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Buried Treasure in the Tri-State? · River City Mystery - Investigating mysteries in southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and western Kentucky

• 0:00
  Speaker: This is more than just a discovery of rare coins.
• 0:04
  Speaker: It is a compelling mystery from desperate times over a century
• 0:08
  Speaker: and a half ago.
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  Speaker: There are more than seven
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  Speaker: hundred rare U.S. gold coins
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  Speaker: dating from eighteen forty to
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  Speaker: eighteen sixty two, and they've
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  Speaker: become one of the greatest coin
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  Speaker: collecting finds of the twenty
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  Speaker: first century, unearthed
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  Speaker: recently in a Kentucky
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  Speaker: cornfield.
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  Speaker: These coins are estimated at a
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  Speaker: value exceeding two million
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  Speaker: dollars.
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  Speaker: An extremely rare find as buried treasures go rarer still to find
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  Speaker: them in such good condition.
• 0:49
  Speaker: You're listening to River City
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  Speaker: Mystery Podcast, the show that
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  Speaker: delves into the Evansville and
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  Speaker: surrounding Tri-State area's
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  Speaker: mysteries, including unsolved
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  Speaker: crimes, murders, and
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  Speaker: disappearances.
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  Speaker: A show that isn't afraid to jump
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  Speaker: down the rabbit hole to
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  Speaker: investigate reports of local
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  Speaker: hauntings, sightings of UFOs and
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  Speaker: cryptids, among other paranormal
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  Speaker: phenomena.
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  Speaker: With your host, co-founder of
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  Speaker: the Humans of Evansville
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  Speaker: Facebook page.
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  Speaker: Law office worker by day.
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  Speaker: Insomniac researcher of the unknown.
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  Speaker: By night.
• 1:16
  Speaker: Matt.
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  Speaker: Deig.
• 1:23
  Speaker: Welcome to episode twelve.
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  Speaker: We're going to be talking about
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  Speaker: buried treasure in the
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  Speaker: Tri-State.
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  Speaker: I don't typically think of buried treasure when I think of
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  Speaker: southern Illinois, southern Indiana, Western Kentucky.
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  Speaker: I think of more out west, you know, prospectors going out west
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  Speaker: digging for gold or pirates on a beach, pulling out treasure
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  Speaker: chests or whatever.
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  Speaker: But it wasn't that long ago that
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  Speaker: we didn't have the FDIC insuring
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  Speaker: banks.
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  Speaker: So people didn't always trust banks with all of their money.
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  Speaker: Say there was a robbery at a bank prior to the FDIC.
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  Speaker: You lost your money.
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  Speaker: If the bank had everything was
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  Speaker: taken out of the bank, you'd
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  Speaker: lose everything Unless you had a
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  Speaker: wealthy banker who wanted to,
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  Speaker: you know, make up for everyone
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  Speaker: who had lost all of their
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  Speaker: deposits.
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  Speaker: So that was it wasn't uncommon
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  Speaker: for people to put everything
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  Speaker: under a mattress or to bury it
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  Speaker: in a field or somewhere safe, or
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  Speaker: somewhere where they thought was
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  Speaker: safe versus depositing it into a
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  Speaker: bank.
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  Speaker: And if people did that and they
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  Speaker: passed away without telling
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  Speaker: anyone where they buried it,
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  Speaker: it's possible there are tons of
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  Speaker: valuables buried all over the
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  Speaker: place.
• 2:34
  Speaker: And in the intro, you heard
• 2:35
  Speaker: David Mattingly at a Wave News
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  Speaker: in Louisville.
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  Speaker: His report on the hoard that was found in a Kentucky cornfield in
• 2:42
  Speaker: July of twenty twenty three.
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  Speaker: So very recently, as of well as of this recording, these things
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  Speaker: are being found.
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  Speaker: It's just a matter of where are they?
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  Speaker: And, you know, doing a little research to figure out where
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  Speaker: they are and obviously having permission to dig or to, to
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  Speaker: search on people's private property, if that's where you
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  Speaker: think things are.
