City of Rocks Historic Resources Study

[While touring City of Rocks] I was startled by the appearance of three men, who were digging at the base of a crag [for a treasure] supposed to have been buried somewhere in the vicinity about two years previously by a party of highwaymen who had robbed the Montana stage. . . . The present party had undertaken the search and had been at it then for two months. . . . As a last resource, had consulted a medium or clairvoyant, and they were then plying pick and shovel where she had recommended them. . . . This incident completed the picture of the city for me for it was the only thing lacking to give it the air of wild romance which so readily accorded the lonely enclosed landscape. [127]

Tales of stage robberies complete with lost loot buried beneath one of the City's rocky crags have formed part of local lore for almost 120 years. Although versions of the robbery differ, most agree that the Kelton stage was robbed circa 1878 of $90,000-200,000 in gold bullion bound for a U.S. military camp in Boise. One bandit (in some accounts, two) was killed in the confrontation. The second was captured days later after reportedly burying the treasure at the base of what soon became known as Treasure Rock — a site revealed to his jailers just before his death. The legend is plausible — the Albion-Kelton stage was robbed, for example, in 1882 and the robbers captured in the vicinity; so plausible, that by 1929 "dozens of men [had] dug for the treasure. If any one of them discovered it, he has kept the discovery a secret." [128] Since 1880, the Legend of Treasure Rock has provided the "air of wild romance which so readily accord[s] the lonely enclosed landscape." [129]