Explore Oregon Treasure Stories

China Bar Treasure - Located just below the mouth of Salt Creek in Wallowa County.  The area is named for the Chinese miners who were attacked and killed by Indians for pilfering their fishing grounds, destroying their equipment, and ravishing their women.  Legend has it that a good deal of gold was left behind buried somewhere near their old fireplace.

$8,000 in Gold Dust Lost in Jacksonville In April of 1886, an "old timer" who had lived in the area in the 1860s came back with a team of men searching for his lost gold dust buried in the vicinity of what had become J.N.T. Miller's field.  Considerable ground was dug, but the lost treasure could not be found.

Neahkahnie Mountain Treasure  Coastal lore in this region tells of two mysterious lost treasures -- one is of buried pirate treasure and the other of a wrecked mission ship carrying Spanish gold.  The latter says that the ship "San Jose" left La Paz in Lower California loaded with Spanish gold and mission supplies on June 15, 1679, including a large amount of beeswax, headed for San Diego, but disappeared in a storm.  Through the years artifacts have been found, along with a large amount of beeswax, on the sandy shores at Nehalem Beach, leading historians to believe this is where the wreck washed up.  Clatsop Indian legend also speaks of a pirate ship that anchored offshore at Neahkahnie Mountain.  The landing party was said to bury a treasure chest in the slopes at the base of the mountain and mark the spot with an inscribed rock.  Some who have tried to find the treasure have claimed it is guarded by the ghost of a man who was killed and buried with the treasure.  Neither treasure has been recovered.

Old Squaw's Buried Treasure (from a March 1915 newspaper) - Near Pendleton, Oregon, farmers and Indians on the Umatilla reservation have been hunting for buried treasure, the existence of which had been asserted by Koko-Dye-a-Lash, an old squaw, on her deathbed.  Plows, scrapers, picks, and shovels were used, and one can containing $1,100 in gold was found, but the old woman said she had buried more almost 20 years before.  P.F. Kirkpatrick, who farms the land, set to work but could find no other treasure, and more explicit directions could not be elicited because the old squaw was nearly dead and too weak to explain any more details.