Free Republic

PENFIELD, Pa. — In the heart of Pennsylvania elk country, Eric McCarthy and his client, Don Reichel, got up before sunrise to scour the forest floor for so-called “brown gold” — a rack of freshly shed antlers to add to Reichel’s collection back home. One hill over, a team of FBI agents was also hunting for gold. The metallic yellow kind. The FBI’s highly unusual search for buried Civil War-era treasure more than five years ago set in motion a dispute over what, if anything, the agency unearthed and an ongoing legal battle over key records. There’s so much intrigue...

DENTS RUN, Pa.—Dennis Parada points to a weedy spot where he believes the Federal Bureau of Investigation dug up nine tons of Civil War-era gold, worth more than $500 million, and made off with it in the middle of the night. The patch of ground halfway up a mountain in western Pennsylvania lies at the heart of the treasure hunter’s quest to recover the trove and prove it was snatched from under his nose. The matter is now playing out in federal court. At 70, he has been chasing the Dents Run gold for more than 40 years. “It’s definitely...

A treasure hunter has accused the FBI of a 'major coverup' after it allegedly made off with $500million worth of buried Civil War gold. Dennis Parada believes he located a burial site around halfway up a mountain in western Pennsylvania laden with Civil War treasure, before the FBI dug up the goods under the cover of darkness. The detectorist claims he alerted authorities to the possible haul after ground-testing suggested the Dents Run site was filled with gold. The FBI then commissioned its own tests that suggested vast amounts of the metal could be below the surface. The agency claims...

The court-ordered release of a trove of government photos, videos, maps and other documents involving the FBI’s secretive search for Civil War-era gold has a treasure hunter more convinced than ever of a coverup — and just as determined to prove it. Dennis Parada waged a legal battle to force the FBI to turn over records of its excavation in Dents Run, Pennsylvania, where local lore says an 1863 shipment of Union gold disappeared on its way to the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia. The FBI, which went to Dents Run after sophisticated testing suggested tons of gold might be buried...

The FBI either lied to a federal judge about having video of its secretive 2018 dig for Civil War-era gold, or illegally destroyed the video to prevent a father-son team of treasure hunters from gaining access to it, an attorney for the duo asserted in new legal filings that allege a government cover-up. The FBI has long insisted its agents recovered nothing of value when they went looking for the fabled gold cache. But Finders Keepers, a treasure-hunting company that led agents to the remote woodland site in Pennsylvania in hopes of getting a finder’s fee, suspect the FBI found...

A scientific analysis commissioned by the FBI shortly before agents went digging for buried treasure suggested a huge quantity of gold could be below the surface, according to newly released government documents and photos that deepen the mystery of the 2018 excavation in remote western Pennsylvania. The report, by a geophysicist who performed microgravity testing at the site, hinted at an underground object with a mass of up to 9 tons and a density consistent with gold. The FBI used the consultant's work to obtain a warrant to seize the gold - if there was any to be found. The...

The FBI might not have found any Civil War-era gold at a remote woodland site in Pennsylvania - but it's definitely got records of the agency's 2018 dig, and will soon have to turn them over to a father-son pair of treasure hunters. A federal judge has ordered the FBI to speed up the release of records about the search for the legendary gold, ruling Monday in favor of Finders Keepers, the treasure hunting outfit that led FBI agents to the remote site. The group accuses the Justice Department of slow-walking their request for information. The FBI must turn over...

The government has long claimed its dig was a bust. But a father-son pair of treasure hunters who spent years hunting for the fabled Civil War-era gold — and who led agents to the woodland site, hoping for a finder's fee — suspect the FBI double-crossed them and made off with a cache that could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The newly revealed geophysical survey was part of a court-ordered release of government records on the FBI's treasure hunt at Dent's Run, about 135 miles (220 kilometers) northeast of Pittsburgh, where legend says an 1863 shipment of Union...

A father-son duo of Pennsylvania treasure hunters have sued the FBI for failing to produce records chronicling a top-secret excavation the agency administered in the state nearly four years ago that may have yielded a $400million cache of Civil War-era gold. Court documents unsealed earlier this year revealed that the bureau had in fact engaged in the previously undisclosed dig in Elk County in search of the fabled treasure, lost by the US government in 1863. The filing attested that agents engaged in the dig came up empty-handed.Fortune seekers Dennis and Kem Parada, however - who together comprise the lost...

