Volume 11 , Issue 2

Treasure Trail Only Just Begun

The long treasure trail was not to end with Frank James. It was only beginning. A serious and determined treasure seeker named Joe Hunter made startling news when he unearthed the long hidden "brass bucket" and many more of the "treasure clues" that Frank had missed.

The long search began for Joe Hunter in 1932, the same year that Frank's niece made a final attempt to find her uncle's gold.

Twenty-five years after Frank James's long quest in the Keechi Hills, Mrs. Belle Hedlund found the strange rock he had so patiently sought. It happened one spring day, when Mrs. Hedlund was attracted to a large stone that appeared unnatural in its position. It reminded her of what Frank had told her years before. When she had it turned over, it was obviously the stone Frank had sought. Strange markings were etched on its underside. But there were no clear directions telling where to find the buried gold.

By then, the secret pact had been lost to history for 72 years, and most of the outlwas' names on the bucket were of men about whom little was known. In 1948, at the foot of looming Tarbone Mountain on the north edge of the cedar clad Wichitas, Joe Hunter unearthed the legendary brass bucket.

The Outlaw Gold Pact
The pact read: "This the V day of March in the year of our Lord, 1876, we the undersigned do this day organize a bounty bank. We will go to the west side of the Keechi Hills which is about fifty yards from (symbol of crossed sabers). Follow the trail line coming through the mountains just east of the lone hill where we buried the jack (burro). His grave is east of a rock. This contract made and entered into this V day of March 1876. This gold shall belong to who signs below."

Below the pact appeared the following names: Jesse Jjames, Frank Miller, George Overton, Rub Busse, Charlie Jones, Cole Younger, Will Overton, Uncle George Payne, Frank James, Roy Baxter, Bud Dalton, and Zack Smith.

On the bottom of the bucket was inscribed the patent dates and the manufacturer. It was first patented on December 16, 1851, it was reinstated on March 24, 1870, and was extended in 1873 by E. Miller and company.

Not far from where Hunter found the brass bucket under the rock ledge where Jesse had concealed it, he dug up a three-legged iron Dutch oven. Inside were the chain and fob that matched the watch he had uncovered in the Keechi Hills on the Hedlund farm, 35 miles northeast.

Landmarks Change & Time Running Out
With luck running out as time was passing, too many landmarks had changed. Too many clues had been destroyed. It had been more than 3/4 of a century since the outlaw gold had been hidden. Nature had successfully played its role well in concealing it.

One of Hunter's waybills showed a grave, a horse and saddle, a cave, various symbols and five caches of buried loot, with the descriptions: "$32,000 in gold, 136 paces north of cave; $428,000 in gold, 76 paces west of care; $18,000 in gold, 72 paces north of cave; $38,000 in gold, 42 paces west of cave, and greenbacks and jewelry, 142 paces west and 11Hbg."

It is told that Frank and Jesse James were planning on giving up their robbing and killing. They planned on having a ranch that stretched from the Wichita Mountains South to the Red River. But they never saw those dreams come true. After Jesse died, Frank left Missouri and came to Oklahoma, and bought a farm near Fletcher, in Comanche county. It leaves us wondering why he would leave his homeplace to come to the good for nothing county if he had not planned on digging up something pretty big -- Gold. Frank dug up a good amount of money on the very farm he bought near Fletcher in Indian Territory. Frank also dug up more at other places.

With Joe Hunter's death in the 1950's many of the clues, along with the famous brass bucket, disappeared, and most of the treasure maps have scattered.

Frank James recovered some of the loot, but Joe Hunter unearthed some of the treasure that Frank had failed to find. The clues were too many to dismiss as legend: the brass bucket with the outlaw pact, the silver watch, the graves, the gold bracelets, the copper sheet with its secret code, and the maps -- too old and perhaps too cryptic for anyone to read. Treasure seekers still dug in lonely canyons, scanned out of the way pinnacles, and explored musty smelling caves in quest of the James Brother's 2 million dollar treasure, secreted in the Wichita Mountains at a time when those hills harbored some of the deadliest outlaws of the West.

Frank is said to have once revealed that the treasure was buried alongside the Old Chisholm Trail between Fort Sill and the Keechi Hills. Does it still await some lucky finder, one who can break its secret code and follow the long trail that Frank James rode hard enough to wear out six horses?
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