Every legend, still open
485 trails of gold, ships, and the people who went looking. Each one is unfinished. Pick one up.
Query the Case File Registry Submit a site
SS Central America
Three days she fought the hurricane, bucket lines, prayers, a flag flown upside down. On the third night the Ship of Gol…
ShipwreckNuestra Señora de Atocha
Sixteen years Mel Fisher searched. Sixteen years of empty water, of debts, of a son and daughter-in-law lost to the sea,…
ShipwreckSanta Margarita
Sister galleon of the Atocha, lost in the same hurricane: 166,000 pieces of eight, 550+ silver ingots, 9,000+ oz of gold…
ShipwreckSan Pedro (1733 Fleet)
One of ~20 ships wrecked in the 1733 hurricane. Now the San Pedro Underwater Archaeological Preserve.…
ShipwreckHMS Winchester
Scurvy had killed most of her 350 crew when a hurricane drove the 60-gun warship onto the reef. Now within Pennekamp Sta…
ShipwreckSS Brother Jonathan
The worst shipping disaster on the Pacific coast. A storm drove the overloaded sidewheeler onto the reef.…
ShipwreckSS Winfield Scott
Ran aground in fog; all 450 aboard survived. The much-salvaged wreck now lies within Channel Islands National Park.…
ShipwreckSS Yankee Blade
Struck a rock pinnacle in fog, tearing open her hull. A cache of rare Double Eagles surfaced after 1977 recoveries.…
ShipwreckEl Nuevo Constante
Ran aground in a hurricane in shallow water. A shrimper snagged it in 1979; Louisiana archaeologists excavated it.…
ShipwreckSS Islander
Likely struck an iceberg and sank in 20 minutes. Later expeditions recovered sealed gold pokes; much may remain.…
ShipwreckSteamboat Arabia
The shifting Missouri River buried her 45 ft under a cornfield. Excavated in 1988, the largest pre-Civil War artifact co…
ShipwreckWestmoreland
Foundered in a December snowstorm. Found upright in ~180 ft of water in 2010; nothing removed, pending permits.…
ShipwreckSS Pewabic
Collided with her sister ship and sank in minutes, killing ~100+. The worst disaster in Lake Huron history.…
Shipwreck1715 Treasure Fleet
Eleven ships, a year's treasure of an empire, and one July hurricane. By dawn the Florida shore was a graveyard of masts…
ShipwreckQueen Anne's Revenge
Blackbeard ran his own flagship onto the bar at Beaufort Inlet, deliberately, his marooned crew swore, to cheat them of …
ShipwreckWhydah Gally
Black Sam Bellamy, the poor man's pirate prince, richest freebooter of his age, turned his prize ship toward Cape Cod in…
ShipwreckSS Republic
Civil-War steamer lost in a hurricane. Odyssey Marine recovered ~51,000 coins from 1,700 ft down.…
ShipwreckEl Cazador
A Spanish brig carrying silver to prop up colonial Louisiana. A fishing trawler snagged the wreck in 1993.…
Recovered HoardSaddle Ridge Hoard
A couple, a dog, an evening walk on their own land, and a rusted can breaking the surface of a path they had worn for ye…
Recovered HoardGreat Kentucky Hoard
Morgan's raiders were coming, and somebody in Kentucky trusted no bank, so the gold went into the ground, eagle by eagle…
Open LegendLost Dutchman's Mine
On his deathbed, with a candle box of rich ore beneath the bed for proof, Jacob Waltz whispered directions into the Supe…
Open LegendBeale Ciphers
Three sheets of numbers, left with a Virginia innkeeper by a man who rode west and never came back. The second sheet, ke…
Open LegendLost Adams Diggings
A prospector led to a glittering canyon lost the way after an Apache raid. The "Zigzag Canyon" has never been refound.…
Open LegendVictorio Peak
Doc Noss came down off the peak in 1937 talking of a cavern stacked with gold bars and Spanish skeletons. He dynamited t…
Open LegendConfederate Gold
When Richmond fell, the Confederacy's treasury fled south by wagon train, gold and silver under armed guard, rolling thr…
Open LegendSwift's Lost Silver Mine
John Swift's journals describe rich silver workings hidden before the Revolution. Carved trees keep the legend alive.…
Open LegendDutch Schultz's Treasure
With the tax men closing in, the gangster packed a steel box, cash, bonds, diamonds, seven million by the telling, and d…
Open LegendCahuenga Pass Treasure
Loot tied to the Mexican government buried under a tree in the pass, now under freeways. A string of finders met odd dea…
Open LegendLost Cement Mine
Brothers found a reddish gold-laced rock near the Owens River, then never relocated it. Mark Twain wrote of the hunt.…
Open LegendMosby's Confederate Cache
Mosby's raiders buried Union officers' valuables between two marked pines, then all the guards were killed or captured.…
Open LegendLost Padre Mine
Spanish padres are said to have hidden mine workings and church treasure in the Franklins before fleeing north.…
Open LegendOak Island Money Pit
In 1795 a boy found a hollow in the earth beneath an old oak, and under it flagstones, then oak platforms every ten feet…
Open LegendCaptain Kidd's Charles Island Treasure
Captain Kidd supposedly buried iron chests of gold here in 1699, then cursed the ground. The 'thrice-cursed' island is n…
Open LegendThomas Tew's Buried Plunder
Newport's 'Rhode Island Pirate' is said to have buried his Red Sea fortune before a cannon shot killed him on his final …
Open LegendDungeon Rock Pirate Treasure
Pirate Thomas Veal was reputedly sealed inside a cave by a 1658 earthquake. A spiritualist spent decades dynamiting the …
Open LegendSandy Gordon's Isles of Shoals Silver
Blackbeard's associate Sandy Gordon supposedly buried plundered silver on White Island. His widow Martha is said to haun…
Open LegendSmugglers' Notch Caches
For two centuries smugglers and rum-runners stashed loot in this rugged pass. Locals say recovering it all would take a …
Open LegendCaptain Kidd's Jewell Island Treasure
The most famous of Maine's reputed hiding spots for Kidd's fortune. A mysterious chest unearthed there in the 1850s deep…
Open LegendBlackbeard's Cape May Booty
Blackbeard allegedly buried plunder near Cape May, entrusting four witches to guard it. Spanish coins really did wash up…
Open LegendBlue Mountain Lost Payroll
A Revolutionary-era payroll is said to be hidden in a cave in the dense Blue Mountains, linked in lore to 'Mad Anthony' …
Open LegendMinerva French Military Payroll
In 1755 French soldiers retreating from Fort Duquesne are said to have buried a payroll near Minerva to keep it from the…
Open LegendReno Gang Lost Train Loot
America's first train-robbing outlaws hauled ~$96,000 from an 1868 heist. Vigilantes lynched them days later, none revea…
Open LegendCave-in-Rock River Pirate Loot
From the 1790s this Ohio River bluff was the lair of river pirates and the murderous Harpe brothers, who hid stolen gold…
Open LegendPoverty Island Lost Gold
During the Civil War a ship carrying millions in gold bullion is said to have gone down off Poverty Island. Divers have …
Open LegendFort Crawford Buried Payroll
In 1832 soldiers from Fort Crawford reportedly buried four saddlebags of gold, the garrison's payroll, then were killed …
Open LegendDr. Docker's Gold Cache
Fearing both armies, Dr. Docker secretly buried his fortune in 1863. Townsfolk tortured his servant to death trying to l…
Open LegendBranch Mountain Treasure
Three Confederate deserters who robbed a Virginia bank in 1861 stashed their loot in a small cave near Helmick Rock and …
Open LegendBlackbeard's Plum Point Treasure
Blackbeard kept a house on Plum Point, and locals long swore he buried loot nearby. Only he and the Devil knew where, he…
Open LegendStede Bonnet's Colleton Treasure
The 'Gentleman Pirate' is said to have buried plundered gold along the tidal creeks of Colleton County before his captur…
Open LegendBrentwood Hills Confederate Gold
Legend holds a Confederate detachment hid gold bars in the Brentwood hillsides, then died in battle. Some say a curse gu…
Open LegendAthens Confederate Gold
In 1865 retreating Confederate troops mired their wagon in a bog and buried two crates of coins at a stream crossing, ne…
Open LegendJames Copeland's Buried Gold
Land pirate James Copeland is said to have buried three barrels of gold near Catahoula Creek before he was hanged in 185…
Open LegendCoochie Brake Spanish Silver
A Spanish pack train ambushed near this swamp supposedly buried ten earthen vases of silver and gold in caves dug into t…
Open LegendLost Spanish Silver Mine of the Ouachita
Spaniards allegedly worked a rich silver mine here, then sealed its entrance with a great rock and fled to Mexico, never…
Open LegendGasparilla's Pirate Treasure
Pirate Jose Gaspar is said to have buried thirteen chests of plunder around Boca Grande. He leapt to his death in anchor…
Open LegendCaptain Kidd's Cape Henlopen Chest
Legend says Kidd buried a chest of gold in the shifting dunes of Cape Henlopen, then fed the tale to bargain for his lif…
Open LegendJesse James' Des Arc Cache
After the 1874 Gads Hill train robbery, legend says Jesse buried a fortune in the rugged hills near Des Arc. The main st…
Open LegendNorthfield Raid Buried Loot
Days before their disastrous 1876 raid, the James-Younger gang allegedly buried earlier loot at a farm south of town. It…
Open LegendLa Caverna del Oro (Cave of Gold)
Conquistador monks supposedly mined gold from a demon-guarded cave, then fled. A skeleton in Spanish armor and a red cro…
Open LegendLost Rhoades Mine
Ute chief Wakara supposedly led Thomas Rhoades to a secret mine whose gold minted early Mormon coins. The location died …
Open LegendLost Sheepherder Mine
A Spanish sheepherder found red rock threaded with pure wire gold and packed out a sackful, but refused to reveal the sp…
