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To: IngotWeTrust who wrote (26555)	1/20/1999 8:40:00 PM
From: Richnorth	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116770

I don't know whether the following tale has been posted earlier but anyway I'm posting it as it is interesting and it relates to the gold and silver cache of some forty-niners! What is equally interesting/incredible is that the finder (a poor part-time substitute teacher) of the treasure intends to give it all away to a museum!!! Remarkable and exemplary, eh??? --------------------------------------------------- 08:13 AM ET 01/20/99 Archaeologist Finds Treasure Chest Archaeologist Finds Treasure Chest DEATH VALLEY NATIONAL PARK, Calif. (AP) _ An archaeologist has found a wooden chest filled with gold and silver coins that may have been hidden during an ill-fated Gold Rush expedition across Death Valley. Archaeologist Jerry Freeman uncovered the treasure in November as he recreated the steps of a group known as The Lost Pioneers of 1849. He and four others retraced the entire journey in December. ''I was just blown away,'' Freeman said Monday. ''Nothing prepared me for this.'' The chest was in a cave, propped up on boulders and a board and in mint condition. The find is worth an estimated $500,000, said Freeman, a 56-year-old semi-retired substitute high school teacher. The National Park Service is examining the find to determine if it is authentic, but has not raised any questions. Freeman said he hopes to donate the find to a museum. With the coins were well-worn baby shoes, photographs and a letter documenting the wagon train trek of '49er William Robinson, who was among some 100 men, women and children seeking the gold-laden foothills of the Sierra Nevada. The group wound up in the merciless California desert. The letter was tucked inside a small hymnal. ''My Dear Edwin,'' Robinson wrote. ''Knowed, now we should have gone arownd. ... Ifen I don't raturn by end of fifty I wont never come.'' Robinson died 26 days later on Jan. 28, 1850. According to journals, Robinson drank too much cold water at the first spring the party came to at what is known today as Barrel Springs near Palmdale. He lay down for a nap and never awakened. The group, well-known to historians, was originally from the Midwest. The pioneers started out from Salt Lake City in October 1849, on an ill-conceived attempt to skirt the southern end of the Sierra Nevada and ended up crossing Death Valley. Most of the rest made it to what is now Valencia, in Los Angeles County, some 300 miles southwest of their destination. Freeman said he believes 13 died on the trek. The team found a manifest of the trunk's contents dated Jan. 2, 1850, along with nearly 80 pieces of currency, including $5 and $10 gold pieces and a number of silver dollars. None of the money appears to have dates after 1849, Freeman said. There was also a holstered pistol, a wooden powderhorn, a locket adorned with pearls and china bowls. A knitted shawl covered it all.