Ft

Ft. Arbuckle's Stolen Gold Shipment

Early one morning in 1869, a heavily guarded caravan of wagons rumbled out of Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, bound for Ft. Arbuckle. The iron rimmed wheels left deep ruts in the dirt. It carried a United States government gold payroll.

The caravan safely journeyed through the Indian country and was approaching the designated outpost. A few miles more and the journey would be completed. But as the wagons rounded a bend in the trail near Mill Creek, a barrage of shots from a dozen or more rifles caught the soldiers by surprise. The military detail promptly returned fire, instantly killing five outlaws who had dared show themselves. All the soldiers were killed in the ambush.

The outlaws removed the gold from the wagons, fearing that more troops would be dispatched from the nearby fort when the caravan failed to arrive as scheduled. They then placed the wagons together and set them afire, making it appear that Indians had raided the train. The outlaws knew that they had to travel fast and decided to hide the gold. Farther down stream, they buried the payroll, picking three separate locations, each just deep enough to hold the cache.

The story of the stolen gold was all but forgotten about until the late 1890's when a penniless former convict stumbled into a livery stable in St. Joseph, Missouri. The stranger was ill and begged for a handout. The liveryman gave the sick man what accommodations he could. Even when the old man continued to fail in health, the liveryman continued to care for him. The old man seemed to realize that the end was near from the TB he had contracted in prison.

Finally one day he called the liveryman to his cot and told him that he wanted to repay him for his kindness. The outlaw revealed that he had recently been released from federal prison and that he had been sentenced for his part in killing a bunch of soldiers and robbing a gold shipment near Ft. Arbuckle. He told the story and drew a crude map showing as best as he could remember, the location of the three caches of buried gold. A few days later he died.

The story convinced the stable owner for the old man had been too familiar with details to have made it up. In a few weeks the liveryman had sold his possessions in St. Joseph and was on his way to Davis, I.T. the closest town to the abandoned fort.

At first he tried to follow the map the old outlaw had drawn. Although the map resembled the rugged country, the location of the gold was vague. Weeks turned into months and months into years. He dug up every likely spot on Mill Creek. He built a log cabin and married an Indian woman while searching daily for the elusive treasure. As years passed he became old and weak. He had long since used up his money and had to live off the land. His wife refused to care for him and left him for days without food. This is where Samuel H. Davis, the namesake of Davis, OK, comes into the picture.

Sam had met the old man when he first journeyed to Davis in the early 1890's. the two had become good friends and Sam began to bring food to the old man. When the old man became too weak to search any longer, he gave Sam the map. As late as the 1930's Sam searched for the gold always believing that it was hidden somewhere on the meandering Mill Creek.

One morning, Sam stopped to talk to a rancher whose land was included in a portion of Mill Creek. The rancher told Davis of the story of a group of Mexicans who had come to 'fish' on his land. The group of Mexicans asked if they could camp and fish in Mill Creek. Every few days the rancher would check on them.

One day the rancher noticed the Mexicans digging a lot of holes along the creek. He asked them what they were doing and they said they were digging worms which seemed logical enough since they were fishing. A few days later he noticed they were gone and noticed a deep hole they had failed to fill. Inside was a rusty iron pot and he could plainly see the impression of coins made on the kettle.

Evidently, the Mexicans had been given a map to the treasure by another outlaw who had escaped to Mexico. There were still two caches left and the third and largest was buried in coffee cans in a cave. Sam dug the floor of every cave he could find in the Arbuckles but never found the gold. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of caves in the Arbuckle Mountains.

The major portion of the United States Government gold shipment still lies buried in the floor of some forgotten cave in the Arbuckles. Someday, some lucky explorer will choose the right cave.