12 Lost Treasures You Can Still Look For

12 Lost Treasures You Can Still Look For

Treasure...gotta love the concept! I recall a girlfriend whose father used to head up into the foothills in Alberta to search for the Lost Lemon Mine. And go fishing, I suspect. There's said to be an 1812-era military payroll buried near the lakefront outside of Toronto. Here's a link to a great assortment of destinations. Got any stories yourselves you want to share?

Pirates, sea battles, treasure chests, secret tunnels, old maps...any mention of the word "treasure" is bound to set our imaginations on fire. And though it often seems unbelievable or just plain stupid, human beings have continually been lured by the prospects of hidden treasure. Here's an exciting selection of 12 famous real-life lost treasures - "real" in the sense that countless people have gone out in search of them (with limited or no success!). While some of these lost treasures may be products of rumor, others, like the Bourbon Treasure or the Nazi Loot indeed have historical backing. But we'll leave that to you to decide. Happy hunting! www.huffingtonpost.com...

reply to post by JohnnyCanuck
The best ones are in the article or I'd have gone for Renne le Chateux.

Living in the UK and having an interest in archaeology, it appeals to my imagination that the landscape still holds untold treasures somewhere below the ploughs of tractors or beneath the hollows of ancient trees. Sutton Hoo may not be alone, Roman treasure troves lie in wait and Catholic heirlooms may well sit in the darkness of some Reformation church recess.

That's the romantic notion of treasure hunting. Finding where Rumsfeld's $2 trillion went would be better than all of them.

Originally posted by Kandinsky
reply to post by JohnnyCanuck

 

The best ones are in the article or I'd have gone for Renne le Chateux.
Living in the UK and having an interest in archaeology, it appeals to my imagination that the landscape still holds untold treasures somewhere below the ploughs of tractors or beneath the hollows of ancient trees. Sutton Hoo may not be alone, Roman treasure troves lie in wait and Catholic heirlooms may well sit in the darkness of some Reformation church recess. That's the romantic notion of treasure hunting. Finding where Rumsfeld's $2 trillion went would be better than all of them.

Problem is there is a very uneasy relationship between treasure hunting and archaeology. The smelting of metal is an historical technology here in Ontario, so some of the obvious issues wouldn't emerge. Still, my sense of ethics tingled just a little as I posted this thread. Stupid conscience!

There's really no need for distrust on either side, so long as both sides are pure in motive. A treasure hunter could find a treasure, give it away to science and still make a fortune on the book, Discovery/Nat Geo docos and talks and the like.

Years ago, my brother went out to Arizona and went looking for the Lost Dutchman Mine. He never found anything but he said he sure had a good time trying. He says that that is his dream, to move out there and have the money to seriously look for it. He's a bit of a hermit and says that he would love being a mountain man and spend his time looking for lost treasure.

Originally posted by DeltaNine
There's really no need for distrust on either side, so long as both sides are pure in motive. A treasure hunter could find a treasure, give it away to science and still make a fortune on the book, Discovery/Nat Geo docos and talks and the like.

Certainly. I refer, though, to the process of excavation because any artifact is much diminished if not examined in its proper context. There is also a very thin line...many would state there is none...between treasure hunting and looting.

There is an old legend of buried whiskie kegs in Redburn/knocknagoney, (hill of Warren's) Belfast Ireland. from Dunville's whiskie family, Who lived at Redburn house near Holywood Co Down, Also rumored to be buried are a large amount of 303s from the first world war, Destined for the the locally raised militia, at the time of the Easter risings in Dublin.. If ever discovered the whiskey from that time, Still in its kegs fermenting (100 years plus) would be worth a small fortune, As Dunville's whiskie went into receivership sometime ago,

As for the rifle's they could have something to do with this incident that happened.

Lord Dunvilles son ..

By September he had fully recovered and in November he transferred as a Lieutenant to the Fifth Reserve Battalion Grenadier Guards. Later he served in the Third Battalion. He was in Ireland when the rebellion broke out in Dublin in April 1916, and set off to join his regiment there. On the way he was captured in Castlebellingham, County Louth by Irish Republicans who thought he was a spy. They placed him against a wall and shot him, leaving him for dead. Although he survived, he never fully recovered from his wounds and died fifteen years later at the age of thirty-eight,.

Like i said a local folkore legend,

I think if I was going treasure hunting, the place I'd go is off the Atlantic coast of Florida (called "Treasure Coast" for all the shipwrecks there.) You can legitimately hunt gold and artifacts there -- I believe the difference is that these are modern and so the context loss (that happens when pot hunters get onto a site that's 2,000 years old) isn't important.

Pot hunters are a real plague. They mention them in a recent documentary I saw about the Anglo Saxon treasure, and I know we had to have an armed guard on the site when we were digging up the 90 million year old crocodiles in Arlington (and we had a hard week's work getting the bones out before someone stole them.)

It'd be better if we could get rid of the black market for these things.

Originally posted by JohnnyCanuck

Originally posted by DeltaNine
There's really no need for distrust on either side, so long as both sides are pure in motive. A treasure hunter could find a treasure, give it away to science and still make a fortune on the book, Discovery/Nat Geo docos and talks and the like.

Certainly. I refer, though, to the process of excavation because any artifact is much diminished if not examined in its proper context. There is also a very thin line...many would state there is none...between treasure hunting and looting.

Ah that's a fair point and one I hadn't thought of. I'd always thought if I went treasure hunting it would be the actual hunting and not the looting that would appeal to me and I'd send in the archaeologists once I'd even remotely found anything. Thanks for that.

The sale of fresh historical objects is a terrible thing. I was first horrified by it when I saw the evidence of illicit excavations in Giza. HERE is a rather long winded video about one such 'illegal' dig. The truth is probably that the people in charge (in Giza Dr Hawass and the board of antiquities) are undoubtedly taking bribes to allow secret digs, thus the super-rich get to buy themselves some fresh sarcophagi. This is probably the case in all artifact-rich areas in the world.

Really liked that list by the OP. The only one I had heard of before was the Oak Island money pit. I think that place is fascinating. I would sink millions into digging it out if I could.

in the words of the words of Indianna Jones "That belongs in a museum!"

When I worked on the river (barges), the guys talked about a barge-load of gold that sunk somewhere on the Mississippi during the Civil War or immediately thereafter.
I suppose that one of the dredges should have found it, but maybe after the river changed course around New Madrid, it's now underground instead of underwater.

Originally posted by ZombieJ
The truth is probably that the people in charge (in Giza Dr Hawass and the board of antiquities) are undoubtedly taking bribes to allow secret digs, thus the super-rich get to buy themselves some fresh sarcophagi. This is probably the case in all artifact-rich areas in the world.

I would be exceedingly surprised if this were true. In fact, Hawass is driving folks nuts by the simple fact that he is asserting Egypt's ownership of its past.