There may be a treasure buried somewhere underground in Portland, Oregon - no one is really sure. There's a treasure map, at least, and it may lead to a cache of $6,000, which was a whole lot of money when it was hidden. If it was hidden, that is. This buried treasure in Oregon is a mystery! Read on to learn more about it.
Today, Portland, Oregon is a bustling metropolis with a population of about 650,000 people.
In 1862, it was a lot smaller. Only about 4,000 people lived there then. This picture is from 1890 when about 46,000 people lived there, so imagine how small it was 30 years earlier!
The Oregon Historical Society has many interesting documents in its collection. One of the most interesting is this hand-drawn treasure map that's dated February 1862. It's 6 inches tall and 18 inches wide, and it has numerous recognizable landmarks on it like a port, a building with a tall spire, a barn, a road called "Pike Road," and some gravestones.
The word "MONEY" is also on the map - twice - noting two separate caches of $3,000 each!
That may not sound like that much money to you right now, but $3,000 in 1862 would be $108,000 today. Both caches would have been the equivalent of $216,000. That would have been quite a treasure back then!
No one is even sure if this map is legitimate, though. It was found amongst the papers of a Seattle judge named Everett Smith when he died.
His son, Irving, who found the map and who gave it to Oregon Historic Quarterly magazine in 1940, said his father never mentioned it. Later, the son learned that the map belonged to a man whose estate had been settled in his father's court.
Irving admitted he looked for the treasure himself for a period with no success before turning it over to Oregon Historical Quarterly.
Dozens of treasure hunters have searched for the treasure over the past century and a half, but no one has found it yet. At least, no one has said that they found it...
Maybe you'll be the lucky one! Good luck and happy treasure hunting!
You can ask to see the map yourself if you visit the Oregon Historical Society. Maybe you can make sense of it and find the treasure yourself. Sure, it's not a lot of money by today's standards, but how cool would it be to find an actual buried treasure? Happy hunting!
Are you interested in learning more about possible treasures hidden in Oregon? Check this post out! 7 More Buried Treasures That Most People Don’t Know Are Hiding In Oregon.
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