Hendricks Lake was By the time the summer of 1958 had ended, Waldrop, buzzing again and the moss-laden oaks echoed the sound of the SoRelles, and all of the other treasure hunters spurred on heavy equipment and trucks pulling in for another attempt. The real story of Hendricks Lake is not the legend alone, it is about the people who believed it fervently enough to put their time and money on the line in the hope of recovering it. 0000001207 00000 n The Lost San Saba Silver Mine This lost mine, with its rich vein of silver, has been what one treasure hunter writer has called the Holy Grail of Texas treasure seekers. In 1756 a Mexican official traveling through Texas learned from Indians of an exposed strain of pure silver that ran through a certain hill in Central Texas. Plus, if when they come back and nothing can be found, he says they have the whole Texas coast and more to continue their search. Seagoville pharmacist who was the diver that planted dynamite on the bottom of Hendricks Lake. When one of the recent landowners near the lake sold their property to the mining company, they inserted a treasure clause that reserves the rights to one-half of any treasure trove found on the Property by Purchaser. There will always be true believers in the treasure legend of Hendricks Lake. Roper is the latest in a long line of people to search for treasure in Hendricks Lake, and hes using the latest technology and techniques to do it. Lr !_) Now, more modern equipment was available, and one man used a metal detector and managed to get some interesting readings from the bottom of the lake. La Belle was a French ship that sank in Matagorda Bay in 1685 after running aground in a storm. 3. He is portrayed by Armando Riesco. Only recently did I learn of a parallel effort to tell the story of the Hendricks Lake treasure legend via film. All they found was a big sawblade from one of the sawmills that had operated on the lake; they left the artifact behind for future treasure hunters. hill on the Lakes side, the scans show some promising images. The lake is located in the extreme northeastern part of the county along the boundary between Rusk and Panola. But people buy into it, and thats the part thats interesting to me.. And if so is the treasure still there? In an interview . He knows more than a thing or two about the present . There are people who spend their whole lives and considerable sums of money searching for sunken treasure ships, lost mines, and hidden loot. Lake Ridge (5) Las Olas Isles (5) Las Olas by the Sea (0) Lauder Gate Isles (2) . The first documented treasure recovery attempt in 1894 was based on the belief that Santa Anna had dumped gold, silver, and jewels, By 1935, a full-page syndicated article fleshed out more details. The enduring story of Hendricks Lake is a treasure legend that has been around for more than 150 years. . So read this, get up, and go after your pot of gold. Please support the Cherokeean Herald by subscribing today. I dont want to give too much away, but part of the reason that Hendricks Lake may have been incorrectly added to the story is because, I believe, in the late 1830s there may have been something found on a property owned by a man with the last name OHendrick, Roper said. LAKE CHIEMSEE, GOLDEN CAULDRON In Bavaria, in southern Germany, Lake Chiemsee has been the focus of many divers ever since a Nazi-themed gold cauldron, worth more than $560,000, was found there in . endobj 0000003684 00000 n In 2018, we decided to renew the legend with some information of our own. The dig, which employed 39 Zuni workmen, was conducted from 1917 through 1921 and in 1923, and uncovered approximately 25,000 artifacts as well as human remains. The basic story is that in 1816 silver stolen by pirate Jean Lafitte from the Spanish brig Santa Rosa was being moved north from Matagorda Bay to St. Louis, Missouri, for disposal. In one Internet posting, I read the following: Texas has more buried treasure than any other state, with 229 sites within the states borders. Texas oilmen. According to reports, the total bounty would be worth more than $1.36 million today. Read More about USS Hatteras, This is a funny little slot filled with intricate features and attention-grabbing symbols. Somebody made fun of him; he clubbed the guy to death. Mainly clear. accepts, and the show continues at Hendricks Lake in East Texas. This is the place where six wagon loads of silver stolen by Jean Lafitte from a ship called the Santa Rosa were supposedly dumped, according to HendricksLake.com, a website run by author and independent researcher, Gary L. Pinkerton. It was packed with tons of gold and silver. Host Mattie Blake and local movie maker Christian B. Roper (see Sunken Silver) led a team conducting underwater searching. Clarksville Standard, August 29, 1884. endobj PRIME turn-key restaurant is a landmark of Fort Laud(Former Ernie's BBQ). Barnie Waldrop and the former Sheriff of Panola County, Corbett Akins, at the time were in an article on the first page of the Wall Street Journal. According to a story by Mary Roger of the Fort Worth Star Telegram, the silver was indeed robbed from a galleon by Laffite and his mean in the early 19th century. 147 0 obj May the hunters strike gold. A light came on when the probe hit metal. In one account, Pinkerton recalls doing research and finding a story about the son of the founder of Tatum. So where is it? According to the legend, the Cherokee were fleeing north after the Battle of Neches when Roper said their path crossed Little Cypress Creek on the property of a man named OHendrick. 