Written September 16, 2002 by Farrell W. Phillips

I first heard the original “Trinidad Treasure” story when I was going to school at Entiat, Washington, probably in grade school. The story was repeated several times, (with slightly different variations), in our local newspaper, The Wenatchee Daily World. A rather unusual set of circumstances prompts me to write this “sequel” to the original story. Since the eighth grade, my best friend has been Don Colyar. Most unfortunately, Don’s youngest son, Bobby, died after a short illness in 1993. Bobby Colyar had many friends and Boeing coworkers that attended his services and also his extended family were all able to come to pay their respects.

After the services, Helen and I were invited as “Family” to an informal get together. Proper words and “things to say” at this sad time were hard to come by, as you can imagine. Don’s younger brother Jess was there and as unfortunate as the occasion was, we were able to get “caught up” on what the other had been doing the last time we had seen each other.

I had gone to Enitat School with Don & Jess, and two of his sisters. I had seen little of Jess since he attended my dad’s funeral in 1989, so we had much that we could talk about. Jess was certainly the outdoor type and we had a common bond in the subjects of hunting, shooting, reloading, and prospecting.

Jess had spent a lot of time in the “Blewett” & “Swauk” country, on both sides of Hwy. 97. This country covers an area representing a rectangle, roughly two miles wide and perhaps twelve to fifteen miles long. Jess was familiar with all the known gold strikes and the thriving mining communities of the past like Old Blewett and Liberty.

He had explored the (supposed) location and pursued the legend of Captain Peter Ingalls “Lost Ledge” also. Jess prospected and panned for placer gold many places in the above area. During this time he discovered a culvert under a road that had automatically “panned” the gold for him. The corrugations in the culvert had caught a very worthwhile amount of small gold nuggets for him and all he had to do was scoop out the dirt and use a gold pan to get the nuggets. During this same time frame Jess was also involved in a couple of mining adventures that went nowhere due to untrustworthy associates. So he had “paid his dues” in prospecting.

During our conversations that afternoon, we happened to go to the subject of the Trinidad Treasure. I told him my experience there so many years ago, about dad dowsing the area with his welding rod and also about one of the coworkers having the area professionally “map dowsed”.

As our conversation continued, Jess told me about the “quest” he had pursued for four years. This was in tracking down one of the miner’s daughters in Portland, Oregon. He said that he had talked to her at some length and she kept referring to a metal box that the miners buried their gold in.

They were being pursued by part of that same band of renegade Indians that had caused trouble for the ranchers & miners in Central Washington for several years. In this particular case there were probably about six renegades that attacked the four miners. As the story unfolds, the miners killed two Indians and lost one of their own during the chase.

The chase ended at “Mattawa” several miles South of where it started North of Vantage along the Columbia River. Apparently, the renegades decided they had had enough. Had there been more of them, It’s almost a certainty that all the miners would have been killed.

It was about this time that it dawned on me that Jess was talking about a completely different incident than the one at the Quincy/Trinidad Bar area (several miles to the North). Besides this, it occurred to me that there were probably several groups of miners going by horse and pack mules or packhorses from the States to the very rich Fraser River placer country in British Columbia.

As I thought about it later, I realized that the Wenatchee Daily World newspaper articles had led everyone to believe there was only one group of miners that were attacked. At least, all the articles I read over the years, I never saw any references to other pack trains or other incidents.

Jess had advanced emphysema, and although we had talked about exploring the canyon that he had told us about, it was never meant to be. Jess had moved to Arizona in hopes of better health, but this didn’t help much either.

Before and after Jess’ passing, Helen & I explored the canyon, but found no clues to where any sort of treasure might be buried. The last time we were there, I used a brand new metal detector with absolutely no results. I contacted the seller/inventor to see why I had no response and he said that he had received a batch of defective condensers from his Canadian supplier. I shipped the detector back and he replaced the defective part. Since the incident, we have not returned for any further exploration. I guess this is one reason why we dubbed this particular canyon our “Mystery Canyon”.

PS: In spite of the fact almost anything can be lashed to a packsaddle frame, I remain puzzled why a “metal box” would be used? For centuries, leather pouches have always been used as the handiest carriers for gold coins & gold nuggets-silver and gems also. I have to think that it was gold “concentrates” that was buried. However, it would be most unlikely that all the miners would have put all their collected gold in one container?