Salton Sea Expedition???????

[Old Katz]

Someone posted this about looking for people for an expedition. Curious, I called the number
but the people at the other end had NO idea what I was talking about. I rechecked the number; it was correctly copied down.
So was this a joke or for real?

leytegirl [ Send a Message ]
Date: April 15, 2010 09:53PM
Registered: 1 year ago
Posts: 1
we are LOOKING for southern California Salton sea area treasure hunting partners for a two ( 2 ) year search, all partners etc will have to have their own gear,
transportation, food and supplies and be able to sustain themselves for this hunt.. NO investment or fees are needed, just your ability to follow through till the end of the search period,,,,,,, call digger ( 818 ) 362-2303 from 8: AM to 5M for more information !!!!!


Is there really treasure at the Salton Sea? Maybe. There has been a story circulating for years about a Spanish ship that was stranded there. But How?
It turns out that at one time the Salton Sea was indeed connected to the Sea of Cortez http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/salton/SaltonBasinHomePage.html so it is
possible that at one time a ship could have sailed up into the Salton Sea area.

Is it worth the effort to go searching for what could be just a pipe dream? I have recently wondered why people call it a pipe dream. Perhaps because of what they were smoking? Seriously, you never know if there is something there or not until you do the work and dig, dig, dig.

http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/salton/PeriscopeSaltonSeaCh1-4.html

http://www.semp.us/publications/biot_reader.php?BiotID=505

Katz

 

[Old Katz]

OK. Its for real. Finally got the number straightened out.
Talked with Digger on the phone and will keep in touch with him.
I was thinking two years is along time! But what he was trying to say
is people would stay on the project, coming and going, taking care of
their personal lives and coming back onto the project.

Personally I think it would be a great way to spend one's time. And heck,
one might even stumble across some of those pesky meteorites.

Katz

 

[Davy Jones Locker]

ARRRRRGH !!!! Medellin fools always lookin for a mans buried property LOL

 

[reporter1]

My understanding is that the Salton Sea was dry long before the Spaniards came to the New World. The water now in it came from a levee break in the Colorado River early in the 20th Century and it's many times saltier than ocean water. I don't know what you'd find out there but I can tell you that the Imperial Valley during the summer will blister the leather on a saddle. Still, good luck to you as you never know where you might strike it rich.

 

[Old Katz]

Yea, I would NOT want to be there in the summer. Winter seems like a good time to go in
my book. There are photos of an old deserted resort that was built way back when.

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://gettotallyrad.com/dougboutwell/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/naas.jpg&imgrefurl=http://dougboutwell.com/2009/03/28/salton-sea-photographs-abandoned-naval-base/&usg=__vUBbPe_bh_O611p86r6JEmNhdio=&h=633&w=950&sz=229&hl=en&start=5&um=1&itbs=1&tbnid=N7C6nz6SVibkmM:&tbnh=99&tbnw=148&prev=/images%3Fq%3Ddeserted%2Bresort%2Bsouth%2Bend%2Bof%2BSalton%2BSea.%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26sa%3DN%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-USfficial%26channel%3Ds%26tbs%3Disch:1

Anyone want to go MDing at the above link?

Katz

 

[Tom_in_CA]

Reporter 1 is right. This is an old urban legend, with just enough truths in the back-ground documents, to keep the "faithful" believing.

Just like any legend, you have a bunch of psychology involved. First of all, there's the: "No one wants to be left out" gambling/treasure-hunting natural inclination in all of us. It's so strong, that gamblers (even though the odds might be way against them) continue to gamble. Treasure hunters are no different: despite evidence showing that their line-of-reasoning is not conclusive, yet the want "so hard" be believe (lest they be "left out" and someone else get rich instead of them) that they cling to peripheral supporting logic that may be true, but does lend itself to the ultimate conclusion.

As reporter 1 said, the ocean there hasn't reached into the low-lands of the salton sea basis, for millenia. But this is not problem for "the faithful" they've got it all figured out to counter this fact, by saying that there was a big sea surge storm phenonemon, that just happened to raise sea levels enough at just that one time. And they'll have historical citations of times when ocean levels have done just that during tidal surges.

And then when you try to challenge that there was no treasure galleons in that area (even IF a ship could've gone up the colorado river and gone out into the desert, to begin with), they've got their citation of a ship lost at sea in a certain year, that was supposed to have been plying that area.

Do you see? You string together a bunch of "woulda-couldas" with impossible odds, and summarize with some sort of mandate that it, therefore MUST have happened.

In reality, these type treasure stories are a dime a dozen. My grandparents settled in the Brawley El Centro area in the 1920s. So as a kid in the 1960s and early '70s, I still distinctly recall my grandpa telling us grandkids these fanciful legends to "put us to sleep at night" And why stop there? How about the legend of the camels that "still roam the desert" after 150+ yrs. of breeding and living on after the Beale experiments of the 1850s? (the proponents have all their "woulda-coulda" supporting arguments if you doubt them). And so on, and so forth.