Open LegendLost Cabin Mine (Bighorns)
Seven prospectors struck it rich and built a cabin, only to be wiped out in an attack before carrying the gold out. The …
Open LegendButch Cassidy's Buried Loot
Legend says the outlaw buried his robbery gold in an iron pot near Lander, marking trees with mule shoes, until the mark…
Open LegendLost Blue Bucket Mine
Children of an 1845 wagon train scooped heavy pebbles from a stream, dismissed as copper. After the Gold Rush proved the…
Open LegendThomas Douglas's Gold Cache
A neighbor watched Thomas Douglas bury a chest of gold coins as a storm rolled in. Heavy snow followed, he died soon aft…
Open LegendWichita Mountains Iron Door Mine
Spanish miners are said to have sealed their gold behind a heavy iron door near the failed San Calixto mission. Abandone…
Open LegendCoronado's Gold at Pawnee Rock
Fearing an attack, Coronado's expedition is said to have buried a fortune near Pawnee Rock, planning to retrieve it. The…
Open LegendSidney, Deadwood Stage Gold Bars
Outlaws ambushed a treasure-express stagecoach for ~400 lbs of gold bars. A posse cornered them at Lodgepole Creek; the …
Open LegendLost Cabin Mine of the St. Elias
Three railroad men crossing the St. Elias glaciers found a sandbar studded with gold and built a cabin. Only one stagger…
Open LegendKing Kamehameha's Royal Treasure
Kamehameha the Great is said to have hidden a hoard of trade gold, royal jewelry, and sacred weapons in secret caves on …
Historic BattleBattle of Gettysburg
The turning point of the Civil War; ~51,000 casualties over three days in July 1863.…
Historic BattleBattle of Antietam
The bloodiest single day in American history, ~23,000 casualties; prompted the Emancipation Proclamation.…
Historic BattleBattle of Shiloh
Grant's army was surprised near Pittsburg Landing; the Hornet's Nest and Bloody Pond saw savage fighting.…
Historic BattleBattles of Saratoga
The decisive American victory that brought France into the war as an ally.…
Historic BattleSiege of Yorktown
Cornwallis's surrender on Oct 19, 1781 effectively ended the Revolution.…
Historic BattleBattle of the Little Bighorn
Custer's Last Stand. Detector surveys here famously mapped the fight via fired cartridges, pioneering battlefield archae…
Historic BattleBattle of the Alamo
The iconic 13-day siege and last stand of ~200 defenders, including Crockett, Bowie, and Travis.…
Historic BattleBattle of New Orleans (Chalmette)
Andrew Jackson's defenders shattered a British frontal assault behind the Rodriguez Canal, making him a national hero.…
Historic BattleSiege of Vicksburg
A 47-day siege that gave the Union the Mississippi River and split the Confederacy.…
Historic BattleBattle of Cowpens
Daniel Morgan's brilliant double-envelopment crippled British forces in the South.…
Historic BattleBattle of Monmouth
A drawn battle famed for 'Molly Pitcher' that showcased the Continental Army's new professionalism.…
Historic BattleFort Ticonderoga
Strategic Lake Champlain fort; its 1775 capture supplied cannon for the siege of Boston.…
Historic BattleBattle of Chancellorsville
Lee's 'perfect battle', a daring flank attack that routed Hooker but cost Stonewall Jackson his life.…
Historic BattleBull Run / Manassas
Site of the first major land battle of the war (1861) and a major Confederate victory (1862).…
Historic BattleBattle of Fallen Timbers
'Mad' Anthony Wayne's victory opened the Northwest Territory. Detector surveys here relocated the true battle site.…
Historic BattleBattle of Horseshoe Bend
Jackson's force crushed the Red Stick Creeks on the Tallapoosa River, launching his national career.…
Lost MilitaryUSS Cyclops
The Navy collier vanished with 306 aboard, the largest non-combat loss of life in US Navy history. No wreckage ever foun…
Lost MilitaryUSS Scorpion
The nuclear attack sub sank with all 99 crew in 1968; located that October under 9,800 ft of water. Cause still unresolv…
Lost MilitaryUSS Indianapolis
Torpedoed after delivering atomic-bomb components; sank in 12 minutes. Only 316 of ~1,195 survived days of shark attacks…
Lost MilitarySultana
Her boilers exploded, killing ~1,700, mostly released Union POWs, the deadliest maritime disaster in US history.…
Lost MilitaryUSS Monitor
The revolutionary Civil War ironclad foundered under tow in a gale. Found in 1973; its turret was raised in 2002.…
Lost MilitaryDade's Massacre
Seminole warriors ambushed two Army companies (108 men); only three survived, igniting the Second Seminole War.…
Lost MilitaryFetterman Fight
Warriors led in part by Crazy Horse lured Capt. Fetterman's 81-man detachment into an ambush and killed every man.…
Lost MilitaryThe Lost Battalion (WWI)
~550 men of the 77th Division were cut off behind German lines for six days under fire; only ~194 walked out.…
Lost MilitaryWham Paymaster Robbery
Robbers ambushed an Army paymaster and his Buffalo Soldier escort after a 90-minute gunfight. The coin was never recover…
Lost MilitaryJefferson Davis & the Confederate Treasury
The treasure train scattered during Davis's flight; he carried almost nothing when captured, spawning the 'lost Confeder…
Lost MilitaryUSS Conestoga
The Navy tug vanished in 1921 with 56 aboard, a mystery unsolved for 95 years until NOAA confirmed the wreck in 2016.…
Archaeological SiteCahokia Mounds
A Mississippian metropolis of ~10,000 to 20,000 with massive earthen pyramids and a 'Woodhenge' calendar, abandoned by ~…
Archaeological SiteMesa Verde
Elaborate stone villages tucked into canyon alcoves, abandoned ~1300. The first national park created to protect cultura…
Archaeological SiteChaco Canyon
The center of a vast Puebloan world linked by engineered roads, with great houses aligned to solar and lunar cycles.…
Archaeological SiteSerpent Mound
A 1,348-ft earthen serpent appearing to swallow an egg, its head aligned to the summer-solstice sunset.…
Archaeological SitePoverty Point
Concentric earthen ridges built by hunter-gatherers ~3,500 years ago, one of North America's oldest large-scale earthwor…
Archaeological SiteSpiro Mounds
A ceremonial center whose elite tombs held exquisite shell, copper, and stone art, infamously looted in the 1930s.…
Archaeological SiteEtowah Mounds
A walled political-religious capital on the Etowah River with elite burials and carved marble figures.…
Archaeological SiteHovenweep
Multi-story masonry towers clustered around canyon-head springs, built just before the late-1200s depopulation.…
Archaeological SiteFort Raleigh (Lost Colony)
~115 colonists vanished between 1587 and 1590, leaving only 'CROATOAN' carved on a post. Still under active NPS investig…
Archaeological SiteFort Mose
Spanish Florida freed people who fled English Carolina; they defended St. Augustine from this fortified town.…
ShipwreckRMS Titanic
Unsinkable, they said. Four days out she grazed the ice, and proved them wrong in two hours and forty minutes. Fifteen h…
ShipwreckEndurance (Shackleton)
The ice took her slowly, beams cracking like artillery while the crew stood on the floe and watched their ship die. Shac…
Recovered HoardBonanza Creek (Klondike)
Rabbit Creek was nothing, a trickle in the Yukon bush, until George Carmack and Skookum Jim lifted a thumb of gold from …
Open LegendNewport Tower
A round stone tower some believe is a Norse or medieval relic of pre-Columbian visitors. Most archaeologists date it to …
Open LegendDighton Rock
A 40-ton boulder covered in carvings attributed over the years to Norse explorers, the Portuguese Miguel Corte-Real, or …
Open LegendWestford Knight
A worn rock carving some tie to a 14th-century Scottish (Sinclair) expedition; skeptics call it natural glacial scarring…
Archaeological SiteThe Maine Penny (Goddard Site)
At a Native American site in Maine, diggers found an authentic 11th-century Norwegian silver penny, rare, real evidence …
ShipwreckEndeavour Reef (Cook's anchors)
Captain Cook's HMS Endeavour struck this reef in 1770 and survived only by heaving six cannons and several anchors overb…
ShipwreckBatavia
A Dutch East India flagship wrecked on her maiden voyage, followed by one of history's bloodiest mutinies and massacres.…
ShipwreckVergulde Draeck (Gilt Dragon)
A Dutch VOC ship lost with a fortune in coin; her survivors vanished into the bush. Found in 1963, she set off a treasur…
ShipwreckSS Yongala
A passenger steamer lost with all 122 aboard in a cyclone. Now one of the world's great dive wrecks, encrusted and teemi…
Lost MilitaryHMAS Sydney (II)
Australia's worst naval loss, the cruiser sank with all 645 hands after a mutually destructive battle with the German ra…
Open LegendYamashita's Gold
They called it Golden Lily: the plunder of half of Asia moved by ship and rail ahead of a collapsing war and, so the sto…
Open LegendNightingale Island Treasure
Captain John Thomas supposedly stashed a fortune of Spanish coin in the caves of this tiny, remote South Atlantic island…
Shipwreck1554 Padre Island Plate Fleet
Three Spanish ships, Espíritu Santo, San Esteban, and Santa María de Yciar, wrecked in a storm carrying silver from Mexi…
Open LegendThe Kruger Millions
As the British took Pretoria in 1900, President Paul Kruger's government emptied the Mint and the National Bank and fled…
ShipwreckBom Jesus
A Portuguese trader bound for India, lost in a 1533 storm, and found in 2008 when diamond miners drained a lagoon in the…
Open LegendRommel's Gold
Gold and valuables seized from the Jewish community of Djerba, Tunisia in 1943 were reportedly crated, shipped toward Co…
