A compendium of hundreds of treasure tales, rumors and findings gleaned from diverse sources ranging from campfire stories and personal interviews to published works. Listed by each county throughout the state.

This collection of tales and traditions from the Southwest includes stories of lost mines stacked with bars of gold, mule loads of silver cached away in outlaw hoards, and fabulous Jesuit treasures buried when that order was expelled from New Spain. Some treasure locations would be rediscovered by chance or by an old map-and somehow always lost again. But not all these folk teasures are of material wealth. There is the story of a nun who loved a soldier and repented, and whose kneeling figure may still be seen as a mountain rock formation. There is the Hermit of Las Vegas, an actual person who, after traveling between Argentina and Quebec, settled in New Mexico, where he became the subject of affectionate legends.

In the 1800s, J. Ross Browne, that century's most able reporter of western mining lore wrote that old prospectors did more to open up our vast interior territories for settlement and civilization than did all the scientific expeditions ever sent across the Rocky Mountains. By following old trails like Pegleg Smith's across the desert or succumbing to the nebulous moonbeam that beckoned French miners to Colorado, Choral Pepper allows the reader to truly experience the history of our land.Browne's old prospectors were not the first to blaze trails to Western treasure. In the sixteenth century, Spanish conquistadors developed mines as far north as Utah. One-fifth of all gold and silver they produced was poured into molds, the Royal Fifth, that belonged to the King. Tax dodging is nothing new, however. Isolated mines like those of the Tumacacori were worked illicitly and often hastily abandoned. Now they enrich our legendary West.Treasure legends are an integral part of Western Americana. It is through them that our country's history is most provocatively told. Pepper has personally researched the treasure tales recounted in her book in the field, turning up hitherto unknown clues to give readers a head start on their own treasure hunts.

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In the heart of the Rockies

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