Jesse James's Two-Million-Dollar Treasure

[Steve Grinn]

The following is the first part of a chapter from the book 'Oklahoma
Treasures and Treasure Tales' by Steve Wilson telling of a supposed
treasure buried by the James-Younger Gang in the hills of the Wichita
Mountains in western Oklahoma (west of the town of Lawton, Oklahoma).
When i get the rest typed, i'll post it.

Let me start by saying the story is doubtful, but there are some things
that make it curious. Frank James did own land and a home near
Fletcher, Oklahoma. He lived here for a brief period of time
(1907-1911). Why Frank James would move from Missouri to Oklahoma is
not known. The house that Frank James built and lived in while in
Fletcher can be seen today at a place called Eagle Park near Cache,
Oklahoma. Also, in this park is the 'Star House' given to and lived in
by Quanah Parker. If your traveling through this part of Oklahoma, the
place is well worth a visit.

Enough of my rambling, here is the chapter describing 'Jesse James's Two
Million Dollar Treasure'.

No treasure has been sought with the fervor, the dogged perseverance, or
the intrigue inspired by the tales of Jesse James's hidden millions in
the Wichita Mountains. Few treasures have been sought with such
determination anywhere in the Southwest.

Much like the Spaniards, wherever the James gang rode, they left their
legends of buried treasures. One need but examine the newspapers files
of every middle western states between Canada and Mexico - and a few on
either side -for an inkling of the amount of hidden booty attributed to
Jesse or his brother, Frank. If history had not recorded their daring
deeds and the trails they rode, legends would show how far those trails
stretched across the Middle West and into Mexico.

Obviously, Jesse James could not have all the treasure attributed to
him. But of all those reputed secret burials over a multistage area,
the rugged range of hills in southwestern Oklahoma has drawn more
attention and given rise to more stories than perhaps all the other
potential sites put together.

I have woven the legend of Jesse James's treasure from many sources,
both verbal and written. And although the source of the fabled gold and
its final burial often vary, all stories lead to the Wichita Mountains
and most often with the year 1876.

With hammer and chisel the most wanted outlaw of the West, Jesse Woodson
James, painfully pounded the letters into the old brass Kettle. "this,
the 5th day of March, 1876, in the year of our Lord.....".

It was the beginning of a strange contract that was to bind each member
of an infamous outlaw band to secrecy about a golden treasure's hiding
place. Jesse carefully chiseled the names of twelve deadly outlaws
below the contact and then buried the brass bucket and its secret. The
place was Turban Mountain, a roughhewn granite colossus easily
approached from the north in the Wichita Mountains, in what was then
Indian Territory. Jesse James had worked out a clever plan that no
other outlaw of his time had devised. It had all resulted from the
winter before.

Somewhere in northern Chihuahua, Mexico, not far from the southwestern
settlement of El Paso, Texas, Jesse and Franks with ten members of their
gang surprised a detail of Mexican guardsmen driving eighteen burros
transporting gold bullion. The brigands led the heavily laden packtrain
across the Rio Grande and over the plains of central Texas. Their
destination was Indian Territory, a haven for wanted men and a region
already familiar to both Jesse and Frank. When the outlaws entered the
Wichita, they were greeted by a severe winter blizzard. For three and a
half days they raveled with little rest through snow almost a foot
deep. His men were cold and weary, and Jesse knew that the gold had to
be buried. And it was now obvious that their exhausted animals could
travel little farther.

After almost three hours of slow, arduous travel east of Cache Creek,
Jesse and Frank agreed to bury the golden cargo and burn the packsaddle
to warm their chided bodies. At the head of a small arroyo the band of
men untied the packs from the burros and watched a the gold bars sank
into the snow covered ravine. After concealing the Mexican treasure
with rocks and boulders and kicking the half-frozen earth off the side
of the arroyo with their boot heals, the horseman gathered, round the
packsaddle and set them afire. One lame burro was shot, while the
others were set free to wander.

Jesse made two final but lasting signs to the gold. A burro shoe nailed
into the bark of a tress served as one. Into a nearby cottonwood Jesse
emptied both his six-shooters for a second mark. They would do until
the day when the men could return to plant their gold in a much safer
place.

By March 5, 1875, Jesse had made up hid mind about what to do with part
of the two million dollars, plus other proceeds the gunmen had gathered
while terrorizing banks and trains from Missouri to Mexico. As the
ingenious Jesse now valved the contract into the brass kettle, he
thought to himself that neither he nor any of his cohorts would ever
want for money - if and when they were taken by the law. But if anyone
violated the brass-bucket pact, that fellow would personally answer to
him. With that Jesse James placed the brass bucket beneath a rock ledge
on the side of Ternion Mountain.

