TYLER, Texas (KETK) – Legends of buried treasure have fascinated individuals round the world since time immemorial. It’s no shock that East Texas has native tales of buried treasure.
There are two legends particularly that appear to have discovered buy in the minds of East Texas treasure hunters. Tales of pirate booty and Mexican gold have captivated minds for generations, and all of it could possibly be nearer than you would possibly suppose.
Jean Lafitte’s treasure
One significantly well-known legend is that of Jean Lafitte’s treasure. There are many tales about famed pirate Jean Lafitte, however one locations his misplaced buried treasure at the backside of a lake proper right here in East Texas.
North of Tatum, in the center of the woods, lies Hendricks Lake. This is the place the place six wagon masses of silver stolen by Jean Lafitte from a ship known as the Santa Rosa had been supposedly dumped, in accordance with HendricksLake.com, a web site run by creator and impartial researcher, Gary L. Pinkerton.
Pinkerton is an enigmatic determine. His web site is titled “True Believers: Treasure Hunters at Hendricks Lake” however he’s not a ‘true believer’ himself.
In an interview with KETK, Pinkerton mentioned the treasure, or lack thereof, at Hendricks Lake.
“I titled it True Believers because I’m way more interested in the people who believe this stuff than the possibility that there might actually be something,” Pinkerton mentioned. “I haven’t found anything to suggest that a centuries-worth of stories about buried treasure have any credence. In fact, this same story about Lafitte treasure being lost somewhere, was repeated over and over in almost the same pattern from the Gulf Coast all the way up into Arkansas and Missouri.”
Pinkerton went on to explain how there have been dozens of expeditions and makes an attempt to search out buried treasure between Hendricks Lake and the Sabine River. In one account, Pinkerton remembers doing analysis and discovering a narrative about the son of the founder of Tatum.
“It led all the way back to an 1884 account where the guy who was the son of the founder of Tatum, Texas in East Texas decided he was going to drain the lake. So, he set up these steam engines and buckets on a conveyor belt and pumps. The story was reporting the fact that Tatum beat a man to death who essentially made fun of that effort,” Pinkerton mentioned.
For Pinkerton, the treasure of Hendricks Lake is its historical past and the individuals who have believed in the legend over the years.
“The people who have looked for Hendricks Lake treasure since the 50s have spent a lot of money and hired a researcher in Spain to see if the Santa Rosa actually existed, all kinds of things,” Pinkerton mentioned. “It’s just a great story and what intrigued me was the people engaged in that all over those 100 years.”
People’s dedication to myths, tall tales and legends is highly effective, in accordance with Pinkerton. “‘Legend remains victorious in spite of history’ and it just attests to the power that legends have over people when the facts may not necessarily support something,” Pinkerton mentioned.
One one who remains to be dedicated to the Hendricks Lake legend is Jacksonville documentary movie maker and treasure hunter, Christian B. Roper.
Roper is the director of a four-part documentary sequence about the Hendricks Lake legend titled “Sunken Silver.” The documentary follows Roper’s private journey with the story, beginning when he first heard it at 7-years-old and chronicling his dives and searches at Hendricks Lake. It’s slated to be launched in May on Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and Tubi.
Roper is the newest in an extended line of individuals to seek for treasure in Hendricks Lake, and he’s utilizing the newest expertise and strategies to do it.
“I spent the majority of the summer of 2020 organizing expeditions into the lake, through sonar we had come up with quite a few hits of things that were very interesting,” Roper mentioned. “We organized some strategic searches via dives doing grid patterns and things of that sort to try to get those up.”
By utilizing deep-sea sonar expertise that may pierce the thick mud and clay at the backside of the lake, Roper mentioned he could have discovered a cart or wagon which may have moved treasure to the lake.
“There was one spot that we initially found, I think it was June of 2020, which gave us a sonar reading that was pretty much an exact match to a wooden wagon that had submerged with some sort of weight,” Roper mentioned.
Hendricks Lake is a particular place for Roper. Having grown up listening to these tales about buried treasure and now trying to find it himself, he’s turning into a component of historical past.
“What I like most about the lake is that, it just contains this feel when you go out there and you see the Spanish moss hanging on the trees, you feel like you’ve gone back in time,” Roper mentioned. “No matter the lack of proof for a lot of these things, it just makes sense in your mind for a story like this to take place here.”
Little Cypress Creek
The different massive buried treasure legend from East Texas is the story of Little Cypress Creek. Little Cypress Creek, north of Gilmer, is the web site the place legend says a cache of Mexican coinage was dumped, in accordance with “A Brief History of Upshur County” a historical past guide printed in 1946.
Roper believes that the Little Cypress Creek story and the Hendricks Lake story could have a typical heritage. According to the legend, the Cherokee had been fleeing north after the Battle of Neches when Roper mentioned their path crossed Little Cypress Creek on the property of a person named O’Hendrick.
“I don’t want to give too much away, but part of the reason that Hendricks Lake may have been incorrectly added to the story is because, I believe, in the late 1830’s there may have been something found on a property owned by a man with the last name O’Hendrick,” Roper mentioned.
Overtime, Roper believes that this information was interpreted to imply that there was treasure in Hendricks Lake. For Roper, tales like these are greater than a curiosity. He believes that tales like this reveal one thing about the individuals who inform them.
“Societies are kind of defined by what they put their belief in and what they really want to be true. It says so much about East Texas folklore. In the 1880s through the 1970s East Texas was, in most parts, very poor, very rural and it gave people something to believe in, it gave them their attachment to the beyond,”
After years of looking, Roper remains to be optimistic, and he mentioned that his dedication to Hendricks Lake will nonetheless be there it doesn’t matter what he finds.
“No matter what, I come to believe throughout professional research or diving, I will always associate it with Jean Lafitte, with treasure, with piracy because it’s meant so much to the community,” Roper mentioned. “Stories are how we interact as people and it’s how we grow. Stories like this, it’s what created a filmmaker in myself, it’s what creates archeologists, it’s what creates people that come up with plans to conquer whatever they want to solve in life, it’s just a special place.”
Whether the treasure is actually on the market or not stays to be confirmed. One factor is definite although, East Texans will proceed to be fascinated by tales like these. If the treasure is on the market, then some East Texan is certain to search out it. That fortunate treasure hunter who finds the place ‘X marks the spot’, will change into an East Texas legend, similar to the treasure they strove to search out.
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