W. C. Jameson

This biography of the life-and controversial death-of Robert LeRoy Parker, a.k.a. Butch Cassidy, is a journey across the late-nineteenth-century American West as we follow the exploits of this surprisingly affable outlaw. More important, this book answers the question of whether Butch Cassidy survived his alleged death at the hands of Bolivian soldiers in 1908 and returned to friends and family in the US.

Throughout history, the state of Missouri has served as a setting for a vast array of exciting legend and lore. Within the pages of this book, W. C. Jameson presents the most complete collection of the Show Me State's tales of lost mines and buried treasures. With his gift for storytelling, Jameson relates episodes from the time of Indian occupation through early settlement, the Civil War, to the present. As a legendary professional treasure hunter, Jameson has followed the trails of many of these lost mines and buried treasures.

Two subjects continue to fascinate people the Old West and a good mystery. This book explores and examines twenty-one of the Old West's most baffling mysteries, which lure the curious and beg investigation even though their solutions have eluded experts for decades. Many relate to the death or disappearance of some of the best-known lawmen and outlaws in history, such as Billy the Kid, Buckskin Frank Leslie, John Wilkes Booth, The Catalina Kid, and Butch Cassidy. Others involve several mysterious tales and legends of lost mines and buried treasures that have not been recovered yet.

W. C. Jameson shows you where to look and how to find valuable artifacts, precious metals, lost jewels, and hidden caches in a neighborhood park, your attic, at the beach or in open country. Practical tips will get you started, help you protect your claim on any found treasure and authenticate the value of coins, jewels and other objects.

Arizona's history is liberally seasoned with legends of lost mines, buried treasures, and significant deposits of gold and silver. The famous Lost Dutchman Mine has lured treasure hunters for over a century into the remote, treacherous, and reportedly cursed Superstition Mountains east of Phoenix. Gold and silver bars discovered in Huachuca Canyon by a soldier stationed at nearby Fort Huachuca just before World War II remain inaccessible despite years of laborious attempts at recovery. Outside the town of Yucca, bandits eager to make a fast getaway buried a strongbox filled with gold, unaware they wouldn't survive the pursuit of a law-enforcing posse to recover their plunder. And somewhere in the Little Horn Mountains northeast of Yuma lies an elusive wash containing hundreds of odd gold-filled rocks. Selected from hundreds of tales passed down from generation to generation since the days of the gold-seeking Spanish explorers, the tales included here are among the most compelling that Arizona has to offer.

In the 1870s, buffalo hunters moved onto the High Plains of Texas. The Plains Indians watched hunters slaughter the animals that gave them shelter and clothing, food and weapons. The battles at and near the ruins of a trading fort, Adobe Walls, became symbolic of the struggles between hunters and the Comanche. In this aptly titled novel, Texas novelist Elmer Kelton shows his uncanny ability to present both sides of a clash between cultures. With a firm grasp of Comanche life, Kelton presents The People as very human and very threatened. Equally clear is the picture of Anglos found on the high plains in those days - Jeff Layne, a Confederate veteran and now a fugitive; Nigel Smithwick, an English ""second son"" and gambler; Arletta, the lone woman among these men (one woman was at Adobe Walls).

Carlos, a young man who has grown up near El Paso, Texas, succumbs to the allure of Mexico and crosses the Rio Grande to embark on a mythic journey. Bearing the scars of a cruel childhood, Carlos is eager to escape the United States, a country he finds insipid, inauthentic, and hypocritical. In contrast, the northern Mexico countryside offers him a chaotic reality in which he battles a gigantic foe in a boxing match, eats snakes, and befriends a hunchbacked dwarf who tells tales of brutality and revolution in Carlos' newly adopted homeland. It is from this dwarf that Carlos learns of Chavez, guerilla champion of the oppressed who is engaged in a battle of attrition and vengeance against the militia henchmen of Joaquin Mueller, a land- and power-hungry hacendado. Carlos joins the outlaw Chavez and his band of men in their struggle against Mueller. It is a struggle that will overwhelm Carlos with death and loss, setting him on a path for revenge of his own. ""When the dreams come I taste the dust, the dry, swirling Mexican earth kicked up by galloping horses and running men.

