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    My interest in Nevada’s caves came from my research in the Lost Wagon Train Treasure. I have spent many days traveling over a large part of Nevada in tracking what I believe to be the trail of this treasure.  At the time of this great treasure’s loss, there were no maps of the area involved. 

    The facts are as follows:

    In 1856, war between Utah and the federal government appeared imminent.  Brigham Young and the Mormon elders decided to gather the wealth of the Mormon Church and to protect it by finding a suitable hiding place.  They dispatched several converted Indians to find an appropriate place.  A large cave was found between the present towns of Pioche and Ely in what's now the state of Nevada.

    In Utah, every attempt was being made to convert every possible asset to gold.  Goods were sold to passing travelers, banks were being liquidated, and church members were being drained of all possible cash.  Over $1.5 million dollars were collected, mostly in gold.

    Relations with the federal government seemed to be improving until news reached Brigham Young of the infamous Mountain Meadow Massacre.  For reasons still unclear, the members of an entire wagon train from Arkansas were slaughtered, leaving only a few of the very youngest children alive.

    Brigham Young now felt that even the cave would be unsafe. He ordered that the gold be transferred to the Mormon town of San Bernardino in California, from where, if necessary, it could be moved quickly to Mexico.

    Twenty-two wagons with an armed escort of forty Utah militiamen traveled to the cave to remove all of the gold.  They decided to take a route that would bypass any settlements to avoid any detection.  To do this, they would have to travel across the uncharted area of south-central Nevada.

    However, the desert proved to be too much, even for these hardy men.   They soon found themselves critically short of water and all efforts to locate water proved futile. Finally, they decided the best solution was to go back to the last water they had passed.  So, leaving the gold wagons and horses to the care of the teamsters, the forty militiamen headed back.

    Several days later, the militiamen returned only to find the teamsters murdered, the wagons burned, the horses stolen and the gold gone.   The Piutes had wiped them out to a man.  There was absolutely no trace of the gold.  After a diligent search, the militiamen returned home. Subsequent searches by the Mormons proved equally fruitless. None of the gold has ever surfaced, as far as anyone has ever been able to tell.

    The gold is still out there for someone to find.  By today's value, the gold would be worth over 30 million dollars. However, the aesthetic value would be much, much higher.

    The gold is too heavy to have been moved very far without the wagons, so it would have to be hidden close to the massacre site.

 Sign in the center of the remote Cave Valley, Nevada (left).  Stan Nielsen (right) shown standing outside the Little Ale Inn ("Little Alien") in Rachel, Nevada, near the road leading to Area 51.

    Approximately twenty miles south of the town of Lovelock, Nevada, near the top of a high hill, there’s a cave known now as Lovelock cave.  But in the 1800s, the cave was known as Horseshoe Cave, probably because of the shape of the interior.  The cave is about forty feet deep and one hundred and sixty feet wide, with the sides curving around like a horseshoe.  The cave was probably formed by the collapse of a limestone dome and wave action during the time it was under Lake Lahontan , a prehistoric lake which covered most of western Nevada.  Emigrants traveling the trail to California, known as the Humboldt Trail, referred to the cave on a hill overlooking the Humboldt Sink in their memoirs.

    The cave was pointed out to early Nevadans by the Piutes, who told stories about their battles with the white giants with the red hair who were living in the area when the Piutes first arrived.  They claimed to have ambushed and fought the white giants until they had killed all but a few who had retreated to the cave. According to Piute legend, after they had cornered all the remaining giants in the cave, they piled sagebrush in the cave entrance and set it on fire.  The Piutes said they killed any who tried to escape. They kept the fire up until all the giants had been smothered.

    In 1911, a company was formed to mine the bat guano in the cave for fertilizer.  The guano was in layers four to six feet deep.  After about four feet of the manure was removed, artifacts started showing up.  Before archaeologists were brought in, many of the findings were discarded or damaged.  But what was then found was staggering. The history in the cave goes back over four thousand years and yes, they found red haired giants.

    In fact, they found that what the Piutes had told them was true.  There was a layer of burned material and there were broken arrows that had been shot into the cave.  The dryness of the climate plus other factors had indeed turned many of the giants to mummies.  Among the many beautiful artifacts was a donut shaped stone that has 365 notches on the outside rim and 52 notches on the inside rim. Many of these artifacts now reside in the museum at Winnemucca, Nevada.

    While searching for a lost gold mine in Nevada, for a documentary film that I was making, I took the opportunity to explore the Lovelock Cave (photo below) and visit the quaint, little, but very interesting museum at Lovelock, Nevada.  The curator told me about a skull from one of the “giants” that was in the Winnemucca museum.

    Prior to a subsequent trip to the area, I borrowed a full-sized plaster dental model of the lower teeth of a normal modern adult from a friend, who was also my dentist.   I took the plaster model with me when I next visited the area, in the hopes that I would be able to compare it with the jaw from one of the “giants.”

    As I had hoped, the curator at the Winnemucca museum graciously allowed me to compare the plaster model with the jaw from the skull of one of the “giants” in the museum’s collection. She placed the jaw down on her desk.  I was allowed to place my plaster adult jaw next to jaw from the skull for purposes of comparison (photo below). The plaster model was much smaller than the jaw from the skull.  In fact, the teeth of the jaw from the skull were almost twice the size of those of my plaster model.  There were other factors, too, that distinguished it from today’s humans.

    On your treasure hunting expeditions, always keep in mind that some of the most fascinating artifacts are to be found in smaller museums because they are inclined to display everything in their collections and not hide artifacts away in a dusty closet.

    Stan Nielsen (left) at Lovelock Cave, home of the red haired giants.  Jaw from red haired giant (right) shown with plaster dental model from a normal modern adult for size comparison.