Superstition Mountains photograph by Beyond My Ken, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0. Edited for the channel banner.
The campfire
Old West and Lost Treasures tells true stories of lost mines, buried loot, and vanished gold. The history is real, and so is the legend that grew out of it.
Narrated by Shane Coburn.
The channel
Two evenings so far. Each one keeps the documented history apart from the legend that came after it. Watch the channel.
Episode 1 · Arizona
East of Phoenix, the Superstition Mountains hide one of the most famous lost-mine legends in the American West. This story keeps the documented record — Jacob Waltz, Julia Thomas, the 1891 flood, the 1895 newspaper story, and the 1931 disappearance of Adolph Ruth — apart from the legend that grew up around them.
Watch episode 1
Episode 2 · California
Thomas L. Smith, the mountain man called Peg Leg, left a real trail from Kentucky to the California desert. The black-rock hill of gold that searchers still hunt is the legend. Nobody has proved that hill. California Historical Landmark 750 marks the story in Anza-Borrego.
Watch episode 2ElevenReader
Adult western. Violence. Not a children's book.
Redstone. Four thousand dollars sits in the wooden bank until the Thursday coach takes it north. Sheriff Jed Tucker pins a tin star on Will Mercer and puts him on the door.
Cade Voss wants the number. Elias wants a cut. Front Street holds the count.
The teller
Shane Coburn narrates the true stories and writes westerns. Drawing on a longtime interest in storytelling, history, and the American West, he writes lean, character-driven fiction about law, loyalty, money, and the choices men make when the street goes quiet.
The novel on the cover is Redstone the Star. He also writes westerns as S. Q. Coburn.
