The key, of course, is to dig in the right place.

And it's questionable where that right place is. During the early 1930s, the Tulsa World ran a long series of articles about reports of buried treasure, none of which was ever found.

Those reports involved loot buried by bandits such as Jesse James, the Younger brothers and even Belle Starr. Other reports claimed that Spaniards buried money in the state and that pioneers hid their money in the ground. None of the reports was verified.

Some of the robbers and the pioneers went back for their treasure -- but couldn't find it, according to the legends. The land had changed, and one piece of dirt looked like every other piece of dirt.

Jesse James and his gang reportedly hid $2 million of their loot near Fort Sill and cached $88,000 in the Lost City (now part of Chandler Park) area south of Sand Springs and $110,000 in a deep pit in what was known in the early days as Robbers' Canyon near Pryor.

Of course, there's a question of whether James and his gang ever had that much money, even by adding their takes

Frank James, who died in 1915, couldn't find the money in Lost City when he returned after the turn of the 20th century and headed to the Lawton area to search there. He bought a ranch in the Wichita Mountains and spent years in a futile search for treasure the gang had buried there before finally giving up.

When the loot was buried near Lawton, the area was a hunting ground for American Indians; but after Jesse was killed and Frank returned, the land had been homesteaded, plowed and fenced.

Cole Younger, who had been a member of the James gang, told residents of Pryor in the early part of the 20th century that he had helped hide their booty in Robbers' Canyon but the landmarks also had changed there and he couldn't find the loot.

The James-Younger gang tried to rob a bank in Northfield, Minn., where some were killed and others were injured and captured by a posse several days later. The Youngers pleaded guilty, and it was 25 years before Cole was paroled -- no doubt thinking of the hidden loot during the entire period.

But Cole discovered that the landmarks near Sand Springs also had changed when he tried to find $63,000 in gold and silver he had buried along the south bank of the Arkansas River south of Sand Springs.

He told friends when he tried to retrieve the money after being released from prison that he couldn't find it, apparently because it had sunk in the soft sand of the river's bank.

Younger said he buried the gold and silver while he and his gang were being chased by a posse as they rode toward Missouri. When they came to the Arkansas River, the heavy gold and silver they had liberated from a stage coach slowed them down as they started to ford the shallow water. They jumped off their horses, dug a hole and dumped the sacks of precious metal in, planning to return for it later.

Another group of gold-laden bandits were being chased in Cherokee County by a posse that killed three of the group, according to another legend. The remaining bandits hid their gold near Chimney Rock along the Illinois River before being killed by the posse, but the gold was never found.

Among the legends of Spanish treasure is that more than $30 million worth of gold and silver was buried in the 1830s near Vanoss in Pontotoc County by a group that came to Oklahoma to establish a Catholic mission.

The precious metal was to be used to finance the mission and perimeter churches, but, because there were no banks and no safe place to keep their treasure, the churchmen decided to bury it until they could begin building. They dug a tunnel, gouged out a vault at its end, lined it with pitch or asphalt and stashed their treasure.

And as they headed for Mexico, they were killed -- the location of their stash lost forever.

Stories of buried loot and gold abound. One of the most unusual was reported in the Tulsa Democrat in 1905.

According to that report, a group of Mexicans headed by a don named Valdez were starving on the winter plains and were taken in by Osage Indians. The Mexicans noticed that the Osages left the village from time to time and returned with gold.

One of the Mexicans followed the Osage group and discovered the Indians working in a gold-filled cavern on the east side of the Grand River. Valdez and his group started filling bags with gold with plans to take it to Mexico. But the Osages discovered the plot.

While Valdez and his group were working in the cave, the Osages sealed the entrance -- leaving the Mexicans and the gold inside.

Photographic research by Rachele Vaughan

Gene Curtis 581-8304
gene.curtis@tulsaworld.com

Gene Curtis is a former managing editor of the Tulsa World.