But the brass bucket with its secret treasure code was never to be
retrieved by Jesse or any of his men, even though several would try
years later. Only six months later almost to the day, the notorious
James gang shot and dispersed while attempting to rob the Northfield,
Minnesota, Bank. Jesse and Frank were among the few to escape.
Finally, On April 3, 1882, Jesse James met his death by the hand of a
"coward: in St. Joseph, Missouri. Frank later stood trial and was
acquitted of his past crimes. But he had not forgotten the hidden gold
down in Indian Territory. He was waiting only for the opportune time to
return as inconspicuously as possible.

Ironically, another former badman appeared to the Wichita Mountains
country first - at least publicly. His name, too, appeared on the
brass-bucket contract. Cole Younger had just completed a twenty-five
year sentence for his part in the Northfield, Minnesota, bank robbery.
When released from prison, Cole made tracks for the Wichita.

In December, 1903 Younger was in Lawton, Oklahoma, then a frontier boom
town barely two years old. Cole was not particular about what he told
the press. One paper reported in November that Cole was in Ardmore
visiting a relative and planned to visit Dallas and the Texas Panhandle
and then return to Lee's Summit, Missouri, about December 1.

Cole changed his mind for on December 1 he was in Lawton. "Cole Younger
was in the city Friday and Saturday with a view to locating. Reports
have it that he will go into the newspaper business. He was given a
reception by the citizens and is pleased with the city", announced the
paper. Just how long Cole "visited" is not known, but apparently Frank
was not convinced that he found much.

More than thirty had passed during the bitter winter of 1875, when Frank
James made known his return to his old stomping grounds. In 1907 he and
his wife, Ann, settled two miles north of Fletcher on a 160-acre farm
between the Wichita Mountains and the Keeechi Hills, the later where
Frank was to dig up at least six thousand dollars of the outlaw loot.

Years before, Frank had hung up his guns for a final time. He was no
longer the surly, though gentlemanly, outlaw whom so many had read
about. Now sixty-four and balding, he remained soft-spoken and took no
pleasure in recounting the past. His objectives he now kept mainly to
himself. The news of Frank's purchase of the farm spread fast when the
papers announced the story in November, 1907. Frank was then building
his new home and planned to move in during the spring. He was also busy
helping celebrate Oklahoma's statehood.

My grandfather C.E. Zorger, often recalled the time he met Frank James.
At the time C.E. was clerking in Blunt Baines's furniture store, at 512
D Street in Lawton. One day Frank was in town having a harness
repaired. Baines and C.E. were looking outside when Baines pointed out
Frank James. At the time C.E. was incredulous. "Ah, you're joking
aren't you".

Baines smiled "You'll see. When he comes back this way, I'll introduce
you to him".

Sometime later Frank Returned up the street, and Baines called him into
the store. "Frank James, I'd like you to meet C.E. Zorger." A young
man in his twenties, my grandfather was satisfied that he was meeting
the old outlaw himself, weather-beaten and wizened with long years of
travel. Just how Frank and Baines had met C.E. was never sure. One
thing he was sure about, Baines was interested in buried treasure, too,
and even had several instruments made to aid him in that search.

On his sandy farm land Frank built a frame house, worked a plot of
ground, and planted a grove of peach trees. Just before his mother
died, in February, 1911., She visited Frank and his wife at their farm.
She died in Oklahoma City while en route back to Missouri.

Old timers say that Frank James wore out six horses riding the trails
searching for landmarks to put him back on the road to the golden
treasure. But the country now had been fenced and plowed. The
Kiowa-Comanche-Apache Reservation had opened to white settlement in
August, 1901. Miners had swarmed into the Wichita Mountains to seek
their own fortunes. Towns had grown up overnight, and new roads were
now traveled. The old trails were not called by the names the outlaws
had known them.

Franks had hoped that the old landmarks would help him recall his
secluded haunts of thirty years before, the treasure code Jesse had laid
down, and the brass bucket somewhere on Tarbone Mountain. It was one of
Frank's day-after-day rides that attracted the eye of Dr. L.C. Knee, a
highly respected physician of early Lawton. While paying house calls
near Apache, Dr. Knee observed every day of the week or more that Frank
had ridden to the top of a hill about four miles east of Apache. There
he sat astride his mount, facing south, staring as if in a kind of
trance.

One day, out of curiosity, Dr. Knee drove his buggy up to the erstwhile
bandit. After the usual comments about the weather Dr Knee dismissed
his manners. "I don't want to seem inquisitive, Frank, but why do you
sit in that saddle up here for so long, just staring at the bald
prairie? What is it you're looking for?"