An FBI agent applied for a federal warrant in 2018 to seize a fabled cache of U.S. government gold he said was “stolen during the Civil War” and hidden in a Pennsylvania cave, saying the state might take the gold for itself if the feds asked for permission, according to court documents unsealed Thursday.

A Harrisburg attorney said Thursday that a state appeals court has just given him the next clue toward hopefully solving the mystery of whether the FBI dug up a cache of lost Civil War gold worth about $400 million from a remote Pennsylvania forest nearly three years ago. That clue, William J. Cluck said, is the name of the federal magistrate judge who ordered all records of the March 2018 excavation in the Dent’s Run area of Elk County to be sealed from public view. Cluck said he can use that information, secured through his latest Right-to-Know Law appeal to...

This is a rather odd story that I’ve been following for a while now, so bear with me. It’s been featured on a couple of the Travel Channel’s conspiracy theory shows and you’ll see why in a moment if you’re not familiar with it. But a recent development may bring it out of the tinfoil hat column and at least into the realm of possibility. The tale starts in the 1860s when legend has it that a large wagon full of gold bullion was either stolen or “went missing” in a remote area of western Pennsylvania. The shipment had supposedly...

Go for the gold? The U.S. government went for it. FBI agents were looking for an extremely valuable cache of fabled Civil War-era gold — possibly tons of it — when they excavated a remote woodland site in Pennsylvania three years ago this month, according to government emails and other recently released documents in the case. On March 13, 2018, treasure hunters led the FBI to Dent’s Run, about 135 miles (220 kilometers) northeast of Pittsburgh, where legend has it an 1863 shipment of Union gold was either lost or stolen on its way to the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia....

A pair of Pennsylvania treasure hunters and their lawyer are accusing the FBI of playing games and acting suspiciously about a dig at a rural site believed to contain a massive stash of Civil War-era gold -- which may be worth up to $250 million. The accusations from Dennis and Kem Parada, and their attorney, Bill Cluck, came months after the bureau said it dug a hole in Dents Run and found nothing. The father-and-son duo felt convinced that area of state-owned wilderness northeast of Pittsburgh holds a hidden stash of gold and the pair claim the FBI went back...

The FBI came out empty handed at the remote Pennsylvania site where Civil War-era gold treasure is rumored to be buried, officials said Monday. Dozens of FBI agents, Pennsylvania state officials and members of a treasure-hunting group dug in a rural site where local lore has it that a Civil War-era gold shipment bound for a U.S. Mint in Philadelphia was either lost or hidden around the time of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. President Abraham Lincoln reportedly ordered the shipment to pay Union Army soldiers, according to a local treasure-hunting group called Finders Keepers.The FBI said it conducted...

Has $55million worth of lost gold from the Civil War era been found in central Pennsylvania? That's what locals seem to believe after FBI agents, Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and treasure hunters Dennis and Kem Parada were seen digging around a remote area in Benezette Township, called Dents Run. Dennis and his son Kem, the owners of the treasure hunting organization Finders Keepers, have claimed for years that 52 gold bars were buried under a fire pit at Dents Run more than 150 years ago during the Battle of Gettysburg.

When Sgt. Jim Connors tipped back a few too many, he’d talk about the legend of lost Civil War gold, and boast about its whereabouts deep in the hills of Western Pennsylvania. Connors, according to a 1978 United Press International article in the Pittsburgh Press, was part of a special Union detachment tasked with transporting 26 gold bars, each weighing 50 pounds, from West Virginia to the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia in the summer of 1863.According to one version of the story, Connors staggered into Lock Haven, in north-central Pennsylvania, as the lone survivor of an ambush. The gold was...

As a 155-year-old legend goes, a Union Army wagon train left Wheeling, W.Va., before the Battle of Gettysburg, carrying two tons of gold, but never completed its 400-mile mission. The gold was supposed to be used to pay Union soldiers. But it first had to make it to the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia, according to the Associated Press. It never did. The wagon train traveled northeast and was last spotted in St. Marys, Pa. Searchers found the wagons and the bodies of dead soldiers — and the gold was gone. But maybe not forever. On Friday, dozens of FBI agents,...