ShipwreckSan José Galleon
She blew apart rather than surrender, a British broadside found her powder magazine in 1708, and the richest galleon in …
Open LegendTreasure of Lima (Cocos Island)
Lima was falling, and the Church handed its fortune, golden Virgins, jeweled crosses, chests of coin, to a trustworthy E…
Open LegendThe Amber Room
An entire room of amber and gold, six tons of it, glowing like the inside of honey, pried from Catherine Palace by looti…
Recovered HoardThe Golden Owl (La Chouette d'Or)
Eleven riddles. One bronze owl, buried at night by a man who carried the answer to his grave in 2009, and still France k…
Recovered HoardThe Hoxne Hoard
Eric Lawes went into the field to find his friend's lost hammer. The detector sang over something else: a Roman strongbo…
Recovered HoardThe Staffordshire Hoard
Detectorist Terry Herbert, sweeping a freshly plowed field, uncovered the largest Anglo-Saxon gold hoard ever found, swo…
ShipwreckSS Gairsoppa
A British cargo steamer torpedoed by a U-boat in 1941 and found 4,700 meters down. Salvors raised 110 tons of silver, th…
Open LegendAtahualpa's Gold (Llanganates)
When the Spanish executed the Inca emperor Atahualpa mid-ransom, General Rumiñahui supposedly hid the unpaid gold in the…
Open LegendThe Copper Scroll Caches
Among the Dead Sea Scrolls is one hammered into copper, a plain inventory of 64 hidden caches of temple-scale treasure. …
Open LegendThe Tsar's Gold (Lake Baikal)
As Admiral Kolchak's White Army collapsed, part of the Imperial gold reserve vanished along the frozen Trans-Siberian ro…
Open LegendThe Golden Madonna of the Maravillas
She carried the wealth of an empire and a golden Madonna to watch over it. The bank took ship, silver, and statue alike.…
ShipwreckSilver Bank (Nuestra Señora de la Concepción)
A treasure so vast it named the sea floor it sank into. Two famous salvages, three centuries apart, and the bank has not…
Open LegendNorman Island Treasure
The island that likely whispered Treasure Island into Stevenson's ear earned the honor honestly: real chests, really bur…
Open LegendIsla de Mona Caches
A waterless rock riddled with caves, set in the busiest treasure lane of the Spanish Main. Portugués hid here; Kidd paus…
ShipwreckL'Orient & the Treasure of Malta
The explosion stopped the battle, both fleets simply stared. When the smoke cleared, the gold of three centuries of crus…
Open LegendThe Treasure of Alaric
Alaric sacked Rome and died within the year, and his men gave him a funeral no grave-robber could follow: a river for a …
ShipwreckAntikythera Wreck
Sponge divers found an ancient freighter full of Greek masterworks, and a corroded lump of gears that proved to be a two…
Open LegendThe Loch Arkaig Jacobite Gold
France sent gold for a rising that was already bleeding out. So the coin went into Highland ground, entrusted to men who…
Open LegendThe Nazi Gold Train
The mountains are honeycombed with tunnels the Reich never finished, which is exactly the problem: there is room down th…
Open LegendAmaro Pargo's Chest
A privateer rich enough to lend to kings died leaving the cruelest document in treasure hunting: a legal inventory of a …
Open LegendLa Buse's Cryptogram
Olivier Levasseur took one of the richest prizes in pirate history and answered the noose with a puzzle. The cryptogram …
Open LegendThe Awa Maru
A green-lit relief ship sunk by mistake in a single salvo, two thousand lives in twelve minutes, and then the rumors: bu…
Open LegendThe Honjo Masamune
Seven centuries of samurai history in a single blade, handed over in occupied Tokyo and walked out the door by a ghost. …
Open LegendLasseter's Reef
Harold Lasseter said he found a reef of gold as a young man, and spent the rest of his life failing to find it twice. Th…
ShipwreckThe General Grant
A ship eaten by an island. The General Grant drifted becalmed into a cavern and the swell beat her under; ten survivors …
Open LegendVault B of Padmanabhaswamy
When the courts opened the temple's vaults, the world gasped: gold by the ton in chambers no one had entered for centuri…
Open LegendThe Tomb of Genghis Khan
The man who ruled from the Pacific to the Caspian was buried so well that eight centuries of searching, satellites inclu…
Open LegendLake Guatavita, El Dorado
The legend began with a real ceremony: a new Muisca ruler, gilded in gold dust, pouring treasure into a mountain lake. E…
Open LegendPaititi
When Cusco fell, the story goes, the gold walked east, over the cordillera and down into cloud forest that eats expediti…
Open LegendRennes-le-Château
A hilltop village, a renovation, and then money: towers, gardens, banquets, on a curate's salary. Parchments in a pillar…
Open LegendThe Irish Crown Jewels
They were stolen from inside a fortress, without a forced lock, by someone who knew exactly where the keys lived. The in…
Open LegendThe Tucker Cross
Teddy Tucker pulled the finest piece of shipwreck treasure ever found in Bermuda out of a 1594 wreck, and twenty years l…
Open LegendÎle Sainte-Marie Pirate Hoards
For thirty years this little island was the pirates' home port, Kidd, Tew, Condent, all of them, dividing the richest se…
Archaeological SiteThe Tomb of Qin Shi Huang
The Terracotta Army, eight thousand soldiers, is merely the garrison outside the walls. The tomb itself has never been o…
ShipwreckConcepción of Saipan
The Manila galleons were the richest ships that ever sailed, and the Concepción was lost in sight of land with a year of…
Open LegendThe Sacambaya Treasure
When the Jesuits were ordered out of South America, the wealth of their missions did not sail with them. At Sacambaya th…
Open LegendTrindade Island Treasure
A volcanic fang in the empty Atlantic, a deathbed map, and a Victorian yachtsman who believed it enough to dig for a sea…
Open LegendAmelia Earhart's Electra
She had crossed the world and had one speck of coral left to find. The radio grew louder as she neared, and then the oce…
Open LegendMoctezuma's Treasure (La Noche Triste)
The conquistadors loaded themselves with an empire's gold and ran for the causeways in the dark. The lake took the greed…
Open LegendPancho Villa's Caches
An army has to be paid, and Villa paid his from holes in the desert. The stories agree on the method and argue about eve…
Open LegendThe Lost Lemon Mine
Two prospectors found the gold; only one came back, and not all of him. The mine that drove Lemon mad acquired a curse t…
ShipwreckSMS Scharnhorst & the Squadron's Gold
Von Spee's squadron had crossed the Pacific with the treasury of a colonial empire's outpost, so the story goes, and the…
Open LegendThe Jesuit Tunnels of Córdoba
The crown expelled the Jesuits and expected their treasuries; the ledgers came up strangely light across South America. …
Open LegendThe Treasure of Juan Fernández
The island that marooned the real Robinson Crusoe also, the story goes, banked a Spanish navigator's plunder. The modern…
ShipwreckThe Mahogany Ship
For forty years there was a ship in the dunes that nobody could explain, too old, too strange, possibly Portuguese, poss…
Recovered HoardThe Welcome Stranger
Two Cornish miners scratching a worked-over field hit the largest nugget human beings have ever found, sitting just bene…
ShipwreckThe Elingamite
A mail steamer, a fog bank, and an island that appears out of nowhere even on clear charts. The bullion room gave up mos…
Recovered HoardShackleton's Whisky
Shackleton walked away from his hut in 1909 and left the Scotch under the floor. A century later conservators chipped th…
Open LegendLake Toplitz
In the final weeks, SS convoys backed up to a black alpine lake and rolled crates into it for days. Some held forged ban…
Open LegendThe Nibelungen Hoard
Before the dragon, before the opera, there was a hoard and a river. The Nibelungenlied names a stretch of the Rhine, and…
Open LegendMorgan's Panama Plunder
Henry Morgan took the richest city in the New World with a jungle-sick army, and when the loot was divided, the men who …
ShipwreckThe Galleons of Vigo Bay
An entire silver fleet, cornered in a Spanish bay and set ablaze rather than surrendered. Verne had Captain Nemo fund th…
Open GroundRye Patch, the Majuba Placers
The desert kept this one quiet until 1938, when Charles Dice pulled several hundred ounces from ground everyone had walk…
Open GroundGemfield Gem Claims
Outside a half-ghost gold town sits a hillside seamed with color: lavender, fire-banded, moss-green, blue. You sign the …
Open GroundFree Claim No. 6, Bonanza Creek
This is the creek that started the stampede of 1898, and one claim on it, No. 6 above Discovery, is held open for anyone…
Open GroundCrater of Diamonds
A 37-acre plowed field over the throat of an ancient volcano, the only diamond mine on earth where the public digs and k…
Open GroundSunstone Public Collection Area
Thirty miles of gravel road from a town that is barely a town, and then: a sagebrush basin where the ground glitters. Su…
Open GroundEmerald Hollow Mine
The only emerald mine in the world open to public prospecting. Dig the banks, sluice the dirt, or walk the creek where t…
Open GroundThe Herkimer Diamond Mines
The dolomite here holds pockets, and in the pockets sit crystals that come out of the rock already cut, eighteen facets,…
Open GroundGem Mountain Sapphire Mine
The oldest and largest public sapphire ground in America. You buy gravel by the bucket, wash it at the trough, and tweez…
Open GroundCrow Creek Mine
