[MaggieZ]

it's something about human nature to want to get rich quick and beat someone else to the kill...survival of the fittest? the California Goldrush is just one other example of to what lenghts people will go for treasure...

[ArkansasSlim]

It was believed that my great grandpa had money buried around his house in east Pike County. I was told by a man who was his neighbor, that when g grandpa and g grandma died, men came in like vultures and dug holes in the area and even tore down the fireplace chimney looking for the money. There were no rumors of anything being found. I know where the house was and have thought about trying to use a metal detector there, but the place is now a pine plantation and even walking through it is tough so I doubt using a metal detector in there would be possible.

At one time a friend and I were serious metal detector treasure hunters. Except for the cache he found in the burned house that I wrote about above, we never found anything, but were serious in our searches. From time to time we would talk about what we would do if we were searching together and found "the big one". Of course we would split it 50-50, no doubt, but it isn't that simple. A dime of a certain date could be much more valuable that a silver dollar, or a silver dollar of a certain date could be more valuable that a gold double eagle (at that time). Thankfully (I guess ) we never had to work that out.

[ArkansasSlim]

Treasure missed About 20 years ago we bought, from an estate, a 1923 Craftsman home for an investment and to get it on the National Register. When we bought it the only people who had ever lived there were the couple who built it when they first married and lived there all their lives. In the property Abstract (that was back when AR was still using Abstracts) was an impressive itemized list of the family jewelry. The home was in superb condition needing only minor restoration, and I wanted to add central heat and air and decided to install the unit in a hall closet which had wall paper on the walls, and in the process of prepping the closet I found a loose wall plank and noticed that the paper had been cut around the plank and the way it was nailed the plank could be pulled out at one end and swing down. I did that and saw that the space between that closet wall and the adjoining bedroom wall was deeper than the normal four inches (about eight inches) and about a foot below the opening was a large nail driven into the wall stud. There was nothing hanging on the nail but I knew I had found their "safe" for their valuables and could imagine that some had fallen onto the floor below. I took off for home to get a flashlight and mirror and thinking the whole trip what should I do with the loot I expected to find. Fast round trip home, and thankfully no speeding ticket, and when I got back I almost ran into the house and looked in the wall. Of course there was nothing there, but I always thought; 'there coulda been'.

We closed the sale of the house on the day it was nominated for the National Register (and in due time was accepted) and the buyer was doing some work on the stairs and saw something shiny between two floor boards in one of the upstairs rooms. He fished it out and it was a Sterling Silver bracelet. So, "they" didn't get everything !

[ArkansasSlim]

The Father of a dear friend was very eccentric. Friend and her Mother were cleaning up the yard of their home preparing it for sale, and the yard had old wash tubs they were using for flower planters. When they moved one of the tubs they found under it a quart jar full of coins buried just below the surface. After they sold and moved I tried to get permission of the new owners to metal detect the property but never got it. There is no way to know how many other jars of money he had hid.

Father died a few years after they moved to their new home and after he died they were going through his "stuff" in the basement and found several more quart jars full of coins, and under the mattress of his bed they found several property Deeds of property Friend and Mother didn't know about. Also there were many IOUs where he had loaned money to people, and to show the integrity of people; Of all those IOUs, one man came to Mother and told her he had borrowed money from Father but had paid it back , and another man came and told Mother he had borrowed money from Father with the agreement he would repay it as he could and asked if that would be O.K. with Mother. She never heard from any of the others.

[CraigCreek]

Treasure doesn't always come in the form of coins or gold or silver or precious gems. When my aunt and uncle enlarged their older Benton home in the 1970s, the original back steps were removed to make way for a new room.

Beneath the stairs lay an 18 inch tall swirled brown, cream, and blue handthrown Niloak Pottery vase, with only one tiny chip on the rim. Evidently some previous owner thought it was too bad to display but too good to pitch, so under the steps it went. Of course, Niloak was made in Benton, and so it also have been a case of a prophet in his own country at the time the vase was hidden.

A few years later, swirled Niloak pottery was going for $100 an inch in Arkansas. Prices have dropped since, alas, but I was still very happy to find a five-inch swirled Niloak vase at the U.S. 127 "World's Longest Yard Sale" here in Kentucky a few weeks ago - for one dollar. Not quite as good as my aunt and uncle's unexpected find, but I'm not complaining!

[ArkansasSlim]

Treasure found but I don't know by whom. Dad wanted to go to a specific place on a specific mountain. Long story short; In the 1920s one of his hoodlum buddies would go to Chicago or St Louis and rob and steal until things got too hot then he would steal a car ("A" Model back then), drive it back home and run it off the side of that mountain so it couldn't be found. Dad wanted to see if they were still there 50 years later. After only one wrong turn we went right to the spot he remembered and scattered down that mountain side were parts and pieces of three A Models that had been knocked off when they went down the mountain, and at the bottom were three almost complete chassis. We talked about getting them out but decided since we had no ready market for them, it would take a wrecker with a long cable, and the biggest stumbling block would be to get property owner permission, we decided it would not be worth the trouble.

Thirty years later my archeologist friend and I was in the area doing some work and I told him the above story and he wanted to see if we could find them again. We found the mountain and the right place, but the whole mountain had been clear cut and there was not a single piece of the cars to be seen.

[ArkansasSlim]

An "old man" was always digging for buried treasure, at night, in a particular field in east Pike County, and even though he was very secretive about it, it was common knowledge he was doing it. One day Dad and some of his buddies went to the field and found the last hole the man had dug, then they dug it deeper and left the imprint of an old iron pot in the bottom of the hole. The next day the man came into the local post office almost hysterical, hollering; "Some s-o-b (he used the words the Moderator will not allow) got my gold! I stopped diggin too soon, just too soon and some s-o-b got my gold!"

[Cali BassMan]

40 years ago while walking through the woods on my uncles property, I stumbled upon an old abandoned shack, needless to say I had to explore it. I found an old steel jaw trap. My Dad cleaned it up and it had a date from the 1800's on it. Probably not real treasure, but it's sitting on my fireplace mantel right now....

[ArkansasSlim]

Dad told me that when his maternal grandparents lived on Suck Creek between Delight and Shawmut, his grandpa would go into the woods with a sack and chopping ax and a few hours later would come back with several pounds of "pure lead" that he would melt down for bullets for his muzzle-loader which he still used. Years later I asked a state geologist if he knew of lead in that area, and he did not. When I told him the story he said it's possible there is a small vein of "native silver" in the area that no one knew about, and if that was correct, it would be pure silver. I never tried to find it because there are several square miles of bushes, briars, hills, and hollers between there and the Antoine River.

[AWC]

Ahh, the greatest lost treasure in Arkansas...hmmm. I hear stories that the Ark of the Covenant is in the Blue Mountain Range, in a cave on Mount Nebo.
An interesting book on it is here: The Jeremiah Journey pt.1thru6.PDF
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9lv...t?pli=1&hl=en#

The Jeremiah Journey pt.7thru12.PDF
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B9lv...hi/edit?hl=en#

Wouldn't that be a treasure to behold? If you find it, I'll buy you a steak dinner if you open it