Jean Lafitte's Buried Plunder

The account

The privateer Jean Lafitte ran his empire out of the Louisiana bayous, and the swamps and islands of Barataria are riddled with the legend of treasure he buried and never reclaimed.

Leads, where the trail points now

• The search zones are the bayous and barrier islands of Barataria south of New Orleans and the Galveston area where Lafitte later based; both are full of local Lafitte-buried-it-here sites.
• Lafitte was a privateer with real plunder but kept moving; no verified Lafitte cache has ever been found, and most maps are 20th-century inventions.
• The terrain is private, marshy, and storm-changed, with little documentary anchor; treat it as folklore.