Eight men staked Crow Creek in 1896 and took out gold by the bucket; the mine has never truly closed. The original build…
Open GroundJade Cove
The cliffs south of Big Sur bleed jade into the sea, and the sea tumbles it smooth and throws it back. After winter stor…
Open GroundThe Gemfields of Central Queensland
Towns named Sapphire and Rubyvale, sitting on ground that earned the names. A cheap fossicking licence opens designated …
Open GroundLightning Ridge
A town of shafts and tailing heaps in country so hot the miners live underground. The black opal that comes out of this …
Open GroundCoober Pedy, the Noodling Heaps
The opal capital of the world is a moonscape of spoil heaps, and a century of hurried miners did not pick them clean. No…
Open GroundBaile an Òr, the Kildonan Burn
In 1869 a returned prospector found gold in a Highland burn, and within months six hundred men were camped at a place re…
Open GroundTankavaara Gold Village
Gold was found in Finnish Lapland in 1868, and the far-north diggings never quite closed. At Tankavaara, above the Arcti…
Open GroundThe Napf
Between Bern and Lucerne rises a knot of green hills where the streams run cold and carry gold of almost absurd purity, …
Open GroundThe Steinkaulenberg
Idar-Oberstein cut gems for the courts of Europe for five centuries, and the mountain that fed the trade is the only gem…
Open GroundThe Amber Coast
When a hard northerly blows across the Baltic, the sea tears amber from the drowned forests of the seabed and hurls it i…
Open GroundThe Golden Triangle
The Welcome Stranger, 72 kilograms of gold, the largest nugget ever found, came out of this triangle in 1869, lying just…
Open GroundThe Public Fossicking Areas of the West Coast
New Zealand set aside nineteen stretches of its old goldfields where anyone may fossick free, no permit, no fee, nine of…
Open GroundToi Gold Mine
For 250 years the Tokugawa shoguns took gold from the tunnels at Toi, second only to Sado in all Japan. The mine is open…
Open GroundThe Ovens, Cunard's Gold Beach
In 1861 gold turned up in the beach sand below the sea caves they call the Ovens, and a thousand miners swarmed the shor…
Open GroundThe Rivers of the Cévennes
The rivers that fall from the Cévennes have paid gold since before Caesar, orpaillage, the French call it, the old wash …
Sunken CityPort Royal, the Wicked City
At twenty minutes to noon on June 7, 1692, the sand under Port Royal turned to liquid and two-thirds of the pirate capit…
Sunken CityBaiae, Rome Beneath the Bay
Baiae was where Rome went to misbehave, Caesar, Nero, and Hadrian kept villas on this volcanic shore. Then the bradyseis…
Sunken CityThonis-Heracleion
For a thousand years Herodotus' city of Heracleion was thought half-myth. In 2000 a magnetometer found it seven kilometr…
Sunken CityThe Royal Quarter of Alexandria
The earthquake of 365 AD dropped the palaces of the Ptolemies into their own harbour. Under the murk of the Eastern Harb…
Sunken CityPavlopetri
Pavlopetri was trading with Minoan Crete before the pyramids of Mycenae rose, and the sea took it slowly, street by stre…
Sunken CityOlous
Olous minted its own coins and signed its own treaties, then the east Cretan coast tilted and the city slipped under the…
Sunken CityKekova, the Lycian Sunken City
An earthquake in the second century dropped half the Lycian town of Dolchiste down the flank of Kekova island. What rema…
Sunken CityShi Cheng, the Lion City
In 1959 the valley of Shi Cheng was flooded for a dam, and a city founded under the Tang dynasty went under a lake, inta…
Sunken CityThe Yonaguni Monument
Off Japan's last western island, a stone formation rises from twenty-five metres like a flooded ziggurat: terraces, flat…
Sunken CityAtlit Yam
Before bronze, before writing, a village stood on the Carmel coast: stone houses, a dug well, a circle of standing stone…
Sunken CityDwarka, Krishna's City
The Mahabharata says that when Krishna left the earth, the sea swallowed his golden city of Dwarka in a single day. Off …
Sunken CityDunwich, Britain's Atlantis
Dunwich was one of the great ports of medieval England, eight churches, a mint, a fleet. The storms of 1286 and 1347 ate…
Sunken CityRungholt, the Atlantis of the North
On the night of January 16, 1362, the Grote Mandrenke, the Great Drowning of Men, tore the North Sea coast apart and too…
Sunken CityMahabalipuram, the Seven Pagodas
Sailors called this the Land of the Seven Pagodas, and only one, the Shore Temple, still stands above the surf. When the…
Sunken CityThe Gulf of Khambhat Structures
Side-scan sonar in the Gulf of Cambay drew geometric patterns on the seabed, and dredges brought up pottery, worked ston…
Sunken CityThe Sunken City of Issyk-Kul
High in the Tien Shan, a lake so deep it never freezes hides a city along its northwestern rim. A quake in the early 140…
Sunken CityWat Saam Prasob, the Sunken Temple
When the Khao Laem Dam filled, it drowned a whole town and its temple, and the people climbed to a hill to rebuild. The …
Sunken CityPhanagoria, the Russian Atlantis
On a peninsula between two seas stood Phanagoria, once the greatest Greek city of the eastern Black Sea and capital of t…
Sunken CityNeapolis
The same earthquake and tsunami that toppled Alexandria in 365 AD swallowed the Roman city of Neapolis on the Tunisian c…
Sunken CityHelike, the Real Atlantis
One winter night in 373 BC the sea rose and took Helike whole, every soul, a rescue fleet of fifty ships finding only a …
Sunken CitySamabaj, the Maya Atlantis
A diver looking for fishing spots in Lake Atitlán found stone stelae standing in the deep. Samabaj was an island town of…
Sunken CityThe Drowned Land of Saeftinghe
Saeftinghe was once the wealthiest land in Zeeland, fat polder, peat, and trade, until the All Saints' flood of 1570 bre…
Open LegendThe Tomb of Cleopatra & Mark Antony
Two thousand years, and the most famous queen in history has no known grave. Cleopatra and Mark Antony were buried toget…
Open LegendThe Lost Library of Ivan the Terrible
When Sophia Palaiologina rode north to marry a Moscow grand duke, she is said to have carried the rescued libraries of C…
Open LegendThe Ark of the Covenant
The Ethiopian Orthodox Church says it has had the Ark of the Covenant for three thousand years, brought from Solomon's J…
ShipwreckThe Flor de la Mar
Albuquerque loaded the Flor de la Mar with the sacked treasure of Malacca, gold, gems, a tribute from the King of Siam, …
Open GroundCherokee Ruby & Sapphire Mine
Most gem mines salt their buckets with stones trucked in from abroad. Not this one, Cherokee runs only native Cowee Vall…
Open GroundDiamond Hill Mine
Three acres of an old quartz hill, open every single day of the year, never salted. You take a pick to the seams yoursel…
Open GroundGraves Mountain
A few weekends each spring and fall the gate at Graves Mountain swings open and the rockhounds come: the tallest peak in…
Open GroundThe Fairburn Agate Fields
Across the rolling grass below the Black Hills lies the home ground of the Fairburn, a fortification agate banded in red…
Open GroundWanlockhead & Leadhills
Gold from these hills went into the Scottish regalia, and the burns still carry it. At Scotland's highest village a lice…
Open GroundCharmouth & the Jurassic Coast
Mary Anning found her first ichthyosaur on these cliffs at twelve, and the sea is still paying. The grey ledges shed amm…
Open GroundThe Kalgoorlie Goldfields
The Golden Mile at Kalgoorlie is, ounce for acre, the richest goldfield the world has known, and the desert around it is…
Open GroundThe Central Otago Goldfields
When the Dunstan rush broke in 1862, the rivers of Central Otago ran thick with diggers. The schist gorges of the Clutha…
Open GroundThe Virgin Valley Opal Fields
In a high desert valley near the Oregon line, ancient forests turned to opal, and the wood still comes out of the bank f…
Open LegendThe Lost Ship of the Desert
In 1615, the story runs, a Spanish pearler named Iturbe rode a tidal bore up the Gulf of California into a vanishing inl…
Open LegendThe Lue Map Treasure
Few real documents have launched more shovels than the Lue Map, a hand-inked Florida chart, passed through the treasure-…
Open LegendThe Lost Fabergé Imperial Eggs
Fabergé made fifty Imperial eggs for the last two Tsars; the Revolution scattered them, and seven have never been seen a…
ShipwreckThe San Miguel, the Register Ship
When the hurricane of July 1715 destroyed the Spanish treasure fleet off Florida, ten wrecks were eventually located and…
Recovered HoardThe Galloway Hoard
One afternoon in 2014 a detectorist named Derek McLennan got a signal in a Galloway field and uncovered the richest Viki…
Recovered HoardThe Frome Hoard
Detectorist Dave Crisp heard a 'funny signal,' dug down, and hit the rim of a buried pot. Instead of emptying it, he sto…
Recovered HoardThe Grouville (Le Câtillon II) Hoard
Two detectorists, Reg Mead and Richard Miles, chased a farmer's rumour of silver 'pieces' for thirty years before the si…
Recovered HoardThe Środa Treasure
Demolition crews renovating an old Polish town turned up, in the rubble, a king's ransom: gold florins, jewelled rings, …
Recovered HoardThe Panagyurishte Treasure
Three brothers digging clay for tiles struck what they took for a strange whistle, then another, then a gleam. They had …
Recovered HoardThe Hand of Faith
Kevin Hillier swung a detector across ground near Kingower in 1980 and got a roar he couldn't explain. Twelve inches dow…
Recovered HoardThe Treasure of Villena
