Don Joaquin’s Lost Gold
Greg Hawk • August 12, 2021
Don Joaquin’s Lost Gold was one of the treasure stories that I read in John D. Mitchell’s book, “Lost Mines & Buried Treasures Along the Old Frontier.”
In it he tells the story of a Spaniard, named Don Joaquin Campos from Guadalajara, and his crew that were mining in the Sierra Estrella Mountains around 1840. As Mitchell tells the story a rider came into Don Joaquin’s camp where he had a stone house and mines telling him that the U.S. Army was coming and taking over all the mines. Don Joaquin quickly loaded up all his burros with 1,500 lbs. of gold bars and nuggets and headed out of the mountains. The load was too heavy to move fast so he buried all the gold in the back of an old cave thinking he would come back some day to retrieve it. Mitchell goes on to say that the gold is still buried somewhere in a cave in the Sierra Estrella Mountains even today. The mountains are located just southwest of present-day Phoenix.
In this video I bring up other stories written about the same old rock house and mine that Mitchell talked about. Each story is a little different and I will show and tell you about the research I have done trying to get to the truth of the story. The question remains as to who built the rock house and when?
In the video I will give you some directions and coordinates to get to the trailhead and old rock house. We will also hike up the canyon to show you the rock house, the mine shaft and what looks to be an old, stacked stone corral.
Treasure Videos
A look into the treasure story of Skelton Canyon which lies in eastern Arizona. Was it real and if so where is it buried today? Cheers! Greg Hawk
Three 100 lb. gold bars taken in a stagecoach holdup hidden in the Harwquahala Mountains of Arizona. Today's Value $10+ Million!
Here is a a short video on rebuilding an old Army trailer, into an off road extended-stay trailer for treasure hunting and prospecting(metal detecting). You'll see this trailer in my future videos! Cheers! Greg Hawk
A lost ledge of gold and the prospector who found it but wasn't able to return. The marker he left was his vest with a mule shoe on top of it to mark the spot. This story takes place around 1900 along the Colorado River about 25 to 30 miles north of Yuma, Arizona on the California side of the river at a place called Picacho. A man searched for it for over 20 years and never found it, can you?
This is the story of a stagecoach robbery that was printed in the March-April edition of Westerner Magazine in 1974.
It took place south of Beale Springs and supposedly $200,000 worth of gold bullion was heisted from the stagecoach and the stagecoach disappeared after the robbery never to be found until 40 years later.
A photo was sent from a subscriber showing the Indian face in the rock formation and also pictures of things he found below the nose.
A visit to gold country in Northern California. A subscriber to my YouTube channel contacted me about a mine he had a claim on in Arizona and also some mines close to where he purchased property in Glencoe, CA. Being a Vietnam Vet, as I am, I decided to meet up with him and look at the mines he was curious about in California. We had lunch in the town of Mokelumne Hill which was located in rich placer gold country during the 1849 gold rush.
The following pictures I took in 2017 after several years of looking for the Lost Ivanpah Mine, which was a story that was told to me by John whom I mentioned in my book. I had searched for this prospect for several years in my spare time and camped out in the dry lakebed while I searched. Finally, on the last day of searching, before I was going to give up on it, I went up a really rough wash to an area higher than I had been before. Here I found the old prospect hole where Miguel had been digging. Beside it was an old tin bucket and what looked to be a cigarette tin. They had been sitting here for approximately 110 years when I found them as Miguel died around 1906. For more on this check out the video: The Lost Ivanpah Silver Mine
Directions to what we had been told was the Bully Bueno Mine and evaluating the ore. In the end was this the real Bully Bueno Mine?
We visit some of the old mining towns and delve into the history from 1860's forward that made this area a mining center back during that time period.