Free Republic

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...

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...

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.

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,...