It is not known what Frank replied, but it was not many weeks later that
the doctor and two local men arrived with teams and fresno scrapers and
dug out a portion of a small canyon. Their search yielded the proper
clues, for they had not dug long when they uncovered the skeleton of a
burro, and not far away they found a burro shoe firmly embedded in a
large tree. But it was their last clue, and after spending more than
four thousand dollars, Dr, Knee gave up in disgust.

Frank had once explained that the eighteen burros had traveled so slowly
after they forded Cache Creek in the winter of 1875 that it would take
him only about a fifteen-minute ride on a good horse to cover the same
distance to where they had unloaded the heavy golden cargo.

Dr, Knee may have known the old Fort Sill stage driver Holsy Green
Bennett, who one winter day early in 1876 spotted seventeen burros
grazing at the base of Mount Scott. Bennett had thought it strange, for
no military animals were allowed to roam that far from the fort, and the
animals he saw carried no government brand.

Former Deputy Sheriff Jim Wilkersin had been reared on stories of the
James boys and their two-million dollar treasure. He had worked with
old deputies, who were aware that Frank was seeking part of the outlaw
gold in the Wichita. "none of them ever nosed in" Jim once told me.
"Frank had and understanding with them". Wolkerson also took a stab at
finding the treasure and was not completely unsuccessful in his search.
One telltale clue had been overlooked by Dr. Knee. Not far from the
canyon in which the doctor had dug. Jm unearthed the rust-eaten buckles
from eighteen burned packsaddles. :I was convinced more than ever that
I was on the right track," Jim sighed "But I never found anything more.
And I don't think Frank did either."

One piece of property attracted Frank James perhaps more that any other
he was known to have studied. Just east of Cement in the Keechi Hills,
the farm was the property of a teacher, Mrs. Belle Hedlund. In 1907,
not identifying himself, Frank inquired about an old spring and some
symbols etched on a rock and asked Mrs. Hedlund whether he could look
over her land.

The schoolteacher was curious and walked along with the stranger as he
poked an iron rod into the ground in an inviting spot. She showed him
the only spring she knew about, at the foot of a lone knoll with a
natural cave through one side, known a Buzzards Roost.

"If this is the right place, this is Jesse's kitchen," the stranger
declared, pointing to a nearby rock as he bent down to reach under a
stone. Soon he pulled out a rusted spoon.

When Frank James revealed his identity to Mrs. Hedlund, she was
momentarily frightened, she recalled later, but as he continued his
visits to her farm over many months, she found him likable and always a
gentleman.

As Franks continued his search, he confided in Mrs. Hedlund that he was
seeking sixty-four thousand dollars that Jesse had taken during a
robbery at Independence, Missouri. Jesse had carved a map and
directions on a large rock and turned it upside down. The rock Frank
believed was on Mrs. Hedlund's farm, near the spring, where the outlaws
camped on many occasions. Frank revealed that Jesse drew a similar map
on his boot, later transferred it to paper and gave it to his mother.

Some time later Frank, found some of the markings he was seeking. At
the foot of Buzzard Roost he found the carving of a pair of crossed
rifles cut deeply into a rock. The barrel of one pointed east to an
aged tree, on which were etched the letters M.O.O. and, below, the
letter Y. Beneath the carvings was a mule shoe nailed into a blaze.

Not far from that tree Frank unearthed a copper kettle with a crook
covering containing six thousand dollars - or so he said. One old
settler who was that Frank's claim was true was Uncle Billy Royce, who
owned the farm adjacent to Mrs. Hedlund's. Billy Royce had met Frank
James once before. He knew that the kettle of loot was not all that
Frank was seeking. One day while Frank was in Cement buying supplies,
Royce first spotted him. He took a double look and then hollered,
:Hello, Frank!'
The old outlaw wheeled around, staring, as if trying to remember where
he had seen him before.

"I'm Billy Royce; we camped one night....."

"Nuff said." Frank interrupted with a twinkle in his eye. "Could I ever
forget that supper you fed us?"

The two men had met almost forty years before. Yet neither had
forgotten that accidental run-in so many miles away up in Montana
Territory. It was early in the 1870's, remembered Royce, that Frank
Jesse, and five others were making tracks between them and the law.
After a long day's ride the brothers ran into a group of buffalo
hunters. One long-haired sharpshooter recognized Frank and called out
to him/ Frank placed his hand close to his six-shooter and then almost
instantly recognized the hunter as William F. "Buffalo Bill" Cody
himself. That evening they camped together. Cody's cooks served a hot
meal of venison and wild turkey. One of the cooks was Billy Royce, then
only a tousled-haired youth of fourteen. Billy was the son of an
Irishman who had served as a doorkeeper at the White House when Lincoln
was president. The year before he Frank James, Billy had gone to Denver
and had later joined up with Cody.

--
Steve Grimm
sgr...@dimensional.com
(Email address modified for spam control - remove the huh. to respond)