Workers near Villena in 1963 uncovered fifty-nine objects of Bronze Age gold, bowls and bracelets nearly three thousand …
Historic BattleWaterloo
On a June afternoon the Napoleonic age ended in the mud south of Brussels. The Waterloo Uncovered project has lifted ove…
Historic BattleTeutoburg Forest, the Varus Disaster
Three legions marched into the German woods under Varus and never marched out, Rome's worst defeat, and the eagles of th…
Historic BattleTowton, the Bloodiest Day
In a Palm Sunday snowstorm, the largest, bloodiest battle ever fought on English soil, perhaps 28,000 dead in a day. A g…
Historic BattleIsandlwana
Under a sphinx-shaped crag, 20,000 Zulu warriors fell on a British column and destroyed it, the Empire's worst defeat by…
Historic BattleGallipoli
For eight months ANZAC, Allied and Ottoman soldiers bled into these ridges above the Dardanelles. The trenches of Quinn'…
Historic BattleThe Battle of Visby
When a Danish king stormed Gotland in 1361, the island's farmers, old men and boys among them, were cut down outside the…
Historic BattleSekigahara
On a foggy October morning, 160,000 samurai met in a mountain valley and decided the next two and a half centuries. Toku…
Lost MilitaryThe Lost Army of Cambyses
Cambyses II sent fifty thousand men across the Egyptian desert to burn the oracle at Siwa. A sandstorm rose, Herodotus w…
Lost MilitaryThe Lost Ninth Legion
Legio IX Hispana fought for Caesar in Gaul and held Britain's wild north, then, after a last inscription at York around …
Lost MilitaryNapoleon's Berezina Gold
The Grande Armée crossed the Berezina in November 1812 a dying thing, and legend says the plunder of Moscow, too heavy f…
Lost MilitaryKublai Khan's Lost Fleet
Twice Kublai Khan launched the largest seaborne invasion the world had known at Japan, and twice a typhoon, the kamikaze…
ShipwreckThe Spanish Armada Wrecks
Beaten at Gravelines, the Armada fled home around the top of Scotland and into Atlantic storms that flung two dozen ship…
Archaeological SiteSutton Hoo
Under a quiet Suffolk mound a whole ship had been dragged uphill and buried with a king, Raedwald of East Anglia, most t…
Archaeological SiteThe Varna Necropolis
A digger laying cable on the Bulgarian coast turned up grave goods older than the pyramids by two thousand years. The Va…
Archaeological SiteTillya Tepe, the Bactrian Gold
A Soviet-Afghan team opened six nomad mounds in 1978 and found over twenty thousand pieces of gold, crowns, daggers, cla…
Archaeological SiteSanxingdui
A brick-worker's spade broke into a sacrificial pit in 1986 and out came faces, towering bronze masks with protruding ey…
Archaeological SiteThe Lord of Sipán
Grave robbers tipped archaeologists to a mud-brick platform in 1987, and Walter Alva reached the chamber before the loot…
Archaeological SitePetra, the Treasury
The Nabataeans cut a city from the desert cliffs, and its grandest face, Al-Khazneh, 'the Treasury', earned its name fro…
Archaeological SiteThe Valley of the Kings
For five centuries Egypt hid its pharaohs in a desert valley, and robbers emptied nearly every tomb in antiquity. Nearly…
Archaeological SiteGreat Zimbabwe
Mortarless granite walls eleven metres high rise from the bush, the heart of a kingdom that traded gold and ivory to Chi…
Recovered HoardThe Spillings Hoard
A farmer let archaeologists sweep his field with detectors, and the machine screamed: under the floor of a vanished Viki…
Recovered HoardThe Cuerdale Hoard
Workmen mending the bank of the Ribble in 1840 broke a lead chest and silver poured out, coins, hacksilver, ingots, and …
Recovered HoardThe Eberswalde Hoard
Diggers laying a house foundation at a brass works in 1913 struck gold a metre down: 81 Bronze Age objects, bowls and ar…
Recovered HoardThe Preslav Gold Treasure
A deeper-than-usual plough in 1978 shattered a buried kiln and flung gold across a Bulgarian field, over 170 pieces of t…
Recovered HoardThe Mildenhall Treasure
A ploughman turned up dark metal in a Suffolk field in 1942 and, the story goes, kept the great dish on his wall for yea…
Recovered HoardThe Carambolo Treasure
Workers at a pigeon-shooting club on a hill above Seville dug up a ceramic pot in 1958 packed with twenty-one pieces of …
Recovered HoardThe Pereshchepina Treasure
A shepherd boy near Poltava put his foot through the ground in 1912 and fell, the tale runs, into a hoard of gold and si…
Recovered HoardThe Quimbaya Treasure
From two tombs in the Cauca valley came the masterwork of the Quimbaya goldsmiths, 122 pieces of nose-rings, pendants, a…
Lost MilitaryKolchak's Gold
When the empire fell, the whole tsarist gold reserve fell into the hands of the White admiral Kolchak, 645 million ruble…
Lost MilitaryThe Lost Fleet of Mardonius
Herodotus tells it plainly: Mardonius sent the Persian fleet around the cape of Athos, and a savage north wind caught it…
Lost MilitaryThe Golden Submarine I-52
On her maiden run the I-52 carried gold, tungsten, and opium across the world to pay Hitler for technology, and US codeb…
Lost MilitaryThe Lost Reichsbank Gold
As the Reich collapsed, the last reserves of the Reichsbank, 730 bars of gold, sacks of cash, sealed boxes of platinum a…
Historic BattleCarrhae, the Eagles Lost
Crassus, richest man in Rome, marched seven legions into the Mesopotamian desert chasing glory, and Parthian horse-arche…
ShipwreckThe Vasa
The pride of the Swedish navy sailed thirteen hundred metres into her maiden voyage, caught a gust, heeled, and sank in …
ShipwreckThe Mary Rose
Leading the charge against a French invasion fleet, Henry VIII's favourite warship heeled as she turned, took water thro…
ShipwreckThe Belitung Wreck
Sea-cucumber divers off a Sumatran island in 1998 found an Arab dhow on the seabed, packed with the largest single haul …
ShipwreckThe Nanhai One
A Southern Song trader went down in the South China Sea eight centuries ago and settled upright in the silt, hold full. …
ShipwreckThe Tek Sing, the Titanic of the East
Overloaded with porcelain and sixteen hundred emigrants, the junk Tek Sing took a captain's shortcut through the Gaspar …
ShipwreckThe Geldermalsen, the Nanking Cargo
A Dutch East India ship homeward from Canton struck a reef and sank in 1752, and lay forgotten until Michael Hatcher rai…
Open LegendThe Temple Treasure of Jerusalem
Titus carried the treasures of Jerusalem through Rome in triumph in 71 AD, the golden Menorah, the trumpets, the table o…
Open LegendThe Peacock Throne
For a century the Mughal emperors sat on a throne of gold and gemstones said to have cost more than the Taj Mahal, the K…
Open LegendThe Cathar Treasure of Montségur
In March 1244, after a ten-month siege, the Cathar fortress of Montségur surrendered and over two hundred believers walk…
Open LegendThe Lemminkäinen Hoard
By one telling, a vast pre-Christian treasure lies sealed in an underground temple in the forests near Helsinki, gold, g…
Open LegendThe Lost City of the Kalahari
In 1885 the showman-explorer 'Farini' came out of the Kalahari claiming he had found a lost city, cyclopean walls and ce…
Open LegendThe Tomb of Attila the Hun
When Attila died in 453, the legend runs, his people dammed and diverted a river, buried him in three nested coffins, ir…
Sunken CitySt. Thomas, the Town Lake Mead Drowned
Mormon settlers built St. Thomas where the Muddy River met the Colorado in 1865, farms, shops, five hundred souls. Then …
Archaeological SitePueblo Grande de Nevada, the Lost City
For eight centuries Ancestral Puebloans farmed the Moapa Valley, hundreds of pithouses, rock shelters, and ancient salt …
Lost MilitaryThe Lake Mead B-29
In 1948 a B-29 Superfortress skimmed too low over a glassy Lake Mead on a secret high-altitude research flight, clipped …
Open LegendThe Lost John D. Lee Gold Mine
John D. Lee ran the only ferry across the Colorado for hundreds of miles, and hid in those canyons for years, a wanted m…
Open LegendThe Lost City of Z
Colonel Percy Fawcett disappeared into the Amazon in 1925 hunting a vast lost city he called Z. Neither he nor the city …
ShipwreckFranklin's Lost Expedition (Erebus & Terror)
Sir John Franklin's two ships vanished seeking the Northwest Passage in 1845. The wrecks were finally found in 2014 and …
Open LegendThe Lost Gold of the Asante
The Asante kingdom's fabled gold, much of it seized or spirited away during the Anglo-Asante wars. How much was hidden, …
Open LegendTamerlane's Treasury
Timur heaped the loot of half of Asia into Samarkand. His tomb, opened in 1941 amid tales of a curse, has never given up…
Open LegendThe Scythian Gold of the Altai
The Scythian horse-lords buried their dead with worked gold in kurgans across the Altai. Many mounds were plundered in a…
Open LegendThe Lost Norse of Greenland
Norse farmers thrived in Greenland for five centuries, then vanished. Their churches, silver, and fate were swallowed by…
Archaeological SiteGardar, the Bishop's Seat
The cathedral of Gardar held the silver and relics of Norse Greenland's bishops, gone when the settlement died.…
Recovered HoardThe Midhus Silver Hoard
A Viking silver hoard turned up in an Icelandic field in 1980, proof that more may still lie buried in the old farms.…
Open LegendFjalla-Eyvindur's Cache
Iceland's most famous outlaw survived decades in the highlands. Whatever he hid out there has never been found.…
ShipwreckThe Cape Horn Graveyard
More ships have died rounding Cape Horn than anywhere on earth, their holds scattered across the seabed at the end of th…
ShipwreckThe Hulks of Stanley Harbour