152 0 obj That set off a huge treasure hunting stampede. A pharmacist. One group proposed to use a new divining rod activated with isotopes. Palm City. Brackston has been on board about 12 of those months. Pinkerton is an enigmatic figure. My favorite part of the legend is that the Guadalupe Mission in El Paso was built in way so that the shadows of the mission point to the Lost Padre Mine. In fact, this same story about Lafitte treasure being lost somewhere, was repeated over and over in almost the same pattern from the Gulf Coast all the way up into Arkansas and Missouri.. And the story was basically, you wanna be the guy selling the metal detectors, you dont want to be the guy out there looking for (stuff) that doesnt exist. In 1965, led a team of Iowans in some aborted, but ambitious, attempts at the treasure. It featured Pirate Treasures. Since that time, many parties and individuals have endeavored to find the Lost Treasure of Hendricks Lake, with searches as early as 1884 and as recently as the 1970s. TREASURE HUNTER CLAIMS FBI IS COVERING UP DISCOVERY OF CIVIL WAR-ERA GOLD WORTH MILLIONS "The two vessels separated after the impact, both fatally damaged. the new book is available in paperback. We organized some strategic searches via dives doing grid patterns and things of that sort to try to get those up.. One person who is still committed to the Hendricks Lake legend is Jacksonville documentary film maker and treasure hunter, Christian B. Roper. And then again, the 50s and 60s, there were a bunch of these treasure magazines about metal detectors. The open-endedness and lack of conclusion is what attracts Roper to the story today. 159 0 obj Just about every book written about Texas in that era mentioned it. The story was reporting the fact that Tatum beat a man to death who essentially made fun of that effort, Pinkerton said. Low 47F. endobj Historian Gary Pinkerton says the legend is mostly unsubstantiated. Some said it was Santa Annas gold sent north from San Jacinto, and others say it was not even in Hendricks Lake, but in Martin Creek. A team of treasure hunters could be on the verge of unearthing the "world's largest treasure hoard," said to be worth over $20 billion. And soldiers were overtaking them, so they had six wagon loads full of gold and silver they dumped it in the lake. The stories of treasure have been around for a long time, Pinkerton said. 4. The legend says that in 1816, Laffite and his fellow pirates plundered six wagon loads worth of silver from the Spanish. A TV repairman. For Roper, stories like these are more than a curiosity. Many came to the lake to drain, dredge, dig, dynamite and scan its murky depths. But they got nothing. Gary L. Pinkerton, Trammels Trace: The First Road to Texas from the North (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2016). endstream 0000001730 00000 n Filmmaker Brackston McKnight uses a metal detector on his property, searching for lost treasure. January 2023 Reader Quiz: What Did You Learn? brought up to the surface. Joe spent many hours growing up around Milzie Williamson and later used his Fisher M-Scope metal detector to search those mysterious holes. I havent found anything to suggest that a centuries-worth of stories about buried treasure have any credence. Hits are sounded off. This same engineer, only two years earlier, had led the team who located the Tecumseh, a Union metalclad ship sunk during the battle of Mobile Bay in August 1864. endobj A dirt contractor who learned about the legend when helping another man drill holes on the edge of the lake. The silver was never recovered. hunt presented by Christian, Rick and Marty offer to send Matty Blake down to Laffite was wounded in the battle and is believed to have died just after dawn. (Courtesy of Andy Swanger) As far as more. All Rights Reserved. Omoa was the site of the largest Spanish fort in Central America, a fort constructed to safeguard the Spanish silver shipments from the mines of Tegucigalpa in Honduras. "My father and his friends shared the Hendricks Lake treasure legend with me when I was very young, perhaps 6 or 7 years old," Roper said. He built a new kind of sewing machine, and in 1851 he started I.M. A lookout for alligators and venomous snakes is . I looked into it a little bit in high school and at UT, just on and off. The same thing is true for the Paradise Cove Lodge down California 178. 0000004315 00000 n Its just a great story and what intrigued me was the people engaged in that all over those 100 years.. We had not even known that he had heard of the treasure. Christian B. Roper, Ryan Travis, and Brackston McKnight, all Jacksonville natives, are working toward a documentary film about Hendricks Lake called Sunken Silver. Christian and the treasure hunting team are looking forward to using new technology to scan the bottom of the lake for possible anomalies, and hope to find a treasure which was missed in past searchers. When a producer for The History Channel contacted me in early summer, the legend was about to add a new chapter to the story.The Lagina brothers of Oak Island fame were beginning a new series, Beyond Oak Island, and the story of Hendricks Lake was the premiere episode on November 17, 2020. It is my sincere belief that the Hendricks Lake treasure was silver taken by Lafitte from capturing of the Spanish ship Santa Rosa in Matagorda Bay in 1820. The Lagina Brothers, famous for their search for the lost treasure on Oak Island and featured in the show The Curse of Oak Island, now hosts a new show called, Beyond Oak Island. 