A notorious Ohio River landmark from which river pirates operated is the source of buried treasure reports stemming from more than $1,000,000 in loot in the form of gold, silver, cash, and counterfeit bills that reportedly passed through the area between 1790 and 1830.
Cave-in-Rock was one of the major milestone for settlers heading west towards the Mississippi River on flatboats heading down the Ohio River, all their possessions and supplies for starting anew loaded aboard.
Cave-in-Rock is a natural cavern with a 55 foot wide access entrance and a big room in the back. It does not penetrate beyond that room. The cave was created by in the white limestone bluffs by wind and water erosion as well as the effects of the great New Madrid earthquake of the winter of 1811, largest earthquake in US history.
The cave is the centerpiece of the 204-acre Cave-in-Rock State Park near the village of Cave in Rock which has a population of under 400. Park visitors can look down through the screened chimney access at the top of the cavern which opens in the main rear cavern. From a small parking lot visitors can follow a riverside path a few short feet to the cave entrance.
Access to the 100-foot deep cave is through an entrance between a split in rock shelves, opening out in the large back room. The floor of the rear cavern is level. The cave is easily visible from the river.
The cave was at one time a potentially very dangerous stopover for the flood of western-bound settlers looking for free land and a new start, last chance to buy a drink or needed supplies.
It was also, through decades of habitation, a haven for keelboat pirates and various other predators. In modern times, it has been used for location shooting about the piratical era in How the West Was Won and Disney’s TV movie Davy Crockett and the River Pirates.
Cave-in-Rock remains the source of numerous (unconfirmed) reports of treasure left by generations of cutthroat thieves and killers who robbed lightly armed settlers. The so-called Outlaws of Cave in Rock terrorized the area between the 1790s and 1870s. The cave was the center of a frontier web of gambling, counterfeiting, prostitution, robbery, and murder.
Among the most notorious of the criminals operating from Cave-in-Rock was cold-blooded giant Samuel Mason, a former Revolutionary War officer who established himself here around 1800 with a tavern and gambling parlor equipped with prostitutes. Travelers visited at their own risk and many became the victims of beatings, if they were lucky, as well as robbery. Mason dispatched his agents up and down the approaches to Cave-in-Rock to approach confused and unwary themselves as welcome samaritans, ending with them robbed and killed.
Terrorizing his Ohio River haunts and later the Natchez Trace along the Mississippi, one of Mason’s men sought to cash in on a $1,000 reward with a well-placed hatchet, himself to fall victim to outlaws before he could collect his bounty. It’s said Mason may have left behind an unclaimed horse when he was dispatched, carrying $7,000 cash and 20 human scalps.
Counterfeiters Phillip Alston and John Duff began using the cave back around 1790, though details are sketchy, at best. From then on, it was continuously used by an element recalled formally as the “Ancient Colony of Horse-Thieves, Counterfeiters and Robbers”, including such criminals as the Harpe Brothers (Big Harpe and Little Harp), who preceded Mason, themselves dealt with by a band of bounty hunting vigilantes named the exterminators.
By the 1830’s when the criminal element began to decline with encroaching civilization, gradually replaced by visitors to a landscape that is at the least quite lovely and possessing a gorgeous overview from the bluffs of the Ohio. But behind them lingered rumors of loot stolen from countless travelers, buried in the area by bandits who never returned due to the quick-bloody turnover in residency.
There is a report of $200,000 in gold and silver coin taken by stagecoach robbers and stashed in a cave in the Ohio River area near but not at Cave-in-Rock. Allegedly, gold and silver coins have turned up on the river shore after storms.
Sources:
Personal Experience
Blazek, Mark C., Cave-in-Rock Treasure, Lost Treasure Online
Cave-in-Rock, Illinois, Wikipedia
Cave-in-Rock-Shawnee National Forest-Southern Illinois, The Unofficial ShawneeForest.com Website