Battered ships that limped from the Horn were left to rot at Stanley. Their bones still line the harbor.…
Archaeological SiteGrytviken, South Georgia
An abandoned whaling station at the edge of Antarctica, ringed by rusting ships and a century of relics.…
Open LegendThe City of the Caesars
A phantom city of immense wealth, hunted across Patagonia for three centuries and never found.…
Open LegendThe Jesuit Gold of the Missions
When the crown expelled the Jesuits in 1767, the wealth of the great mission towns is said to have been buried and never…
Open LegendThe Lost Mines of Muribeca
A 1753 manuscript describes Portuguese explorers finding a dead city and rich silver mines deep in the Brazilian backlan…
Open LegendThe Gold of Vilcabamba
The final Inca holdouts fled to Vilcabamba with what gold they could carry. The jungle took the city and the treasure bo…
Archaeological SiteThe Ransom Room of Cajamarca
Atahualpa filled a room with gold to ransom his life, and Pizarro killed him anyway. The room still stands; the gold was…
Open LegendLobengula's Gold
As his kingdom fell in 1893, King Lobengula is said to have sent his gold and diamonds north to be buried. Treasure hunt…
Open LegendThe Gold of Timbuktu
Timbuktu sat at the heart of an empire so rich its king crashed economies with his gold. Where that wealth went is one o…
Archaeological SiteThe Cave of Letters
Refugees of the Bar Kokhba revolt hid bronze vessels and letters in a desert cliff cave. More sealed caves are thought t…
Archaeological SiteHerod's Lost Tomb
Herod the Great's hilltop tomb was finally found in 2007, smashed in antiquity. What was carried off, and what the hill …
Open LegendSolomon's Mines at Timna
Ancient copper mines in the Timna desert have been tied to King Solomon's wealth. The gold of Ophir they were said to fe…
Archaeological SiteThe Treasures of Nineveh
The Assyrian capital's palaces held staggering wealth. Much was looted in antiquity and again in modern wars, but tombs …
Open LegendThe Gold of Marib
Marib was the capital of ancient Saba, a kingdom of frankincense and gold claimed as the Queen of Sheba's. Its riches li…
Open LegendNadir Shah's Lost Loot
Nadir Shah sacked Delhi and carried off the Peacock Throne and a mountain of jewels. After his murder in 1747, much of t…
Sunken CityThe Gold of Srivijaya
Divers in the Musi River keep pulling up gold, gems, and statues, the scattered wealth of the vanished Srivijaya sea emp…
Archaeological SiteThe Gold of the Pagan Kings
Thousands of temples mark the lost capital of Bagan. Relic chambers beneath them are said to hold the buried wealth of i…
Open LegendTipu Sultan's Treasure
When the British stormed Tipu Sultan's island fortress in 1799 they looted a fortune, but stories persist of caches he h…
Open GroundWegner Quartz Crystal Mines
In the quartz capital of the world you can dig your own clear crystals from the Ouachita seams and keep every one.…
Open GroundRatnapura Gem Pits
Sri Lanka's gem city sits on gravels rich with sapphire, ruby, and cat's eye, worked by hand pits and river panning for …
Open GroundBancroft, the Mineral Capital
Called the mineral capital of Canada, Bancroft opens old mines and quarries to collectors every summer at its rockhound …
Archaeological SiteFrobisher's Fool's Gold
Martin Frobisher hauled tons of glittering Arctic ore back to England in the 1570s, certain it was gold. It was worthles…
Open LegendThe Treasure of the Knights of Malta
Napoleon stripped the Knights of Malta of centuries of treasure in 1798, but much of the order's wealth was hidden or sh…
ShipwreckHMS Pandora
Sent to drag the Bounty mutineers home in irons, HMS Pandora struck the Great Barrier Reef in 1791 and sank, taking four…
ShipwreckRMS Quetta
The mail steamer Quetta hit an uncharted rock in the Torres Strait in 1890 and went down in three minutes, one of Queens…
ShipwreckThe Zuytdorp
A Dutch East India ship loaded with silver smashed against the Western Australian cliffs in 1712, and coins still wash f…
ShipwreckThe Trial
The Trial became the first English ship wrecked in Australia in 1622, lost on the rocks with her crew and cargo.…
ShipwreckSS Gothenburg
Homeward from the goldfields in 1875, the steamer Gothenburg sank on the Barrier Reef carrying gold and dozens of lives.…
Lost MilitaryAHS Centaur
The hospital ship Centaur, brightly marked and unarmed, was torpedoed off Brisbane in 1943 with the loss of 268; her wre…
ShipwreckThe Ghost Fleet of Truk Lagoon
An American air raid in 1944 sank a whole Japanese fleet at anchor in Truk Lagoon, leaving the greatest graveyard of shi…
Lost MilitaryIronbottom Sound
So many warships sank off Guadalcanal in 1942 that sailors named the strait Ironbottom Sound; the hulls of two navies re…
Lost MilitaryUSS Arizona
The battleship Arizona still lies where she exploded at Pearl Harbor in 1941, eleven hundred of her crew aboard, oil ris…
Lost MilitaryPrince of Wales and Repulse
Japanese aircraft sank the battleship Prince of Wales and the cruiser Repulse off Malaya in 1941, two mighty ships gone …
Lost MilitaryThe Vanished Fleet of the Java Sea
The Allied fleet smashed at the Battle of the Java Sea in 1942 left wrecks on the seabed, several of which have since be…
Lost MilitaryUSS Yorktown
The carrier Yorktown, crippled at the Battle of Midway in 1942, was found three miles deep in 1998, upright and nearly w…
ShipwreckThe Montevideo Maru
A Japanese transport packed with Australian prisoners was torpedoed in 1942, the nation's worst sea disaster; her wreck …
Lost MilitaryThe Bismarck
Germany's greatest battleship was hunted down and sunk in the Atlantic in 1941, and found by Robert Ballard in 1989, nea…
Recovered HoardThe Cirebon Wreck
A tenth-century ship found off Cirebon held one of the richest cargoes ever raised from Indonesian waters, gold, gems, a…
Open LegendTartessos, the Lost Tarshish
A fabulously rich silver kingdom at the mouth of the Guadalquivir, Tartessos vanished around 500 BC. Many call it the bi…
Open LegendThe Eye of the Sahara
The Eye of the Sahara is a vast bullseye of rock in the Mauritanian desert that some insist matches Plato's description …
Archaeological SiteAkrotiri, the Aegean Atlantis
A Minoan city on Santorini was buried under volcanic ash around 1600 BC, frozen like a Pompeii of the Aegean, and is a l…
Recovered HoardThe Oxus Treasure
The Oxus Treasure, a glittering hoard of Achaemenid Persian gold, surfaced on the banks of the Oxus in the 1870s; how mu…
Open LegendThe Dacian Gold of Sarmizegetusa
The Dacian kings hid their gold in the sacred mountain fortress of Sarmizegetusa before Rome destroyed them; looters hav…
Archaeological SiteThe Valley of the Thracian Kings
Bulgaria's Valley of the Thracian Kings hides the tombs of a people who worked gold like no other; the Panagyurishte and…
Archaeological SiteMapungubwe and the Golden Rhino
A golden rhinoceros and a king's grave of gold came from Mapungubwe, the first kingdom of southern Africa, hidden on a s…
Archaeological SiteThe Lost Wealth of Merv
Once one of the greatest cities on the Silk Road, Merv was erased by the Mongols. Its ruins in the Turkmen desert still …
ShipwreckThe Wreck of HMS Bounty
The mutineers of HMS Bounty burned and sank her in Bounty Bay off Pitcairn in 1790 to hide from the world; her remains a…
Archaeological SiteSodom at Tall el-Hammam
At Tall el-Hammam in the Jordan Valley, a Bronze Age city was destroyed in a violent blast, leading some to argue it is …
Archaeological SiteThe Temple of Artemis at Ephesus
The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus was one of the Seven Wonders, heaped with treasure by kings and pilgrims; burned, rebui…
Archaeological SiteThe Lost City of Loulan
Loulan was a thriving Silk Road oasis until the desert and a dying river swallowed it whole; its ruins and the wealth of…
Archaeological SiteKhara-Khoto, the Black City
The dead city of Khara-Khoto stands in the Gobi where a queen is said to have walled up her treasure before the end; Rus…
Archaeological SiteThe Library Cave of Dunhuang
A sealed cave at Dunhuang hid forty thousand manuscripts and paintings for a thousand years; most were carried off, and …
Archaeological SiteOtrar, Where the Storm Began
The massacre of a caravan at Otrar started Genghis Khan's war on the world; the rich Silk Road city he leveled in reveng…
Archaeological SiteKonye-Urgench, the Drowned Capital
Capital of the mighty Khwarazm empire, Konye-Urgench was destroyed by the Mongols who turned a river to drown its ruins;…
Recovered HoardThe Issyk Golden Man
A Scythian burial mound near Almaty gave up a warrior dressed head to foot in four thousand pieces of gold; the kurgans …
Recovered HoardThe Begram Hoard
Two sealed rooms at Begram held Roman glass, Indian ivories, and Chinese lacquer, the merged riches of the Silk Road; hi…
Archaeological SiteThe Treasure of Bamiyan
Beneath the empty niches of the giant Buddhas, a vast monastery once held the offerings of pilgrims; caves and a rumored…
Archaeological SitePenjikent, the Sogdian Pompeii
The Sogdian merchant city of Penjikent was abandoned after the Arab conquest, its painted houses and the wealth of its t…
Archaeological SiteThe Tombs of Niya
The desert oasis of Niya vanished into the Taklamakan, leaving wooden documents and richly wrapped mummies; only a fract…
Open LegendUbar, the Atlantis of the Sands
Ubar, the city the Quran says was buried in sand for its sins, was hunted for centuries until satellite radar traced old…
Open LegendNoah's Ark on Ararat
