4 Stories of Buried Treasure in Key West, Everglades and More.

I love how some of these stories are told with enough detail that they give you hope that you could find the loot. Digging for gold and silver would be fun for about an hour, after that I’d be looking for some shade and a margarita. Florida is hot! Enjoy the stories from Treasurelore.com.

4 Florida Buried Treasure Stories

• Eight barrels of English coins amounting to $100,000 were buried near present-day Cross City and State Road 19/98, by two Bahamian traders before they were hung by General Andrew Jackson for selling arms to the Seminole Indians in the 1830’s. Reportedly this treasure was buried near the junction of two streams on the northern edge of the town.

• During the dry season in the year 1907, a treasure chest was first spotted lying in a swampy area surrounded by quicksand between the Atlantic Ocean and Indian River. Many treasure hunters since have tried unsuccessfully to retrieve it. Survivors of one of several old shipwrecks lying nearby may have buried the chest. Located on the outer banks close to state A1A, 8 miles south of Vero Beach.

• The Florida Everglades is the area of a well documented lost treasure. Near the end of the Civil War, a Confederate paymaster being pursued by Union troops buried a million-dollar payroll, $200,000 in gold coins and the remainder in paper currency. Records reveal he wrote, “Chased by the enemy, we buried our payroll at a point in the Everglades at a junction of two creeks, where the land rises like a camel’s back. The money is buried in the west hump of the rise.” The area is somewhere between Alligator Alley and State Road 41 in the Seminole Indian Reservation.

• Down in Key West, there lived in the 1870’s a middle-aged man of German extraction. His name was Homer Ludwig, and while most of his younger years had been spent at sea, it is said that he “jumped ship” at Key West, and became one of the town’s handymen. For the next 20 years he eked out a bare living, by doing odd jobs, and spent his spare time studying the history of the Island City. One day in early 1890’s Homer bought a small and decrepit sailboat and began to spend his spare time patching it up. To those who took the trouble to ask why he wanted a boat, he would explain that he intended to go treasure hunting. He claimed to have learned the location of a money chest removed from a vessel wrecked on a reef. He would talk at length about how the captain of the doomed ship had carried the money ashore, and buried it in the sand for safe keeping, intending to return with another vessel and reclaim the treasure. The captain never returned.

Several weeks later, Homer set sail in his little catboat and was never seen at Key West again. A fisherman had seen the old fellow on the beach of Big Pine Key, and a little later a yacht had sighted a man of Homer’s description at Matecumbe Key. A year later a couple of Key Westers met Homer on the beach at Key Largo. The old man had build himself a shack of driftwood and palm fronds, and he seemed fit and hard as nails. The old man was living on Key Largo about five years when it was discovered how he was getting money. A fellow who ran a general store in Miami said that Homer was selling old gold and silver coins, a few at a time, to a coin dealer on Flagler Street. He’d get maybe 50 or 100 dollars for the coins and then go buy what he needed. Then he would sail back to Key Largo. One day in September 1909, old Homer got into his boat and started hoisting the sail. A couple of fishermen told him he’d better stay ashore, because a bad storm was building up. The old fellow wouldn’t listen, and he shoved off and headed north. He was probably making another trip to Miami, but he never got there. That night the storm came howling up the Keys, and Homer was never heard of again. The secret of where the treasure was hidden went with him. Somewhere on Key Largo the rest of that old Spanish treasure is waiting for a second finder.