Lincoln ordered a gold shipment to help pay Union soldiers and the route for the shipment came right through Elk County.
The soldiers transporting the gold made it to Ridgway and St. Mary’s, but after that they disappeared — except for the wagon train’s guide, a man known only as Conners."
Really interesting. All that gold in bars was supposed to be used to pay the Union soldiers. But how? Were they planning to converted it into $? Or they were to pay them in standard coins of gold? I'm perplexed, but let's see more about this story according to another article of Mysterious Universe.
$54 million in Lost Gold From the Civil War May Have Been Found
"Here's how this gold war began, according to a Pittsburg Post-Gazette article about a 1983 story in Lost Treasure magazine. In June 1863, President Lincoln ordered two wagons with false bottoms to carry anywhere from 26 to 52 gold bars weighing 50 pounds each from Wheeling, West Virginia, 400 miles north to Pennsylvania to pay the Union troops stationed there. To avoid Confederate troops, Union troop leader Lt. Castleton was ordered to first travel to Harrisburg and then to the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia. According to the legend, none of Castleton’s group of eight cavalrymen and one guide named Connors knew about the gold."
"That’s where the bad news begins. Castleton got the fever (not a good thing in those days) and Connor took over for a while. Still feverish, Castleton took over and made a number of course changes, including a plan to build a raft and float down the Susquehanna River to Harrisburg. Also while feverish, Castleton made the mistake of telling the troops about the gold. After a rest stop in St. Mary’s PA, they headed towards Driftwood. The gold never made it and various conflicting accounts of what happened confounded ever finding it. One version had all but Connor getting killed by robbers. Another had the group split up because of Castleton’s fever, with the lieutenant’s group taking the gold and disappearing."
"In 1975, amateur fortune hunters, now called Finders Keepers USA, claim they heard about the gold from a ‘mysterious stranger’ and began looking, using a map he drew for them. In November 2004, they claim to have found a fire pit in Dents Run where human skeletons were allegedly discovered in 1876. Because it was in a state park, they were told to stop looking. Dennis Parada, founder of Finders Keepers, claims he used a metal detector to determine there was a large amount of metal about eight feet down at the site. According to most news accounts and his website, he’s been fighting for the right to dig there ever since."
How could they have so irresponsible is beyond me. With all that precious cargo they sent just 8-9 soldiers with a Lieutenant to escort it and thought that it was all good, nothing bad would happen. They really did miscalculated their odds.
The treasure hunters Finders Keepers tell the whole story on their website, mentioning that they were given a map about the potential location of the lost gold in 1975. I'll quote just bits of it because it's long and I recommend giving it a full read for a better understanding of what happened.
"Over the years many treasure hunters have looked for it. In 1975 I was given a map that show were the gold was hidden, so we went to the site in Elk Co. Pa. and found nothing and gave up. For 19 years I kept telling my friends about the lost gold hunt we were on and one of my friends ask me if I could still find the same site and this time check it out with the newest metal detectors. So in Nov. 04 we went to the site that was on the map and we started finding artifacts from the civil war period. We then notified the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources about what we found and they ask that we bring everything to them so they could send everything to the Museum Commission in Harrisburg."
"The Museum Commissions response was that there was no truth to the story about a Lost Civil War Gold shipment and everything we sent them wasn't even close to the age of the civil war period. But we had everything looked at by local experts before we sent everything to the state and some of the artifacts were from the 1860s and we found proof of the story to be true."
"So we returned to the site with a GPL metal detector and we had 8 hits on iron and 2 on gold. If the gold bars were buried in iron boxes and they were now rusted open this would explain the readings. Again we took the new info to a state representative and the answer was show us the gold. We now believe the state wants us to dig the gold so they can take it away from us. We were told that if any gold was found it would belong to the Federal Gov. and Finders Keepers may get something but the state would get nothing."
So the treasure hunters were actively prohibited to excavate the site throw bureaucratic means and their evidence wasn't deemed as satisfactory, also in the meantime the FBI was to be notified. Hhmmm very interesting but there is more to it in the Smithsonian Magazine about Jim Burke, Executive Director of the local Mt. Zion Historical Society.
Was the FBI Searching for Lost Civil War Gold in Pennsylvania?
"The FBI offered few details about what it was doing in the area. In a statement, the agency said only that it was “conducting a court-authorized excavation” and “nothing was found.” But Bridget McClure of NBC-affiliate WJAC reports that Dennis and Kem Parada, owners of the treasure recovery service Finders Keepers, were present at the excavation."
"But Parada’s theory about the gold has long been met with skepticism from state officials and local historians. On the Finders Keepers website, Parada posted a 2005 letter from Pennsylvania's Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, which said that analysis of the purported Civil War artifacts at Dents Run revealed the objects to be “hunting camp debris” that dated to the 1880s at the earliest."
“There exists no credible evidence,” the letter reads, “to support any conclusions that a lost Federal gold bullion shipment from the Civil War was ever located on State Forest lands in the vicinity of Dents Run, PA.”
"Jim Burke, executive director of the local Mt. Zion Historical Society, tells Brandon Griggs of CNN that he undertook his own search for the lost gold, even hiring a private investigator to comb through government records in Washington, D.C."
Could this Mr Burke be somewhat important for denying the existence of lost gold bullion? Perhaps, who knows.
The treasure hunter are suspicious that during the excavation of the site in early 2018 the FBI might have taken the gold and declared that there was nothing to find.
Treasure hunters doubt FBI’s word on dig for Civil War gold
An FBI tent at the base of a hill where investigators were conducting an excavation for Civil War-era gold. (Bridget McClure/WJAC via AP)
"Heather Selle, who lives in nearby Weedville, said she was getting her kids ready for school on the morning of the second day when she spied a convoy of FBI vehicles driving past — including two large armored trucks."
“There was too many people involved, there was too much hush-hush, and there’s been too much seen,” said still another resident, Garrett Osche, whose garage was used as a staging ground for the FBI’s initial foray to the Dents Run area weeks before the dig. “Why do you close the road down if you’re not loading something out? If you’re not sneaking something, why do you need to do what they did?”
Finder Seekers were not allowed to observe and be present at the excavation, they were escorted and confined into their trucks and during the late afternoon the excavations were stopped by the FBI, raising even more suspicion. The next day they declared officially that there was no gold to be found anywhere.
Links which add material to this story:
- How did the Union in 1863 was able to posses all that gold?
- Why they escorted it with such a weak and fragile security detachment?