For centuries climbers and explorers have searched the ice of Mount Ararat for the resting place of Noah's Ark, chasing …
Open LegendDilmun, the Garden of Eden
The Sumerians wrote of Dilmun, a pure and wealthy paradise of trade, which many place on Bahrain among its hundred thous…
Archaeological SiteMahd adh Dhahab, the Cradle of Gold
An ancient mine in the Arabian desert, worked since Solomon's time and named the Cradle of Gold, is one of the strongest…
Open LegendThe Ark Cache of Mount Nebo
The Book of Maccabees says the prophet Jeremiah hid the Ark and the Tabernacle in a cave on Mount Nebo before the Temple…
Archaeological SiteBabylon and the Ishtar Gate
Babylon, city of the Hanging Gardens and the Ishtar Gate, was the richest city of the ancient world; looted and rebuilt …
Archaeological SiteMegiddo, the Armageddon Ivories
Megiddo, the hill the Bible names Armageddon, gave up a hoard of exquisite carved ivories; its many unexcavated layers a…
Archaeological SiteUr of the Chaldees
The royal tombs of Ur, the city of Abraham, held golden helmets, harps, and a whole court buried with its queen; the des…
Archaeological SiteThe Treasury of Persepolis
Alexander burned Persepolis and hauled away the Persian treasury on thousands of mules and camels, but what was hidden i…
Sunken CityNan Madol, the Pacific Venice
A hundred artificial islets of stacked basalt rise from the Pohnpei lagoon, the ruined capital of a lost dynasty, its to…
Open LegendThe Secrets of Rapa Nui
The people who raised the moai of Easter Island left a script no one can read and caves said to hide their carvings and …
Recovered HoardThe RMS Niagara's Gold
A German mine sank the liner Niagara off New Zealand in 1940 with eight tons of gold aboard; divers in a daring salvage …
ShipwreckThe Wreck of the Boyd
The trader Boyd was burned and sunk in a New Zealand harbour in 1809; her remains, and her cargo, still lie in the mud o…
Open LegendBully Hayes' Buried Loot
The notorious Pacific pirate Bully Hayes wrecked and schemed across the islands, and is said to have buried his loot on …
Historic BattleThermopylae, the Hot Gates
Three hundred Spartans and their allies held the pass of Thermopylae against a Persian army; the battlefield, its arms a…
Historic BattleCannae, Hannibal's Masterpiece
Hannibal destroyed a Roman army of eighty thousand at Cannae in 216 BC, the bloodiest day of the ancient world; the fiel…
Historic BattleThe Horns of Hattin
At the Horns of Hattin in 1187 Saladin crushed the Crusader army and seized the True Cross they carried into battle; the…
Historic BattleAgincourt
Henry the Fifth's archers destroyed the flower of French chivalry in the mud of Agincourt in 1415; the field still holds…
Historic BattleHastings, 1066
On Senlac Hill in 1066 the Normans broke the Saxon shield wall and changed England forever; the battlefield lies beneath…
Historic BattleBosworth Field
Richard the Third died at Bosworth in 1485 and his crown was said to be found in a hawthorn bush; the true battlefield w…
Historic BattleGaugamela, the Fall of Persia
Alexander shattered the Persian host at Gaugamela in 331 BC and won the richest empire on earth; the exact field is stil…
Historic BattleBannockburn
Robert the Bruce broke a far larger English army at Bannockburn in 1314 and won Scotland's independence; the boggy field…
Open GroundTopaz Mountain
The whole mountain glitters with topaz, and most of it is open to the public to keep what they find, no permit and no fe…
Open GroundThe Oregon Sunstone Beds
Oregon's only free public gem field, where you can dig the state gem, a flash of copper-red sunstone, out of the Rabbit …
Open GroundThe Golden Beaches of Nome
The black sands of Nome made poor men rich in 1899, and the beach is still open to anyone with a pan below the high tide…
Open GroundThe Lemmenjoki Goldfields
Deep in Finnish Lapland, the Lemmenjoki river country is the legal heart of European gold panning, where nugget hunters …
Open GroundThe Arrow River Diggings
The Arrow River at Arrowtown ran so thick with gold in the 1860s that you can still pan it free today, a flake or two fo…
Open LegendThe Stechovice Treasure
In 1945 the retreating SS are said to have buried documents and valuables in a hillside south of Prague, and one cache w…
Open LegendThe Avar Ring Hoard
The Avars heaped two centuries of plunder inside a great ring of earthworks on the Hungarian plain, and Charlemagne's me…
ShipwreckHMS Breadalbane
A ship sent to search for Franklin, the Breadalbane was crushed by ice in 1853 and lies near Beechey Island as one of th…
Open LegendThe Gold of Headless Valley
The South Nahanni country swallowed prospectors who went looking for a lost creek of gold and left some of them headless…
Lost MilitaryLegio IX Hispana, the Lost Ninth
The Ninth Legion marched north into Caledonia and simply disappeared from Rome's records, and where the legendary lost l…
Lost MilitaryThe Lost Roman Legion of Liqian
Survivors of Crassus's shattered legions at Carrhae are said to have drifted east and founded a town in the Gansu desert…
Open LegendThe Land of Punt
The pharaohs sailed to a golden trading kingdom they called Punt, the land of the gods, and its true location somewhere …
Archaeological SiteDjenne-Djeno
One of the oldest cities in sub-Saharan Africa, Djenne-Djeno rose on the Niger floodplain and was abandoned and forgotte…
Open GroundCalvert Cliffs
The Calvert Cliffs along Chesapeake Bay are crumbling fifteen million years of Miocene seafloor, and the beach below is …
Open GroundThe Aurora Fossil Pits
The Aurora Fossil Museum trucks in fresh matrix from the Nutrien phosphate mine and dumps it in a free public pile, wher…
Open GroundThe Peace River Fossil Beds
The Peace River runs over a bed of Ice Age and Miocene bone, and below the waterline you can fan the gravel for megalodo…
Open GroundPenn Dixie Fossil Park
Ranked the top fossil park in America, the old Penn Dixie quarry south of Buffalo lets you split Devonian shale for tril…
Open GroundThe American Fossil Quarry
At the American Fossil quarry north of Kemmerer you split fifty million year old Green River shale and keep the fish, ra…
Open GroundU-Dig Trilobite Quarry
U-Dig keeps an excavator working forty acres of Cambrian Wheeler Shale in the Utah desert, where the average visitor spl…
Open GroundThe Caesar Creek Spillway
Grab a free permit at the visitor center and the Caesar Creek spillway opens up four hundred and fifty million years of …
Open GroundThe Mazon Creek Beds
The spoil heaps of an old strip mine south of Chicago hide ironstone concretions that crack open to reveal the soft bodi…
Open GroundThe Andamooka Opal Fields
The opal town of Andamooka lets fossickers work the old mullock heaps for the flash of color the miners missed, free to …
Open GroundThe Ilakaka Sapphire Fields
A sleepy spot in Madagascar became a boom town overnight in 1998 when one of the largest sapphire deposits on earth was …
Open GroundThe Imperial Topaz of Ouro Preto
The old gold capital of Brazil sits on the world's only real source of imperial topaz, the pink and orange gem dug from …
Open GroundThe Emerald Mines of Muzo
The mines of Muzo in the Colombian mountains have produced the finest emeralds in the world for five hundred years, and …
Lost MilitaryThe Lost Squadron
Eight warplanes of a wartime squadron set down on a Greenland ice cap in 1942 and were swallowed by the glacier, until o…
Lost MilitaryThe Lost Fleet of Xerxes
A storm off the Greek coast smashed four hundred ships of the Persian king Xerxes against the rocks of Cape Sepias, and …
Lost MilitaryThe Grande Armee's Vilnius Grave
Construction crews in Vilnius in 2001 broke into a mass grave of thousands of soldiers, the frozen remnant of Napoleon's…
Lost MilitaryThe Sacred Band of Thebes
Beneath a great stone lion at Chaeronea lie the bones of the Sacred Band of Thebes, three hundred warriors who fell toge…
Lost MilitaryThe Villasur Expedition
A Spanish column marched onto the Plains in 1720 to check the French and was wiped out almost to a man near the Platte, …
Lost MilitaryThe Martyrdom of the Theban Legion
Legend says an entire Roman legion was martyred at Agaunum for refusing an emperor's order, and a great abbey rose over …
Lost MilitaryFlight 19, the Lost Patrol
Five torpedo bombers lifted off from Florida in 1945 on a training run and flew into nothing, the Lost Patrol that gave …
Lost MilitaryThe Lost Fleet of Actium
The war fleet of Antony and Cleopatra was broken at Actium, and the bronze rams of their great ships were sunk in the gu…
Sunken CityKemune, the Drought City
When drought drew down the Mosul reservoir, a three thousand year old city of the Mittani empire rose from the water, it…
Sunken CityCantre'r Gwaelod
Welsh legend tells of a low kingdom of sixteen towns drowned when a watchman left the floodgates open, and at low tide a…
Recovered HoardThe Vale of York Hoard
A father and son detecting near Harrogate in 2007 unearthed a Viking silver hoard sealed inside a gilt cup, coins and ha…
Recovered HoardThe Pietroasele Treasure
A Romanian hillside gave up a Gothic king's treasure of gold, the great brooch known as the Hen with the Golden Chicks a…
Recovered HoardThe Snettisham Hoard
A plough in Norfolk kept turning up gold until archaeologists found the source, a series of buried nests of Iron Age tor…
Recovered HoardThe Broighter Gold
A ploughman in Ulster turned up a hoard of Iron Age gold, including a tiny model boat with oars, an offering to a sea go…