2019. Gary L. Pinkerton is an author and independent researcher. Also join us in the Facebook Group: Beyond Oak Island Treasures for more discussions. <>/Border[0 0 0]/Contents(www.easttexashistorical.org)/Rect[308.5376 282.2367 447.0903 295.1273]/StructParent 4/Subtype/Link/Type/Annot>> Im hoping someday that people can get back down there, Pinkerton said. https://www.tshaonline.org, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/hendricks-lake. As of 2019 much of the land surrounding the lake was in the permit area for the surface mining for lignite that covers thousands of acres. The tale basically states Galveston-based pirate Jean Laffite, in the year 1816, plundered a Spanish ship named the Santa Rosa. In the early 1820s, Great Colombia under the government of Simon Bolivar had begun commissioning former privateers as officers in their newly formed navy. The desire to believe that millions of dollars of silver bars still lie at the bottom of Hendricks Lake is not for the treasure hunters only. During her time at the Watchman, she enjoyed writing features about businesses and local events. And then he became postmaster two years later, so apparently nothing came of that. When they returned after the war, Singer could no longer find Money Hill because the sands had shifted and erased all the landmarks that he once knew. This caused the In the 1950s, the Sabine River and the nearby lake (Hendrick's Lake) experienced a new onslaught of treasure seekers when the story of Laffite's silver was published by the True West magazine. June 6, 2020 - Fenn writes on his blog that the treasure has been found. The legend of Hendricks Lake treasure has inspired men to search for it for at least 150 years. 1``b`5 Y0$ Au`j`H@ Since that time, many parties and individuals have endeavored to find the Lost Treasure of Hendricks Lake, with searches as early as 1884 and as recently as the 1970s. It was a cloudy evening with low visibility, and Laffite attempted to capture what appeared to be two Spanish merchant vessels. In 1884, Tatum clubbed a man to death who made light of his attempts to drain Hendricks Lake. 148 0 obj Handbook of Texas Online, There is a legend surrounding a supposed lost treasure in East Texas, one that filmmaker Christian B. Roper and his team have been researching for a documentary production, Sunken Silver. Building on that production they are airing a new 8-episode series titled "Beyond Oak Island" premiering Tuesday, November 17 at 9:00 pm central. there were treasure legends, and the most common story is that Lafitte stranded a ship, a Spanish ship with gold, in Matagorda Bay in Corpus and was taking it to St. Louis on some wagon trains over roads that dont exist in 1816. Soldiers approach, wagons sunk in Hendricks Lake, an oxbow lake just south of the Sabine River in northeastern Rusk County. Soldiers approach, wagons sunk in Hendricks Lake, an oxbow lake just south of the Sabine River in northeastern Rusk County. The mud is deep on the bottom, and just as It was one of the first times I met with Brackston after we graduated university last summer, Roper recalled. In 1915 in New Orleans a worker uncovered a chest filled with more than 1,500 doubloons . Join the adventures in Beyond Oak Island- Tuesdays at 10PM and summaries and more in depth looks into the many stories of treasure, here at MW! He also might have(might have, I remind you)come across a wooden chest containing what was then $80,000 in jewelry and coins. After years of searching, Roper is still optimistic, and he said that his commitment to Hendricks Lake will still be there no matter what he finds. A Book by Gary L. Pinkerton, author of "Trammel's Trace". Sorry, there are no recent results for popular images. Jean Laffite was a French pirate and privateer born circa 1780. Pinkerton went on to describe how there have been dozens of expeditions and attempts to find buried treasure between Hendricks Lake and the Sabine River. Is there anything better than the tale of someone discovering a hidden clue, figuring out an obscure reference, finding the final piece of the puzzle, and then discovering a fantastic stash of gold or silver? click photo for more. According to legend, Singer hid the money he found in a large sand dune that he called Money Hill. But as fate would have it, he and his family had to abandon their Texas home during the Civil War because they were considered Union sympathizers. We report on vital issues from politics to education and are the indispensable authority on the Texas scene, covering everything from music to cultural events with insightful recommendations. We'll send you a couple of emails per month, filled with fascinating history facts that you can share with your friends. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/hendricks-lake. Singer Treasure on Padre Island In the mid-nineteenth century, a man named Isaac Merritt Singer made significant improvements to the sewing machine. Stories like this, its what created a filmmaker in myself, its what creates archeologists, its what creates people that come up with plans to conquer whatever they want to solve in life, its just a special place.. ingots were in transport, but the Spanish had set a trap. I always thought it was interesting that people had reason to believe there was pirate treasure 200 miles from the coast.. I spent the majority of the summer of 2020 organizing expeditions into the lake, through sonar we had come up with quite a few hits of things that were very interesting, Roper said. Hendricks Lake is a special place for Roper. Jos R. Ralat is Texas Monthlys taco editor, writing about tacos and Mexican food. The Cherokees started getting their butts kicked. TYLER, Texas (KETK) Legends of buried treasure have fascinated people around the world since time immemorial.