Nothing beats the allure of hidden treasure. With its tantalising promise of historical and financial value, it’s no wonder so many people are drawn to hunt for it. Discover the stories behind 13 American treasures that are still waiting to be unearthed...
In 1712, King Philip V of Spain (pictured) required substantial sums of cash to continue funding the War of Succession – a battle to decide who would take over from the childless Charles II of Spain, who died in 1700. To bankroll the conflict, the Spanish authorities in the New World set about assembling a stockpile of silver, gold, gemstones and other valuables.
By 1715, enough treasure had been collected to fund the war, and a fleet of 12 ships was organized to transport the goods to Spain. To avoid pirates stealing the precious cargo, the authorities decided to make the journey in hurricane season. The decision was a foolish one. On July 31, 1715, a week after the convoy of ships had set sail from Havana, Cuba, an almighty hurricane whipped up and destroyed 11 of the 12 vessels with the loss of over 1,000 lives.
A lighter carrack ship called the San Miguel is thought to have separated from the convoy and sank near Amelia Island, Florida. Carrack ships tended to transport the most precious cargo, as they could easily outrun pirates. Incredibly, the San Miguel may have stored a whopping $2 billion-worth of valuables. Several of the ships that went down in the tempest have been recovered over the years, including the Urca de Lima and Nuestra Señora de las Nieves. But, to this day, the San Miguel has never been found.
Notorious pirate Edward Teach, aka Blackbeard, terrorized the Caribbean in his flagship the Queen Anne's Revenge for years until one fateful day in May 1718 when it ran aground near Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina, and the buccaneer was killed. During his criminal career, Blackbeard looted ship after ship, and collected a great many treasures, from gold bars to fine jewelry worth millions of dollars in today's money. The pirate is said to have buried the bulk of it on islands around the Caribbean and parts of North Carolina.
The wreck of the Queen Anne's Revenge was discovered in November 1996, and a number of valuables were retrieved, including a wine glass stem decorated with diamonds and tiny gold crowns, an ornate sword guard and coins depicting Queen Anne. Historians insist that Blackbeard didn't bury most of his booty, and the relatively modest haul of items salvaged from the Queen Anne's Revenge are his actual treasure, but many fortune hunters beg to differ, and believe the riches are still out there somewhere.
Like the challenge of cracking codes? Then you may want to have a stab at deciphering the two unsolved Beale ciphers. The codes first appeared in a pamphlet published in 1885 and are said to contain directions to a stash of gold, silver and jewels, which are said to be worth in the region of $50 million today.
According to the pamphlet, a group of 30 adventurers led by Thomas J. Beale discovered an abundantly rich mine near Sante Fe, New Mexico sometime during the early 1800s. They spent 18 months extracting thousands of pounds of precious metals and stones. Beale was tasked with transporting and concealing the haul, which he ended up hiding near the town of Montvale in Bedford County, Virginia. Beale made three ciphers with details of the treasure. The first reveals the location, the second is a description of its contents and the third lists the owners.
In 1822, Beale handed a sealed box containing the cyphers to a Lynchburg innkeeper called Robert Morriss with directions to open it if he hadn't heard from him within 10 years. A decade passed with no word from Beale but Morriss waited until 1845 to open the box. Unable to decipher the codes, Morriss passed the box to a friend, who managed to decode the second cipher describing the treasure and went on to publish the pamphlet in 1885. Since then, nobody has cracked the two unsolved ciphers and some experts have even argued the whole thing is an elaborate hoax.
Remember the Alamo? Most Americans are aware of the infamous siege and battle that took place in 1836 during the Texas Revolution at the Alamo Mission in San Antonio when Mexican troops massacred every single one of the mission's Texian defenders, including Davy Crockett (pictured) and Jim Bowie.
The battle may be well known but fewer people have heard about the treasure that is said to have been buried on the grounds of the Alamo. According to the legend, the Texans had amassed piles of gold, silver and other precious objects to fund the revolution. When Mexican forces besieged the Alamo, the Texan bigwigs buried the valuables on the mission's grounds to stop the invading troops seizing them. Now called the San Saba Treasure, the valuables are allegedly worth millions of dollars.
In February 1894, a young medium called Mary Mareschal hit the headlines after convening with the dead Texians at the Alamo. The San Antonio Express News reported that the ghosts told her $540,000-worth of gold and treasures had been buried on the site, the equivalent of almost $20 million in 2025. The news story ignited interest in the treasure. Yet, despite numerous excavations of the site (pictured today), no sign of the San Saba Treasure has ever been discovered, and it's likely the story is a fanciful fabrication.