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  Speaker: And I'm not sure if that particular hoard was found
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  Speaker: locally because the the article went on or his story went on to
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  Speaker: say that the person has not come forward, so they've remained
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  Speaker: anonymous and also the location has remained undisclosed.
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  Speaker: So we just know that it's a
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  Speaker: Kentucky cornfield, which is
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  Speaker: pretty vague.
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  Speaker: But I mean, who knows, maybe it's a local cornfield that this
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  Speaker: was found in.
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  Speaker: And so this got me thinking.
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  Speaker: I was wondering, you know, are
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  Speaker: there stories of local buried
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  Speaker: treasure that, you know, maybe,
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  Speaker: maybe not very far from where we
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  Speaker: are.
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  Speaker: There's buried gold or coins or silver or whatever.
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  Speaker: And as it turns out, there are quite a few stories of hidden
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  Speaker: treasure all over the tri state.
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  Speaker: It's there's too many stories to actually go into each one, but
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  Speaker: there, there are tons.
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  Speaker: The Indiana State University website has a folklore archive
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  Speaker: that was started in the sixties, and basically they would take
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  Speaker: voice recordings of people telling stories or talking about
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  Speaker: family legends or things that they had heard throughout the
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  Speaker: generations that had been passed down to them.
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  Speaker: And these were transcribed and put on this archive on the
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  Speaker: website, which you can kind of search and look for various
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  Speaker: topics and things like that.
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  Speaker: So I came across a report or a
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  Speaker: transcription from a Lauren
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  Speaker: Drake who was seventy years old
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  Speaker: from Farmersburg, Indiana, and
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  Speaker: this was dated November
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  Speaker: fifteenth, nineteen eighty
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  Speaker: seven.
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  Speaker: And his report goes on to say a long time ago.
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  Speaker: No one is sure of exactly when a group of soldiers were moving
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  Speaker: across the Farmersburg area.
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  Speaker: They were moving a variety of items, one of which was gold.
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  Speaker: In fact, they had a whole wagon full of it.
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  Speaker: Well, as they were moving this
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  Speaker: gold, a report came to the head
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  Speaker: officer that there would be
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  Speaker: trouble ahead.
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  Speaker: The officer figured that bandits wanted the gold.
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  Speaker: The officer decided to hide the
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  Speaker: gold and come back for it later,
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  Speaker: after taking care of the
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  Speaker: bandits.
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  Speaker: The soldiers then buried the
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  Speaker: gold in a hidden place near the
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  Speaker: wagon trail.
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  Speaker: Then they left.
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  Speaker: When they finally reached the
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  Speaker: bandits, all the soldiers were
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  Speaker: killed and didn't tell where the
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  Speaker: gold was.
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  Speaker: Now no one knows where it's hidden.
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  Speaker: It's hidden somewhere in the area near channel thirty eight
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  Speaker: TV tower, because there used to be an old dirt road running east
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  Speaker: and west there.
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  Speaker: And that's the end of the report.
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  Speaker: The skeptic in me immediately jumps in and says, well, how?
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  Speaker: If all of the soldiers were killed, how do they know that?
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  Speaker: How do they know that they buried the treasure before
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  Speaker: finding the bandits?
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  Speaker: Because they were all dead and
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  Speaker: no one was alive to tell that
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  Speaker: story.
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  Speaker: Unless you have a ridiculously
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  Speaker: long death scene where the
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  Speaker: soldier spills his guts as he's
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  Speaker: being killed by a bandit and
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  Speaker: saying, oh, we buried the
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  Speaker: treasure and you're never gonna
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  Speaker: find it.
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  Speaker: And the bandits, of course, again, the skeptic in me knows
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  Speaker: that the bandits, if they actually were told that,
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  Speaker: probably would not have stopped searching for the gold until
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  Speaker: they found it.
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  Speaker: So I don't know.
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  Speaker: That's how my head works, but you never know.
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  Speaker: Maybe they looked for it and couldn't find it.