Recovered HoardThe Vix Grave
A Celtic princess buried in Burgundy was found with the largest bronze vessel of the ancient world, a krater that held a…
Open GroundBig Brook Preserve
Big Brook in Marlboro is a free public creek cutting through Cretaceous beds, where you scoop the streambed for the teet…
Recovered HoardThe Water Newton Treasure
A field in Cambridgeshire gave up a small hoard of silver that turned out to be the earliest set of Christian church pla…
Recovered HoardThe Ziwiye Hoard
A hoard of gold and ivory in a bronze coffin was found on a hilltop at Ziwiye, mingling Scythian, Median, and Assyrian w…
Recovered HoardThe Nagyszentmiklos Treasure
Two brothers digging in their yard struck twenty three vessels of solid gold, a hoard of the steppe nomads now called th…
Recovered HoardThe Nahal Mishmar Hoard
Wrapped in a mat in a cliff cave above the Dead Sea lay more than four hundred copper crowns, scepters, and standards, s…
Recovered HoardThe Gundestrup Cauldron
Peat cutters in a Danish bog lifted out a huge silver cauldron worked with gods and beasts, the richest piece of Iron Ag…
Recovered HoardThe Mold Cape
Workmen breaking up a burial mound in Wales found a crushed shell of gold that proved to be a ceremonial cape, beaten fr…
Sunken CityVineta, the Baltic Atlantis
Chronicles tell of Vineta, the richest city of the Baltic, drowned for its pride, and searchers still hunt its harbor in…
Sunken CityApollonia of Cyrene
Half of the Greek harbor city of Apollonia slid beneath the Mediterranean in ancient earthquakes, its docks and basilica…
Sunken CityThe Hidden City of Kitezh
Russian legend says the holy city of Kitezh sank into Lake Svetloyar to escape the Mongols, and on still days the pure o…
Sunken CityRavenser Odd
Ravenser Odd was a thriving port at the mouth of the Humber until a run of storms washed it entirely into the sea, a ric…
Sunken CityVilla Epecuen
A lakeside resort town in Argentina was swallowed by rising salt water in 1985 and sat drowned for a quarter century, th…
Recovered HoardForrest Fenn's Treasure
An art dealer hid a chest of gold, jewels, and ancient artifacts somewhere in the Rockies and published a poem with nine…
Open LegendThe Lost Confederate Gold
As the Confederacy collapsed in 1865 its treasury of gold and silver was hauled south and then simply disappeared near t…
Open LegendCaptain Kidd's Buried Treasure
Captain Kidd really did bury treasure on Gardiners Island before his arrest, and most was dug up and used against him, b…
Open LegendThe Just Judges Panel
One panel of the great Ghent Altarpiece was stolen in 1934 and never returned, and clues in a dying thief's letters stil…
Open LegendThe Tayopa Mine
The Jesuits are said to have worked a string of fabulously rich silver mines called Tayopa deep in the Sierra Madre, aba…
Open LegendMosby's Greenback Raid Treasure
The Confederate raider John Mosby is said to have buried a sack of Union silver and gold between two trees in Virginia d…
Open LegendThe Lost Peking Man
The original bones of Peking Man, among the most important human fossils ever found, vanished in 1941 while being shippe…
Open LegendJean Lafitte's Buried Plunder
The privateer Jean Lafitte ran his empire out of the Louisiana bayous, and the swamps and islands of Barataria are riddl…
Open LegendBowie's Lost San Saba Mine
Jim Bowie of Alamo fame is said to have known the location of an old Spanish silver mine near the San Saba, a secret he …
ShipwreckThe Merchant Royal
The Merchant Royal went down off Cornwall in 1641 carrying a staggering cargo of gold and silver, and the hunt for the r…
ShipwreckThe Tobermory Galleon
A ship of the wrecked Spanish Armada sank in Tobermory Bay rumored to be carrying a payroll in gold, and dukes and diver…
ShipwreckThe Esmeralda
A ship of Vasco da Gama's fleet wrecked off Oman in 1503 and was found in our own time, the earliest ship of the Europea…
ShipwreckLe Griffon
La Salle's Griffon, the first full sized sailing ship on the Great Lakes, vanished with its cargo of furs in 1679, and r…
ShipwreckHMS Victory of 1744
The flagship Victory sank in a storm in 1744 with a thousand men and a rumored four tons of gold aboard, and her wreck w…
ShipwreckThe Black Prince of Balaclava
The steamer Black Prince went down in a hurricane off Balaclava in 1854 carrying the British army's payroll in gold, and…
ShipwreckThe Frigate Mercedes
The Spanish frigate Mercedes blew up in 1804 with a fortune in silver, and its recovery two centuries later sparked a fa…
Archaeological SiteThe Mausoleum at Halicarnassus
The tomb of King Mausolus was so grand it gave us the word mausoleum and stood as a wonder of the ancient world, toppled…
Archaeological SiteThe Colossus of Rhodes
The giant bronze Colossus straddled the harbor of Rhodes until an earthquake felled it, and its great pieces lay where t…
Archaeological SiteThe Tomb of Suleiman the Magnificent
The sultan Suleiman died besieging a Hungarian fort and his heart was buried on the spot in a tomb that was lost for cen…
Archaeological SiteBatan Grande, the Sican Gold
The adobe pyramids of Batan Grande in Peru cover the tombs of the Sican lords, some buried upside down in masks of gold,…
Archaeological SiteThe Gold of Troy
Digging for Homer's Troy, Schliemann struck a hoard of golden jewelry he called the treasure of Priam, smuggled it out o…
Historic BattleThe Battle of Grunwald
One of the largest battles of medieval Europe was fought at Grunwald in 1410, where a Polish and Lithuanian army broke t…
Historic BattleThe Battle of Kosovo
The Serbs and the Ottomans destroyed each other on the Field of Blackbirds in 1389, a battle so seared into memory that …
Historic BattleThe Battle of Mohacs
The Ottoman army shattered the Hungarians at Mohacs in 1526, killing the king and most of the nobility in two hours and …
Historic BattleThe Battle of Lepanto
The fleets of the Holy League and the Ottomans met at Lepanto in 1571 in the last great battle of oared galleys, and hun…
Historic BattleThe Battle of Salamis
The Greeks trapped and destroyed the far larger Persian fleet in the narrows of Salamis in 480 BC, and the bronze and ti…
Historic BattleThe Battle of Plataea
The Greeks crushed the last Persian army on land at Plataea in 479 BC and dedicated a tenth of the spoils at Delphi, but…
Historic BattleThe Battle of Crecy
English longbowmen destroyed the French chivalry at Crecy in 1346, a slaughter that announced a new age of war, and the …
Historic BattleThe Battle of Naseby
The decisive battle of the English Civil War was fought at Naseby in 1645, where Cromwell's cavalry broke the king, and …
Historic BattleThe Battle of Austerlitz
Napoleon won his greatest victory at Austerlitz in 1805, and legend says cannon and men went through the ice of the froz…
Historic BattleThe Battle of Pavia
The army of the emperor destroyed the French at Pavia in 1525 and took the king of France prisoner, a field that turned …
Historic BattleThe Battle of Zama
Scipio beat Hannibal at last at Zama in 202 BC and broke the power of Carthage, but the exact field of the battle that d…
Historic BattleThe Battle of the Boyne
Two kings faced each other across the Boyne in 1690 in a battle that decided the throne and still echoes in Ireland, and…
Historic BattleThe Battle of Tewkesbury
The Wars of the Roses were all but decided at Tewkesbury in 1471, where the Lancastrian heir was killed and the field ca…
Open LegendPegleg Smith's Black Gold
A one legged trapper named Pegleg Smith said he filled his pockets with gold nuggets crusted black atop a desert butte, …
Open LegendThe Breyfogle Mine
Jacob Breyfogle staggered out of Death Valley with a hatful of rich gold ore and a story he could never retrace, and bre…
ShipwreckHMS Sussex
The warship Sussex sank in a storm off Gibraltar in 1694 carrying a secret cargo of gold meant to buy an alliance, by so…
ShipwreckThe Lutine
HMS Lutine sank off the Dutch coast in 1799 with a vast cargo of gold and silver bars, and though its bell hangs at Lloy…
ShipwreckThe Grosvenor
The East Indiaman Grosvenor wrecked on the wild South African coast in 1782 amid rumors of a cargo of gold, gems, and ev…
ShipwreckThe Association
The flagship Association and three other ships smashed into the Scilly Isles in 1707 in one of Britain's worst naval dis…
Archaeological SiteThe Tomb of Philip II at Vergina
Under a mound in northern Greece an archaeologist found the unlooted royal tombs of Macedon, one holding a golden casket…
Historic BattleThe Battle of Tours
Charles Martel halted the advance of the Umayyad armies into Europe near Tours in 732, a battle long remembered as the t…
Historic BattleThe Battle of Blenheim
Marlborough and Eugene crushed the French and Bavarians at Blenheim in 1704 on the Danube, a battle so total it gave its…
Historic BattleThe Battle of Bouvines
The French king beat a great coalition at Bouvines in 1214 in a battle that helped forge France and topple a king of Eng…
Open LegendThe Treasure of the Llano River
The Texas hill country along the Llano is woven with tales of Spanish mule trains and bullion caches abandoned in raids,…
Recovered HoardThe Cheapside Hoard
Workmen demolishing a cellar in London in 1912 broke into a wooden box packed with the stock of a Tudor jeweler, hundred…
Recovered HoardThe Boscoreale Treasure
In a villa buried by Vesuvius near Pompeii, diggers found a hoard of more than a hundred pieces of Roman silver plate an…
No case files match that search. Try another name or clear the category filters.