Cart Hollow Mine/Cache

There's one mine, a vertical shaft, located in Cart Hollow near Ray Spring where old Spanish tools were found and two old guns, one of which appeared to be Spanish or at least foreign made, a rifle and a pistol. The tools and the guns were taken from the area by Indians and I have inspected these objects personally and can vouch that they appear to be very old.

Ferno Dubray and I once rode by horseback into this area with our Indian friend as a guide, but about two-thirds of the way in our friend became extremely nervous, fearful that we were being watched or followed, and our expedition was postponed until a later date.

Crossing the head of East Cart Hollow and Cart Hollow, running east to west, is a major Spanish trail, plainly marked upon the trees, which drops off into Dark Canyon and leads on over into Pole Creek. Arteries of this major trail travel down through both Cart Hollows.

Along the Spanish trail which meanders down through Cart Hollow there was found a large Spanish cross carved on a tree which had knobs on all points or arms of the cross (a sure sign of treasure at that very location). Under the cross and a short way around the tree from the cross were carved the numbers "65." The cache would therefore be located 65 varas (yards) from the tree in two separate areas. At 65 varas directly past the cross on the tree was found an old open hole the size of a small couch, and at 65 varas past the tree in the other direction was found another open hole, this one circular in shape -- but both caches had been removed, and from the appearance of the holes, a long time ago.

The most interesting story, besides that of the old mine and that of the missing caches, was the one told concerning my young Indian friend. He told us of a cache of gold bars in Cart Hollow. He would have probably revealed their location to us while we were there had he not become nervous on that particular trip.

Anyway, as the story goes (some of which was verified by his younger brother), this young man rigged up a couple of pack horses and saddled his riding mount and rode up Cart Hollow by himself to retrieve the hidden gold bars. He loaded the bars on his pack horses (32 gold bars in all) and rode off to a pre-designated location where certain "buyers" had arranged to meet him, at an isolated location where they had landed a small plane.

At one point of the journey, one of his pack animals loaded with gold broke away and headed down the mountainside and would not stop. Not wanting it to be found by anyone, carrying his brand and a load of gold bars, he drew his rifle with thoughts of killing it before he lost sight of it. Just as he was about to squeeze the trigger, the animal stopped. He rode over to it, grabbed its lead rope and continued on down the mountain.

When he arrived at the designated area, where the transfer of the gold was to take place, his buyers were there waiting for him. They quickly inspected the gold, but then rudely insisted that it was ordinary brass - worthless! Some arguments flew back and forth for a few minutes and then, finally, one of the men told my young friend, "Look -- the stuff is only brass. We don't need it. But if you want, and since we've all went to some trouble over this, we'll pay you the price of brass. But it's worthless to us, so you can keep it if you want, it doesn't matter to me. But next time you get in touch with us, make damn sure that it's gold!" My friend thought for a moment about the situation and then relented, accepting payment for about 250 pounds of "brass."

He had not realized that brass would have tarnished over the years to that of a greenish-blue color. His bars had not tarnished, they were of a bright shiny yellow metal. And later, when a piece of the metal which had been shaved from one of the bars had been assayed, it was learned, sadly enough, that it was gold. By his innocence my young friend had been taken to the cleaners.--Lost Gold of the Uintah, pg. 140

I made a trip down into the Ray Spring area on 8-5-06. I didn’t find any Spanish artifacts, any old mines, gold bars, or trees with crosses on them. I did however find a tree right down where Ray Springs is supposed to be with a smelter symbol and the number 65 on it. By the way, if there was ever a spring there with water and all, there is nothing now. I found many trees with smelter symbols on them near the road too.