← All case files
Recovered Hoard · Recovered

Saddle Ridge Hoard

Buried 1800s · found 2013, Sierra Nevada foothills, N. CA (undisclosed)
RECOVERED
Evidence status: Historical tradition. no documented source (historical tradition); legal status unknown (manual verification recommended). This account is presented as historical tradition, not verified fact. Manual verification recommended. Repository evidence: 0 sources · 0 timeline events · 0 media items · legal unknown · view on the Map Evidence on file: historical tradition

Saddle Ridge Hoard: still unexplained.

$10M (1,427 coins)

The subject
developing the photograph…
The manifest
$10M (1,427 coins)
The account

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 years. Inside: gold. They came back with hand tools and raised eight cans, 1,427 coins, ten million dollars struck between 1847 and 1894. Who buried a fortune on that hillside, and why no one ever returned for it, has never been answered. They had walked past it a thousand times. So, perhaps, have you.

How it was found
  • A California couple out walking their dog in 2013 spotted the rusted lip of an old can poking from the ground. It was full of gold coins, and seven more cans nearby brought the total to about 1,400, the richest buried coin hoard ever found in the United States.
What the record holds

What remains open

  • No period map of the site has surfaced.
  • No contemporary press coverage has been found.
What we know, and what we don't
Established

No documentary claim is yet established. The account rests on tradition.

Still open
  • No period map of the site has surfaced.
  • No contemporary press coverage has been found.
The evidence room

No documentary or visual exhibits have been located yet. The trail below and the open leads are where this dossier grows next — every exhibit that enters here carries a source.

Where the trail points now
  • Search Library of Congress + DPLA (IIIF) for period cartography of the site.
  • Run Chronicling America for dated newspaper mentions.
  • Query NARA for archival records tied to the site.

Have a source, a map, or a clipping? Add a lead and it enters the record with its citation.

Sources and the record

The full hunt kit

Starting brief, what's known and disputed, evidence timeline, source list, map card, coordinate-confidence and legal-access summaries, and a field checklist, free with a Fellowship account.

Latest Word From the Newswire

Context, not proof. The dossier's own sources remain the evidence record.

Checking the wire…

Chart position 38.800°, -120.900° (approx.) View on the Map