Eye-watering amounts of gold and other precious items went missing during the American Civil War – and one of the most notable cases concerns a shipment of gold that went astray in June 1863 in Elk County, Pennsylvania. The gold was being transported from Wheeling, West Virginia to Philadelphia on a Union wagon train, which had taken a northern detour to avoid advancing Confederate troops. Details are very sketchy, but the precious shipment appears to have vanished near remote Dents Run.
Rumor has it the gold was buried somewhere in the area. The train was carrying a total of 52 bars weighing 50 pounds apiece. Given today's gold prices, the haul is worth tens of millions so, as you can imagine, Dents Run has become a magnet for treasure hunters. Dennis Parada, the founder of treasure hunting website Finders Keepers, found a vague map of the stash in the 1970s, but has only managed to recover several modestly valuable Civil War-era artifacts, despite years of searching. Other treasure hunters have been equally unlucky.
The public requires permission to dig and getting the all-clear is no mean feat, which is unfortunate as the plot thickened in 2018 when a team of FBI agents was spotted on the site, apparently searching for the missing gold. This confirmed many treasure hunters' suspicions that millions of dollars worth of gold is buried in Dents Run. Dennis Parada even launched a legal battle against the FBI to force it to reveal what it discovered during its excavations, but as of 2025, the FBI remains insistent that nothing was found...
Historic Fairfax, Virginia attracts more than its fair share of treasure hunters searching for the stash of Civil War valuables that is supposedly hidden there. In total, the hoard of precious items is said to be worth millions of dollars today. In March 1863, Confederate ranger John Singleton Mosby (pictured) and his men launched an audacious night raid on the Fairfax County Courthouse and captured 42 Union soldiers without even firing a shot.
Searching the courthouse, Mosby and his men came across a bulging burlap sack full of valuables belonging to Fairfax County's most prominent families. The bag is thought to have contained gold, silver, jewels and other family heirlooms worth $350,000 at the time, around $9 million today. On their way back to Confederate lines, Mosby was so worried he and his men would be captured by Union soldiers and lose the booty, he ordered one of his sergeants to bury the treasure in the woods between two pine trees, which were marked with an X.
A humongous stash of Confederate gold bullion worth upwards of $140 million today is sitting at the bottom of Lake Michigan somewhere, say a pair of treasure hunters from the eastern shore city of Muskegon, Michigan. According to treasure enthusiasts Kevin Dykstra and Frederick J. Monroe, $2 million in gold bullion was stolen in 1865 by Union soldiers from Confederate President Jefferson Davis, who had been captured in Georgia and imprisoned in Virginia.
A deathbed confession in 1921 uttered by a local banker called George Alexander Abbott revealed the bullion had been packed onto a train boxcar and smuggled more than 1,000 miles north in the utmost secrecy. When it reached Lake Michigan, the boxcar was loaded onto a ferry. Whether a storm forced the crew of the ferry to offload cargo is uncertain, but somewhere during the crossing the boxcar of bullion was thrown overboard to lighten the load.
The lost gold was the subject of a History Channel documentary in 2018 that followed Dykstra and Monroe's search. The show ended with a cliffhanger – in the season finale, the pair chanced upon a boxcar rivet and what they thought might be a gold bar. But as of 2025, the treasure remains undiscovered...
According to history, cursed treasure is buried somewhere along the Cahuenga Pass in Los Angeles. In 1864, four agents working for Mexican politician Benito Juarez left Mexico City and set out for San Francisco with a treasure trove of gold, diamonds, pearls and other valuables that they were planning to exchange for weapons. The agents were said to be carrying a total of $200,000-worth of luxury items. Adjusted for inflation, the treasure trove is likely to have a value of around $4 million today, possibly a lot higher given the valuables have important historical value.
One of the agents died en route to San Francisco, the first death associated with the treasure. Worried the treasure would be confiscated by the authorities, the surviving trio buried it and fled. Little did they know, a fugitive shepherd named Diego Moreno had been watching. Seizing the moment, Moreno dug up the stash and fled. When the agents returned for their loot and discovered the theft, they pointed the finger at one another. Two of the agents ended up killing each other and the third died in a bar fight not long after. Moreno was just as unlucky. He reburied the treasure on the Cahuenga Pass for safekeeping but died before he could retrieve it.
If you're ever lucky enough to visit the Little Bighorn River in Montana (pictured), you might want to bring a metal detector and shovel. Two super-valuable lost treasures are associated with the famous battle that took place along the river back in June 1876. A month before the battle, General Custer's Seventh Calvary, which was made up of 700 troops, were given four months' back pay in the form of banknotes, silver and gold. All in all, the pay bonanza is estimated to have been worth $25,000, which is just shy of $740,000 in today's money.
