Volume 11 , Issue 2

James' Gang $2 Million Gold Treasure

Where was this alleged $2 million dollar treasure hidden in Oklahoma? Has it been discovered? Where in the Wichita Mountains in Southwest Oklahoma near Old Fort Sill and the Keechi Hills did the Jesse & Frank James gang hide their treasures of gold robberies?

According to Oklahoma Treasures and Treasure Tales, pages 129-147, written by Steve Wilson, The rugged range of the hills in southwestern Oklahoma have drawn more attention and stories than all the other potential sites put together.

The source of the fabled gold and its final place of burial have often varied. BUT ... all stories lead to the Wichita Mountains and most often begin with the year 1876.

The most wanted outlaw of the West, Jesse Woodson James, painfully pounded the letters into an old brass kettle: "This, the 5th day of March 1876, in the year of our Lord ...."

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

It all began somewhere in northern Chihuahua, Mexico, not far from the southwestern settlement of El Paso, Texas, when Jesse and Frank and 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 Wichitas, they were greeted by a severe winter blizzard. For three and a half days they traveled with little rest through snow almost a foot deep. Jesse and his men were cold and weary, and Jesse knew that the gold had to be buried. It was now obvious that their exhausted animals could travel little farther.

It was after almost three hours of slow, arduous travel east of Cache Creek, that Jesse and Frank agreed to bury the golden cargo and burn the packsaddles to warm their chilled bodies.

At the head of a small arroyo the gang of outlaws untied the packs from the burros and watched as 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 heels, the horsemen gathered round the packsaddles 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 bank of a tree 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.

March 5, 1876 Jesse had made up his 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 Jesse carved 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 Tarbone Mountain.

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 was shot up 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. Frank had not forgotten the hidden gold down in Indian Territory. He was waiting only for the right time to return as inconspicuously as possible.

Frank James in 1898, before he returned to his Oklahoma haunts to settle on a farm near Fletcher. Frank spent most of the remaining years of his life seeking outlaw gold in the Wichitas and the nearby Keechi Hills.
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