Utah…Lost Treasure….The Lost House Range Placers..

The explorers and surveyors of the American West are an august company that includes the great Lewis and Clark as well as a host of other renowned pathfinders. Men like Fremont, Long, Stansbury, Pike, Abert, and Beale opened up the west as surely as the mountain men who preceded them and the sutlers and traders who followed them. One of the most promising of these early explorers and surveyors was an Army engineer and West Point graduate named John W. Gunnison.

The idea of an intercontinental railroad stretching from coast to coast was not new in 1853. Fremont’s expeditions during the 1840’s were focused on finding the best route through the mountains for a railroad. In 1853, when an expedition was mounted to survey the west-central portion of Utah, John Gunnison was a natural choice to lead the party. His credentials were impeccable. He had cut his teeth as a surveyor for the Stansbury Expedition in 1849 and he knew the central Utah area well. Gunnison assumed command of the party, which included two survivors from Fremont’s disastrous fourth expedition of 1848, Richard Kern and Frederick Creutzfeldt. Kern was the expedition’s artist and topographer while Creutzfeldt served as botanist. The Gunnison expedition entered Utah Territory in the fall of 1853, passing through the town of Manti on its way to Fillmore. From Fillmore, the party traveled west, reaching the Gunnison Bend of the Sevier River, southwest of present-day Delta. To the west, Gunnison could see the wrinkled peaks of the House Range rising up from the Sevier Valley. To the southwest, he could see the meandering course of the Sevier River as it disappeared toward Sevier Lake. This was a good place. They made camp.

The following morning, the Gunnison Expedition awoke to the sounds of war cries and rifle shots. The end had come. A band of 30 or so Pahvant Indians descended upon the hapless explorers, killing all but four of the party. The dead included the leader, John Gunnison, and the two veterans from Fremont’s expedition, Kern and Creutzfeldt.

As he gazed westward the evening before the massacre, Gunnison may have been contemplating a route through the House Range into the Tule Valley beyond. The House Range stretches some 60 miles in a north-south direction and forms the western boundary of Sevier Valley. It extends from Sand Pass southward to the Wah-Wah Valley. Along its entire length the range is no more than 10 miles wide. House Range is transected by three major passes. Dome Canyon Pass is the northernmost pass, Marjum Canyon lies eight miles to the south, and Skull Rock Pass, south of Sawtooth Mountain, forms the southernmost and main portal through the range.

The House Range still holds many secrets. Prospectors have roamed these mountains for over two centuries. Evidence of early Spanish mining activity still occasionally surfaces. Caches of old Spanish tools and mining equipment have been discovered in the central part of the range, near the only major gold-producing area in the entire county.

Millard County has never been a major producer of gold. Only 500 ounces are officially recorded for the county. Most of this production hails from the small placer deposits of the House Range. Located in North Canyon and Miller Canyon, the gold placers were worked extensively during the 1930’s. Surely more than 500 ounces of gold were taken from the two canyons during the depression years, not to mention the efforts of the early Spaniards in the area. One story in particular has come down to us regarding an incredibly rich placer deposit somewhere in the House Range. In a single transaction, the discoverer of this placer sold more than 300 ounces of gold – 60% of the total recorded production for the entire county! The discovery occurred sometime during the late 1930’s. A Mexican sheepherder working in the House Range stumbled upon a glory hole of placer gold somewhere on the slopes of the mountains. The deposit must have been rich for the Mexican turned up in the nearby town of Delta with several sacks of fine gold dust. On one of his visits, the sheepherder sold more than 20 pounds of gold to a local doctor. Of course, the Mexican never revealed the location of his find and soon dropped out of sight. He was never seen again. Prospectors have searched the House Range for many years but the Mexican’s lost placer remains hidden to this day.

Lost Josephine Gold Mine finally been found? $1.7BILLION bonanza abandoned by Spanish priests…

An adventurous treasure hunter claims he has found a legendary lost gold mine in the mountains of northeastern Utah – a $1.7billion bonanza first discovered by Spanish priests in 1650 that has laid dormant for more than three centuries.

Gary Holt believes that he and his son have found the Josephine de Martinque mine at Hoyt’s Peak in the Uinta Mountains – and they only need federal government permission to delve deep enough to claim their prize, the Park Record newspaper reports.

The Lost Josephine Mine was fabled to be the richest gold mine in the world. It was first documented by Spanish Jesuit priests in 1650.

Discovery: Brandon Holt, pictured, and his father Gary say they have found an abandoned Spanish gold mine from the 1600s

The U.S. Forest Service is skeptical, saying the cavern is likely a natural formation and that it contains no gold deposits

The explorers say they have found calcite semi-precious gemstones in the cavern, but no gold

But U.S. Forest Service officials say the mine is a fairy tale – and treasure hunters are defacing a natural cave and destroying formations that are millions of years old as they search for riches.

Mr Holt told the Park Record that he has yet to find gold in the cavern.

He obtained a mining permit and said he has so far pulled millions of dollars worth of calcite crystals from the shaft. He markets them as ‘Goldite’ and says they could become valuable as semi-precious gemstones.

So far, though, the spelunking into the cavern has not yet yielded any gold. Mr Holt remains undeterred. In a 2009 post on the treasure hunter forum Ancient Lost Treasures, Mr Holt suggests that the mine could contain $1.7billion in gold.

Officials say the ‘Goldite’ mining operation is little more than a ruse to allow Mr Holt to continue looking for gold.

The caver is at the bottom of a deep shaft that Mr Holt and his friends have been exploring for years

This is a ‘Goldite’ outcropping – calcite that Mr Holt believes he can sell for millions as a semi-precious stone

Revolution: The mine was abandoned by the Spanish in 1680 during the Pueblo Revolt when Indians drove them from their claims in New Mexico

He says the hunt for gold is ‘still in active development.’

References to the the Lost Josephine Mine first appear in records of Spanish Jesuit priests in 1650. It was said to be the most valuable gold mine in the world.

Three decades later, the priests were forced to abandon the mind when the Spanish were driven out of the New Mexico Territory during the 1680 Pueblo Revolution uprising by the Pueblo Indians.

The exact location of the mine has been lost ever since.

But, Forest Service Archeologist Tom Flanagan, says the the myth of the Lost Josephine Mine being in northeast Utah is nothing but a fairy tale.

‘If we had those kinds of gold mines in the Uintas (Mountains), I’d be a rich man,’ he told the Park Record.

‘A lot of treasure hunters will map on a natural solution cavity and try to purport that it’s a historic or ancient mine and then try to mine it.’

Location: Other explorers have long believed that the that the lost mine – with untold riches – was located at Hoyt’s Peak in northeastern Utah