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  Speaker: Maybe it was buried so well that the bandits never did find it.
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  Speaker: So I did some searching and the
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  Speaker: channel thirty eight TV tower is
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  Speaker: still there, actually off
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  Speaker: highway forty one near
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  Speaker: Farmersburg.
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  Speaker: And I found a map from the eighteen seventies.
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  Speaker: And that area where the TV tower now is did have some dirt roads
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  Speaker: or I guess all the roads at that time were dirt paths.
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  Speaker: So there were dirt paths in that area going east to west.
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  Speaker: So it does make you wonder if maybe there's some truth to
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  Speaker: this, that maybe there is some buried gold or coins or
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  Speaker: something along the way in, uh, just south of Farmersburg.
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  Speaker: Now in southern Illinois, we have a little village called
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  Speaker: Cave-in-rock, and that area has quite a history.
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  Speaker: There's all kinds of lore of
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  Speaker: pirates and robbers and serial
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  Speaker: killers.
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  Speaker: Actually, the The first serial
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  Speaker: killers in the United States,
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  Speaker: the Harpe brothers and one of
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  Speaker: the more infamous outlaws that
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  Speaker: was tied to Cave-in-rock was a
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  Speaker: Revolutionary War soldier named
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  Speaker: Samuel Mason.
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  Speaker: He formed a gang of river
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  Speaker: pirates and made the cave at
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  Speaker: Cave-in-rock.
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  Speaker: His.
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  Speaker: Actually, it used to be called Rock and cave, but now it's
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  Speaker: called cave in Rock.
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  Speaker: But he made that cave his base of operations, and that cave was
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  Speaker: a tavern and kind of a hideout, and basically just full of
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  Speaker: lawless lawlessness and kind of bad people, notorious figures.
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  Speaker: And legend has it that there is two hundred thousand dollars in
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  Speaker: gold and silver coins somewhere in that area.
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  Speaker: It's said to have been buried by stagecoach outlaws.
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  Speaker: It was reported that the
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  Speaker: treasure was hidden inside a
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  Speaker: cave located near the western
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  Speaker: bank of the Ohio River, close to
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  Speaker: the town.
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  Speaker: Staying in southern Illinois, we
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  Speaker: have stories of treasure in
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  Speaker: Golconda, Illinois.
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  Speaker: It's believed that along the western banks of the Ohio River
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  Speaker: near Golconda, there are hundreds of American silver
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  Speaker: dollars from the eighteen hundreds, and it's believed that
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  Speaker: these coins might be from a wrecked riverboat that went down
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  Speaker: in the Ohio River.
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  Speaker: But that's an unconfirmed story.
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  Speaker: That's another story that, you know, it's lore, legend or
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  Speaker: whatever, and not confirmed.
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  Speaker: But these stories are out there.
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  Speaker: And a lot of times stories might
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  Speaker: get embellished over the years,
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  Speaker: but sometimes there's often some
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  Speaker: sort of element of truth to
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  Speaker: these stories.
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  Speaker: Like something might have
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  Speaker: happened a long time ago and
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  Speaker: it's turned into this massive,
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  Speaker: you know, treasure trove that's
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  Speaker: hidden somewhere.
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  Speaker: But maybe there was a boat that went down that had some money on
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  Speaker: it or whatever.
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  Speaker: And over the years, it just kind
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  Speaker: of developed into this, this
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  Speaker: law.
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  Speaker: I had mentioned the Harpe brothers earlier, the America's
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  Speaker: first serial killers.
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  Speaker: They hung out in cave in Rock
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  Speaker: for a while, but at towards the
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  Speaker: end of their serial killing
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  Speaker: spree, they ended up just
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  Speaker: outside of Henderson, Kentucky,
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  Speaker: And the Dixon, Kentucky, area,
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  Speaker: which is about ten miles south
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  Speaker: of Henderson.
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  Speaker: And they were actually Micah Harp and Wiley Harp.
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  Speaker: The.