To promote the movie National Treasure starring Nicolas Cage, Walt Disney Pictures identified W. C. Jameson as one of the three experts in the U. S. on finding lost treasures. Disney representatives interviewed him for publicity of the film and then spent two days with him in the mountains filming what will become part of the trailer for the film on DVD. Well known for his compelling series on America's lost mines and buried treasure, Jameson ties stories of adventurous treasure hunting to American history to add this book to Taylor's growing "fun history" series. With his storyteller's gift, he relates episodes from early explorers through the colonial period, the Civil War, and the settling of the West. As a professional treasure hunter, he has followed the trails of many of the lost mines and buried treasures he describes. Sample treasures: Sir Francis Drake Treasure, Nez Pierce Gold, Benedict Arnold Treasure, Lafayette's Sunken Riches, Maryland's Lost Silver Mine, The Wandering Confederate Treasury, Lost Treasure of the Gray Ghost, Oklahoma Outlaw Cashe, Jacob Fagan's Lost Loot, Missouri River Gold Cache, Lost Spanish Gold in the Sandia Mountains.

These treasure stories encourage dreams of riches and high adventure. -Review of Texas Books Part of the colorful history of Texas includes legends of outlaw loot, pirate hoards, buried mines, and Santa Anna's lost pack-train carrying gold. This book contains 31 legends ranging from lost fortunes of Native Americans, French pirates, Spanish explorers, and Mexican soldiers to the early exploits of German and Scotch-Irish settlers. These unique tales from the people of the Lone Star State highlight their adventures and struggles in search of lost mines and forgotten treasures. Cowboys, outlaws, and stage coach robbers run fill the pages of this collection of Texas stories from real-life treasure hunter, W. C. Jameson. Readers will learn about the importance of courage, resourcefulness and responsibility in this enthralling adventure collection.

Collects legends and lore of buried treasure in the American Southwest, with maps showing locations

Legends of lost Revolutionary War gold, hidden colonial silver, buried civil war loot, and more Did Fat Patty Cannon really rob and murder at least 37 businessmen and then bury the stolen gold near her Delaware treasure? Has British General Edward Braddock's lost payroll, secreted by soldiers in a Maryland cave, every been found? Could a workman actually scatter a fortune's worth of emeralds on the ground, thinking the green stones were mere playthings? Comprised of Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania, the Mid-Atlantic States are rich in history, culture, legend, and lore. This twelfth book in W. C. Jameson's Buried Treasure collection offers thirty tales of this region that have remained largely uncollected and unpublished for generations. Lost mines, buried loot, caches of gold and silver ingots, gangsters, Indians, pirates, chests of precious stones--such are the ingredients of a rich stew of folkloric treasure gathered from a melting pot of America. These legends of lost fortunes will teach readers about courage, responsibility and resourcefulness.

Anyone with an interest in the history and lore surrounding treasure will want to read these books. -KLIATT Review By putting many miles on his pickup truck, scouring many old books, journals, and maps, and interviewing countless Ozark natives, W. C. Jameson compiled Buried Treasures of the Ozarks, a collection of 43 legends from Arkansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma. As they are handed down and passed around, these tales share certain elements--mysterious strangers bearing maps, social eccentrics who die rich but spurned, good folk who squander their lives on the search for treasure. Again and again, an untimely death (from pneumonia ) or cave-in, a sudden flagging of hope or interest calls searchers away just when they're on the verge of discovering untold riches. But despite their common themes, the stories are always rooted in local detail and at least partly verifiable fact. And again and again a reader is left with the haunting image of gold or silver deep in some Ozark cave, waiting to be exposed once more to the light of day. These American stories of outlaws and treasure teach readers the importance of resourcefulness, courage and responsibility.

