18 MAY8, 2022gold, because then we could claim the inheritance! ... [Or] if they
could prove it came from a bank or a railroad, that money could be
claimed by ... the descendants of those corporations.”
I found myself wrestling with the tension between keeping an
open mind and not being deluded. “What lies between skepticism
and credulity?” I asked one morning, as Getler and I sat beside the
shaft Somers had dug, while Brad and Bradley Richards took more
detector readings to pick a spot to start drilling. “A straight skeptic
might never find gold, and an overly credulous person might be
faked out all the time and keep going, wanting to believe. ... [But]
belief is also an important part of the tool kit.”
“If you don’t have that, you can’t keep going,” Getler agreed.
“That’s where I say ambiguity is our worst enemy. ... And the sad
part is, until you pull up bars of gold in Dents Run, or Ohio, or [a
third active site in] New Mexico, it’s just, for some, a lot of hot air,
or wild speculation, or some might even say a fool’s errand.”S
ay what you will about tree carvings and treasure maps; it’s
harder to argue with metal detectors. The Richardses had
confirmed two fat targets near Somers’s site, and a ground-
penetrating radar survey later indicated other possible targets
nearby. Getler conceded the devices they were using weren’t as
sophisticated as the equipment that the FBI drew upon at Dents
Run — he couldn’t afford that technology here — but the Ohio
technology had obtained readings at Dents Run consistent with
the results that convinced the FBI to dig, he said. As I continued my
cautious journey down the rope on that hopeful fourth day when
digging was to begin and the hill would yield its secrets, my mind
was still open to any possibility. Was I feeling treasure fever?
The rope delivered me safely to the ledge by the shaft, where I
found Somers crouching beside his makeshift tunnel braces. Sun
was glinting off the creek, a gossipy circle of wild turkeys faced us
on the other side, and Somers was in a pensive mood. He was pretty
sure he was about to become a rich man, and he had complicated
feelings about that. It would lift him out of poverty and allow him
to provide for his family and friends, but he knew gold could also be
a curse. “At the end of this thing, I just want everybody involved to
be able to sit down and smile and wrap our minds around what we
have done ... regardless of whether it’s in there,” he said, adding: “I
mean, we kind of already know it’s in there.”
Somers couldn’t help remarking that for all the fancy technol-
ogy and theories that had been brought to bear, they were still
digging right where, in his vision, Jesse James had told him to dig
in the first place.
Getler hired a local equipment operator who began carving a
switchback path that would allow his track hoe to descend the
steep grade to the dig site. They worked on the road all day, filling
the forest with the grinding sound of human intervention. By
nightfall, the path was nearly done.
The next day began with two omens, one hopeful, one not so
much. As the track hoe operator prepared to fell a dead tree and
position the machine for the final assault on the treasure, Somers
reached into the dirt at the base of the tree and found a T-shaped
piece of metal. It was the same shape as the diagrams carved on
two of the beech trees. The operator’s assistant identified it as a
portion of an animal trap. Could this be the wolf trap spoken of in
the letter between Zanesville treasure hunters in 1949 — or was it
meaningless scrap? Any attempts to date the artifact would have
to wait.
“Hey, Chad, nice find there, buddy,” Getler said. “After that,
I’m one step closer to believing it’s here, and if it’s not, I’ll eat my
words.”Getler made a last visit to the beech trees. I sat with him on the
ground and contemplated the carvings, wondering if the discov-
eries to come would confirm the story he thought the trees told.
But Jesse James’s signature was still invisible. Was the bark too
wet — or had he even been here?
By day’s end, the track hoe finally reached the site. The sun was
about to set, so Getler postponed digging until morning. Given
that schedule, I thought I could depart the scene to give Hope
Bowser a lift to the gas station because her car had run out of gas.
While I was at the pump, I got a text message that the treasure
digging had begun anyway — and something dramatic was
happening. I was out of position, a reporter’s worst nightmare. I
raced back to the site and later reconstructed a few moments that
I missed via interviews and video that I reviewed.
Somers rode the excavator’s shovel down into the hole and
started opening what he thought looked like a passage deeper
into the hill. “Tunnel, tunnel!” exclaimed Getler, standing on a
berm above the hole. “If they confirm a tunnel, I’m going to start
hugging everyone.”
Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, an angry man stalked
onto the scene. He ordered the digging to halt and everyone to
leave the property.
Bowser identified him as one of her brothers, though not the
one she said co-owned the property with her. But the co-owner
soon contacted her as well and let her know he disapproved of
digging for alleged gold with a track hoe and cutting a road to get to
the site. The brothers had been taken by surprise by the amount of
disruption to the property, and it was clear that at least some
members of Bowser’s family considered the treasure hunt a
deluded fantasy.
We left. I felt as though a spell had been broken. The cold reality
of family drama made the treasure hunt seem like a game that
made sense only if you were in on it. It dawned on me that, in spite
of ourselves, we had arrived at that most predictable juncture in a
treasure narrative: the moment of reconciling with the absence of
treasure.
But treasure narratives have infinite powers of regeneration.
Gold hadn’t been found — but neither had an empty hole. Within
several days, after Getler, the Richardses and I had left Ohio,
members of Bowser’s family relented. One told me, on the
condition that I not publish his name because of his job, that
stories of gold on the property go back decades. In the 1950s, a man
dug for gold there for years. He probably thought the gold had been
buried, because mineralogists have determined the area is not
suited for naturally occurring gold, the family member said. But
the digger apparently never found anything.
The family allowed the hunt for Jesse James’s gold to continue,
on the condition that it be conducted less invasively. Somers began
excavating by hand, crawling into tunnels and voids. He snaked a
camera deeper into the hill, and as this story was going to press, he
was sending back images that he and Getler interpreted as possible
signs of objects and tool work.
For the time being, though, that thing more precious than gold
that each of the treasure hunters was seeking continued to elude
them. I hadn’t found what I was looking for, either — something
solid to hold on to in this swirl of legend, fact and fantasy; a final
verdict. These days, certainty may be the most out-of-reach
treasure of all.David Montgomery is a staff writer for the magazine. Staff researchers
Alice Crites, Magda Jean-Louis, Jennifer Jenkins, Monika Mathur and
Razzan Nakhlawi contributed to this story.