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  Speaker: They were known as the serial
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  Speaker: killing brothers, but they were
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  Speaker: more likely first cousins,
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  Speaker: according to whatever they were
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  Speaker: known as Big Harpe and Little
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  Speaker: Harp.
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  Speaker: And over the course of nine years, they supposedly killed
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  Speaker: thirty nine people.
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  Speaker: But maybe up to fifty.
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  Speaker: Just depends on what report you're reading.
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  Speaker: And they also not only murdered
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  Speaker: people, but they stole from
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  Speaker: them.
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  Speaker: So they kind of amassed a small
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  Speaker: fortune over that nine year
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  Speaker: period.
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  Speaker: And towards the end of their murder spree, they left Illinois
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  Speaker: and they ended up near Henderson, Kentucky, and they
• 10:02
  Speaker: killed a mother and child outside of Henderson.
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  Speaker: The people of Henderson ended up chasing Big Harp and shot and
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  Speaker: killed him, and they cut his head off and displayed it as a
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  Speaker: warning to other outlaws.
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  Speaker: And apparently little harp met the same fate.
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  Speaker: And apparently just north of a couple miles north of Dixon,
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  Speaker: Kentucky, there's a road still known as Harpe's Head Road,
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  Speaker: which is kind of morbid, but I'm guessing that kind of left an
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  Speaker: imprint on those people.
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  Speaker: And it's rumored that they had
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  Speaker: amassed gold coins amounting to
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  Speaker: about three hundred thousand
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  Speaker: dollars, and no one really knows
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  Speaker: where they might have hidden
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  Speaker: that.
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  Speaker: Some maybe near Cave-in-rock,
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  Speaker: Illinois, but they ended up
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  Speaker: outside of Kentucky, near Dixon,
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  Speaker: Kentucky.
• 10:47
  Speaker: So it might make sense that they brought that with them.
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  Speaker: So there are rumors that the hoard was buried in a cave near
• 10:55
  Speaker: Dixon, Kentucky, about ten miles south of Henderson, like I said.
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  Speaker: And it's said that the cave rests above a stream near
• 11:03
  Speaker: Harpe's Head Road.
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  Speaker: Who knows, maybe someday somebody's going to be metal
• 11:07
  Speaker: detecting and will come across a giant hoard of gold coins from
• 11:11
  Speaker: America's first serial killers.
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  Speaker: And I know I haven't gone into every single report of buried
• 11:18
  Speaker: treasure in the Tri-State.
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  Speaker: I just hit on the stories that piqued my interest.
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  Speaker: There are tons of stories of
• 11:24
  Speaker: riverboats sinking in the Ohio
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  Speaker: River along Henderson or
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  Speaker: Evansville and southern
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  Speaker: Illinois, and every time it
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  Speaker: floods they say that coins wash
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  Speaker: ashore.
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  Speaker: Kind of sparking more interest
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  Speaker: in these legends, and I have no
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  Speaker: doubt that there's buried
• 11:38
  Speaker: treasure in the Tri-State and
• 11:40
  Speaker: sunken treasure in the Ohio
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  Speaker: River and creeks and just
• 11:44
  Speaker: everywhere.
• 11:45
  Speaker: It's just a matter of finding it.
• 11:47
  Speaker: Look, last the last month alone, in July of twenty twenty three,
• 11:50
  Speaker: they found seven hundred gold coins in a Kentucky cornfield.
• 11:54
  Speaker: So I have no doubt at all that there's something out there in
• 11:58
  Speaker: the Tri-State area just waiting to be found.
• 12:01
  Speaker: Just please be sure to get
• 12:03
  Speaker: permission if you're going to be
• 12:04
  Speaker: searching on people's private
• 12:06
  Speaker: property.
• 12:07
  Speaker: You don't want to get yourself shot or beheaded and end up
• 12:10
  Speaker: having a road named after you.
• 12:13
  Speaker: So anyway, hope you all enjoyed
• 12:15
  Speaker: this episode and thank you for
• 12:16
  Speaker: joining me.
• 12:17
  Speaker: And until next time, take care.