And here's how you really sell any treasure legend: "Sure enough, the last surviving witness of the outlaws buried treasure came staggering into the saloon, with indian arrows in his back, mumbling about the lost gold nugget mine, with a cryptic map in his hand, but died there on the saloon floor before he could return to claim his fortune". I mean C'MON folks!

 

[Old Katz]

Hahahahaha. Nice string or reasoning you got there.-)
Yea, stories start and the grow and they almost never end.
But you know what they say about myths: they begin with a kernel
of truth but just how much truth?

Being retired, I still have to work some so I can't pack up everything
to go chasing these stories but if you have the resources and just
like to hunt then go for it! I still have a lot of scratching ground
where I live now.-)

Katz

 

[srf2112]

More power to ya Katz ! Go get em. As important as cold hard reality and logic are in this world, treasure hunting is the one area where we not only can but SHOULD always allow ourselves to dream "what if ". That's why we all love to do it. Good luck Katz and everyone else who takes the chance to take a chance.
HH
Scott

 

[moondog2000]

I like that , myths begin with a kernal of truth,but how much truth.Now I'm going to look at all myths differently. I read about that spanish ship 30yrs ago in an old desert magazine.It seems some one was driving on a wood plank road around there during a wind storm and claims they saw a mast sticking out of a sand dune.I know the colorado river filled the salton sea up but I don't believe thats how it got all its salt.seems like the ocean has made its way in there at some time or another. Hey , this makes for a good myth huh, The thing is you read about some old fool chasing a myth for years then finding the treasure & proving the myth true. Kind of makes you stop and think. If I could know anything it would be how did a story get started in the early 1900's about a spanish ship out in the desert.

 

[Old Katz]

There have been a few ships out in the Salton Sea according to an excerpt from an article: The
Salton Sea, California's Overlooked Treasure. (Google this for the complete article.)

"The desert actually has had several ships sailing its sands. Before the present Salton Sea was formed, the Liverpool Salt Works, operating in the bottom of the dry sink, built a three wheeled sand yacht similar to an ice boat, and used it on the packed bottom of the old salt bed. In the late 1890s an inventor came to the desert with a wagonload of lumber and the necessary ironwork for building a ship. He pitched his tent in the vicinity of Kane Springs and proceeded to build a contraption in the general shape of a boat, with mast and sail and four broad-tired wheels. But the wheels were not big enough and the craft made only about a hundred feet before it wobbled into an eroded cut, shook the one-man crew overboard, and staggered unguided across the sand. it finally bumped into a weed hill and toppled over, breaking the mast off about four feet above the one-piece cross-board deck.
In 1862, according to the Desert Magazine of El Centro, California, when the gold rush to La Paz, Arizona was in full swing, a boat twenty-one feet long was built by the Los Angeles firm of Perry and Woodworth for a band of gold-seekers. They expected to use it crossing the Colorado River. The boat had a mast and sail and four wheels. They loaded the amphibian with provisions, hitched two teams to it, and started out on the two hundred fifty mile journey. Somewhere between Whitewater and Dos Palmas the teams gave out and the craft was abandoned.
But back to those legendary ships. The very real navigational hazard of the Colorado River's immense tidal bore might well have caught an unsuspecting sailing ship, carried it inland and dumped it there. Persistence of such legends in both Indian and frontiersmen lore make it hard to completely discount them. The sands tell no tale."

If this is accurate, then its probable that the Mast people claim to have seen sticking out of the sand is from the 1800.

Katz

 

[moondog2000]

Your probly right as to where the mast came from,I vaguely remember some of the stories of the ships in the area but who knows , maybe one day we will have a 100yr wind and the deserts will give up some secrets.

 

[Old Katz]

With the climate changes heading our way it may be sooner that you think!
Katz

 

[moondog2000]

I wonder if we are going to have an EL NINO summer, & how about all the earthquakes! May be they will uncover some treasure somewhere.

 

[1230@$TREE]

I wish Ya luck Katz, when you look at the surrounding mountain in that area, there is what looks like, what was once a water line. lots of stories of lost gold
and loot, lots of other history, I have detected in places along the old stage coach trail and found a few things, looking for an old ship in the desert which I
do believe could be there would be a big undertaking. but there enough other things in the area that would be fun to explore. the weather usually breaks after
September, but can still get real hot, my grandfather settled in Humboldt county around 1911 lift about the time Poncho Via was robbing banks on the border
My grandmother said it was time to leave when the town started to hand out rifles to fight them off, Poncho Via needed money for his cause,so the story goes.
I spent a lot of time in various places out there, fun to explore.

 

[1230@$TREE]

I meant to say holtville,must be age, I had humbold on my brain,anyway lots of luck

 

[TURNMASTER]

Sounds like fun. May be more truth than we know. If I was retired I would give it a whole lot of considreation.

 

[moondog2000]

I just read something the other day about that ship in the desert. It said back in the day the spanish sailing in the gulf were looking for a way to sail to the pacific ocean and that might be how a ship might have ended up in the desert. Ya just never know.