Thorough research is evident as one progresses through this adventure-filled text. -School Library Journal The dusty trails heading west of the Mississippi provided intrigue, adventure, and danger for the men and women who set out in search of a new life and fortune. Outlaws along with pioneers and forty-niners traveled this frontier often, finding and losing riches along the way. The Great Plains region - loaded with history from Native Americans, Spanish explorers, and Mexican, German, and Scots-Irish settlers - holds some of the country's most promising opportunities for finding buried treasure. Scattered from North Dakota to Texas, these stories provide a glimpse into the lives of fleeing outlaws, hard-working ranchers, priests, prospectors, and immigrants-all entwined in their search for treasure. Along with riches and loot, readers will also find messages encouraging courage, responsibility and resourcefulness.

Legend and lore from the first settled region in the United States. Blackbeard, the swashbuckling marauder, terrorized land and water from New Hampshire to Florida and left behind vast hidden loot. Pirates John Quelch and Joseph Braddish also accumulated millions, buried it on sandy beaches, and never returned to retrieve their hidden stashes. In North Carolina, thieves lured unaware sailors off their course with mysterious lights on the shore. And in South Carolina, a lady pirate hoarded away millions in Charleston's low country. Military ships from as far away as Spain often sailed along the coast carrying wealth to their homeland. These ships, which transported jewels, silver, gold, and other treasure, often crashed near the coast littering the sands with riches. All along the Atlantic Coast lie tales of zealous pirates, unfortunate shipwrecks, and cryptic maps discovered in musty attics. From Maine to Florida, W. C. Jameson chronicles more than thirty stories of lost riches and forgotten stashes in this ninth Buried Treasure book. Although some treasure has been discovered over the years, many relics of the past still remain hidden, awaiting someone with luck and perseverance to discover them. Sunken ships and pirate stashes transport readers into an Atlantic treasure hunt for pirate gold In addition, readers will learn the importance of courage, responsibility and resourcefulness.

Readers learn that indeed some of the gold has been found, and this should motivate them to get lucky and search on their own. -School Library Journal A cedar chest that had been packed with gold coins robbed from a bank just south of Lexington, Kentucky in 1860 was recovered 50 years later by a fishing guide at King's Mill Pond. Only a handful of coins were left in the chest, which had mostly rotted away. Is the rest settled beneath the silt of the pond today? The Appalachian Mountains have witnessed untold fortunes gained and lost. The confluence and clashes of a number of cultures - Native American Indian, French, Spanish, pioneer, and Union and Confederate forces - often resulted in struggles over mineral resources or fights about stashes of gold and silver that were hidden for later retrieval. W. C. Jameson gathered his material from journals, maps, on-site research in the Southern Appalachian Mountains and from interviews with people whose lives have been entwined with the search for long lost treasures. This book contains 40 legends with accounts of caves stacked from floor to ceiling with gold ingots; of caches guarded by skeletons and curses; and of Union payrolls scattered to the four winds. These Civil War era stories tell of courage, responsibility and resourcefulness that will teach readers as well as entertain.

These volumes will make you want to get out the old metal detector and try to find the buried treasure... -The Pilot This book contains more than thirty stories from New England and the Northeast about hidden riches, forgotten war loot, and sunken ship treasures. Marie Antoinette's $1 million necklace lies in the cold waters of the Pennichuck Brook just a few miles from downtown Nashua, New Hampshire. A steamboat, possibly the country's first one, still remains deep in Lake Morey near Fairlee, Vermont. A young woman discovers her great-grandfather's lost money in the chimney of his mysterious Massachusetts mansion. But was there more hidden in the bricks? From Revolutionary War and Civil War tales to a legend about a missing silver church bell, this lore, grown out of true accounts and actual histories, has propelled New England into one of the most fascinating regions for lost treasure. This pirate story is rich in loot as well as culture. Readers will learn about the importance of courage, responsibility and resourcefulness.