William H. Smith January 22, 2002

1204 Christmas Tree Lane about 900 words

Pearce, Az. 85625

303-36-7671

(520) 826-1029

McBride’s Bluff

By

William H. Smith

McBride’s Bluff is located on the east fork of White River, above the town of Shoals, Indiana. The town got its name from the river, at this location in the river is a shallow section of water. McBride’s Bluff is about two miles above Shoals, on the west bank of the river. The bluff can be accessed by traveling by boat up the river, or by going up state road 450 and turning east on a gravel road toward the river, where you will find the gravel road following along the westside of the river.

In the late 1960s I purchased a Fisher medal detector, I used it at the Public Park, school grounds, old house sites, and various home around the Odon, Indiana area. On some of these coin-shooting hunts I took a friend of mine, Lloyd Resler with me, who also became interested in treasure hunting. Lloyd was married and had started on his family; he couldn’t afford to buy a medal detector so he built his own which worked very well.

One day Lloyd brought an article for me to read, about a treasure located in Martin County. The article told of silver being buried in a cave close to McBride’s Bluff, and horses could be ridden into the cave. There was enough silver to shoe all the horse’s in Martin County deposited in the cave.

This story stirred me to do some serious treasure hunting as it had Lloyd. Every year in February, on Presidents’ Day, Lloyd and I would spend the day treasure hunting. We searched the McBride Bluff area with great care; the pictures show the three outstanding levels of our outing.

Picture number one shows Mc Bride’s Bluff. The rock outcropping is a landmark along the east fork of White River. The formation is of sandstone, and has seashells encrusted into it, indicating that it was under water long ago. At the base of the bluff we found a large cave, large enough to ride horses into.

Picture number three shows the mouth of the cave mentioned above. The arrow on the picture indicates another opening, but much smaller. By crawling on my belly I was able to go through the small opening that opened into a large cave that paralleled the first cave we found. Both of the caverns extended about sixty feet under McBride’s Bluff, the cavern obtained by crawling through the small opening was wet and had a little water on the floor. We found no silver bars or other medal. We left the cave and climbed to the top of the bluff, where we made the discovery of the symbols on the rocks.

Pictures three and four, indicates our greatest discovery of the day. The engravings on the sandstone were two diamonds and an arrow; the bottom line may have been natural or could be used to show the river, which flows on this course. The short feather points toward the bluff’s edge toward the river, the long feather points toward the treasure spot.

The front of the rock had quite a lot of dirt removed from the base of it, probably by an earlier treasure hunter, who found nothing in that hole but more dirt. After taking pictures and searching the area our time for this year’s treasure hunt drew to a close. We returned back to our homes, and over the next twelve months we contemplated over the carvings we found on the rock.

During the winter before our next Presidents’ Day treasure hunt, we discovered that by drawling lines through the corners of the diamonds it formed a right angle, and the distance between the diamonds indicated the distance to the treasure site. The appearance of the rock by simply looking at it didn’t reveal a thing. We converted the measurement between the two diamonds into chains, we came up with four and one half chain lengths to the location. Each chain length is equal to sixty-six feet, therefore it was about three hundred feet from the rock to the treasure. By placing a string between the diamond points that made a right angle, we drove a stick at the apex, and intersected with another piece of string at the halfway point between the two diamonds. This gave us direction, and we noticed that the long feather on the arrow was pointing in the same direction.

We stepped off about three hundred feet, there we saw an indention in the ground that looked as if someone else had found the spot before us and dug up the treasure. Another explanation could be that something was stashed under the ground and the top had caved in. We didn’t excavate the sunken area, so we don’t know for sure if the hole was empty or not.

Many years before we made our discovery at McBride’s Bluff the French used this fork of White River to explore the region. The most logical explanation is that they buried goods here for others who followed them, to be used to further explore the area. Without digging into the storage cavity, one can’t be sure that there isn’t still something in the hole.

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