The troops were carrying the precious coins and bills when they were defeated resoundingly by Lakota, Arapaho and Cheyenne warriors, who stripped the dead soldiers of their belongings. The hoard was gathered together and hidden away in a secret location. Years later, Cheyenne chief Two Moons revealed to trader Walker P. Moncure that he knew the whereabouts of the treasure.
Two Moons died in 1917 and the tale passed into legend. In the late 1950s, journalist Kathryn Wright investigated the story and eventually discovered a hidden vault in Two Moons' tomb on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana. Wright found a sealed envelope supposedly containing the location of the haul and sought permission from the Cheyenne to open it, but when she returned to the tomb the envelope had been stolen. What became of it, and the valuables belonging to Custer (pictured) and his troops, remains a bewildering mystery.
There's another lost Little Bighorn treasure which is even more valuable: a hoard of gold bars worth approximately $11 million in today's money. In the aftermath of the battle, Far West steamboat captain Grant Marsh (pictured) picked up 50 wounded soldiers and set off at breakneck speed down the river toward Bismarck, North Dakota.
According to local legend, Marsh had been entrusted with solid gold bars worth $375,000, which he'd been given by a group of miners for safekeeping. Weighed down by heavy cargo and passengers, the Far West was dangerously overloaded and Marsh is said to have removed much of the gold and buried it somewhere along the Bighorn River, which meets the Little Bighorn near Hardin, Montana, downstream from the battle site.
On May 10, 1881, a stagecoach loaded with silver and gold bars and coins worth around $5 million in today's money was ambushed on a mountain outcrop near Flagstaff, Arizona. The property of Wells Fargo bank, the gold and silver was being transported to a branch in San Francisco.
After a spate of holdups, the bank decided to transport the silver and gold in unmarked mail sacks in an effort to thwart criminals, but a group of five thieves were tipped-off by a crooked bank insider, and intercepted the bullion. The robbers made off with the sacks, with a large posse of local sheriffs and army cavalry in hot pursuit. The bandits were eventually tracked to a remote cabin in the mountains above Flagstaff.
The posse stormed the cabin, and a frenzied shootout followed. All five robbers were killed, but despite numerous searches of the cabin and surrounding area there was zero sign of the silver or gold. The owner of the cabin spent 30 years searching for the treasure. In 1913, a local character called Short Jimmy McGuire claimed he'd found several gold coins but dropped dead of a heart attack before he could share its location. Needless to say, the loot remains AWOL.
The mine is named after 19th-century immigrant Jacob Waltz, who reportedly extracted tons of gold over a period of 18 years. After his death in 1891, legend has it the prospector had left gold in the mine worth around $300 million in today's money. Depending on which story you believe, Waltz either died without revealing its whereabouts or 'fessed up on his deathbed and sketched a crude map detailing the location. In fact, there are scores of variants of the tale, which has been embellished like crazy over the years.
That hasn't put off thousands of treasure seekers, and a shocking number of adventurers are thought to have died searching for the lost mine. In June 1931, amateur explorer Adolph Ruth vanished during his search and may have been murdered for his map, the first of the deaths. To date, it's thought that around 600 adventurers are estimated to have perished, making the Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine America's most dangerous treasure hunt. An intrepid pair of explorers, Jesse and John Feldman, have been on the hunt for the mine, with their efforts documented in the TV show called Lost Gold. But no treasure has been discovered as yet...
In what turned out to be the biggest art heist and theft of private property in history, a total of 13 treasured artworks valued at $500 million were stolen from Boston's Stewart Gardner Museum (pictured) on March 18, 1990. Two thieves posing as cops gained access to the museum during the early hours of the morning. They handcuffed and tied up the guards, and made a beeline for Rembrandt's Self-Portrait from 1629, but couldn't prise the painting from its frame.
The crooks had better luck with the Dutch master's The Storm on the Sea of Galilee painting, which they cut from its frame, and then swiped The Concert by Vermeer, the most valuable of the pilfered artworks, and two Rembrandts: A Lady and a Gentleman in Black and a self-portrait from 1634. They went on to steal Impressionist pioneer Édouard Manet's Chez Tortoni, Landscape with Obelisk by Govaert Flinck, five Degas drawings, a Chinese bronze gu wine cup from the Shang dynasty, and a bronze eagle finial.
The identities of the pair remain a mystery, though the police suspected they were East Coast mobsters. According to the museum's website, the Isabella Steward Gardner Museum is still offering a $10,000 reward for information that leads to the safe return of the artworks, while a separate $100,000 reward is on offer for the return of the bronze eagle finial.
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