Today's CTTC 2026 April Surprise Hunt Was A Big Success!

 

Our Central Texas Treasure Club Members had a great time at this morning's 2026 CTTC Members-Only April Surprise Hunt in Brownwood. Thanks to Lisa Alldredge for doing a great job of photographing our Members having fun! 26 Members participated. The number of Club Members attending our activities continues to grow each year. While the most prevalent natural find today was old pull tabs, a couple of Members made some other nice natural finds. Caiden Tyler pulled a 1923 90% silver Mercury dime from the ground and Tommy Faught found a heavy octagonal "Bell System" telephone pole tag from the site.

Yesterday, I buried 3 special prize tokens - 2 for Mercury dimes and 1 for the Grand Prize, a beautiful Brilliant Uncirculated 1922 Peace Silver Dollar. Members Kendall Thomas and "Lucky Mike" Alldredge found the dime tokens and Alvis Boyce found the silver dollar token. Congratulations guys! I estimate that overall our Members cleanly removed over 300 aluminum pull tabs, pop-tops, and assorted aluminum and other trash from the site! Our next regular monthly meeting will be on Tuesday, May 5th. Visitors are always welcome and invited to attend.

Jay Longley, President, Central Texas Treasure Club

 

2026 CTTC Members-Only April Surprise Hunt - Saturday, April 25th!

 Central Texas Treasure Club's 2026 Members-Only Annual April Surprise Hunt date has been set for Saturday, April 25th. We'll gather at Pat Coursey Park at the corner of East Baker and Center Streets in downtown Brownwood BY 10:00 a.m. We'll caravan to the secret hunt site from there about 10:05. Members are encouraged to wear your Club caps and shirts to this hunt to promote and raise public awareness to our Club. Shovels will not be allowed during this Hunt. Small hand-diggers only.

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Jay Longley, President, Central Texas Treasure Club

 

The Treasure of Dry Pond - Near Goldthwaite in Central Texas

 Most traditionalist "historians" and high-and-mighty archaeologists scoff at the suggestion that our area of Central Texas holds massive amounts of buried treasure, including that left well-hidden by the Spaniards and Spanish settlers. Treasure hunters over the past century and a half have proven otherwise. Here's one such story of many treasure hunters who have sought Spanish treasure near Goldthwaite, just 30 or so miles from Brownwood.

 https://www.texaslostmines.com/dry_pond.html 

 Jay Longley, President, Central Texas Treasure Club

Tip from a Professional Treasure Hunter - Old Forts

 

Tips From a Pro - Hunting Old Forts

From: the late professional treasure hunter Robert F. Marx

"Besides the many old forts which are now National Monuments or State Historical sites, off-limits to treasure hunters, there are thousands of others in ruin. In some cases only the sites now exist and no traces of the original structures are visible; most of these sites are not off-limits. Old forts are similar to ghost towns in that they had private dwellings, stores, shops, trash dumps, wells, and outhouse pits in addition to military buildings. Around the old barracks one usually finds weapons, shot, cooking and eating utensils, smoking pipes, buttons, watches and chains, jewelry, and scattered coins. The big bonanza are the places where soldiers stashed their individual caches of coins. Military men had two problems: how to safeguard their valuable from their comrades and where to keep their money when they went off on long patrols from which many never returned. Because most forts were overcrowded and privacy was practically nonexistent, soldiers generally hid their small caches outside the fort, usually within walking distance, in and around places which could be easily relocated. The most likely spots to search are near the base of a tree or in or near a prominent natural feature. A Fort Pierce, Florida treasure hunter specializes in finding the small hoards left behind by soldiers. Working a number of Seminole War period fort ruins he has turned up over $100,000 in coins and jewelry. (1978 values) His largest find consisted of 44 gold, twelve silver, and one brass coin, as well as a gold wedding band and a silver pocket watch, which he found under a pile of rocks about 100 paces from the fort ruins."

Photo is of Presidio San Saba at Menard in central Texas. This site is a state historical landmark so its off-limits to treasure hunting but there are many other old Spanish and other forts in Texas that are on private land and can be detected with permission from the landowners. A lot of these have never been found or documented.

 

 

 

Tip from a Professional Treasure Hunter - Ghost Towns

 

Treasure Hunting Tip from the late professional treasure hunter Robert F. Marx.

Ghost Towns

"Many modern treasure hunters prefer exploring ghost towns to any other type of site for the simple reason that they are easy to find - many are still shown on current road maps. There is always the possibility of finding a buried cache of treasure. Besides, you never come home empty-handed as you are sure of finding at least some interesting, and sometimes valuable, artifacts and a few old coins. There are thousands of ghost towns from Maine to California..."

***

There are A LOT of them right here in Brown County and neighboring Central Texas counties! Get busy! 

Take a look at this 1907 postal map of Comanche County for example.

 

Get Ready! Speed-Gold-Panning Workshops Coming Up!

 

I announced plans to hold some speed-gold-panning workshops this spring for interested Central Texas Treasure Club Members at our February CTTC meeting. The first one will be held some Saturday in May.

I decided to share these secrets, that I learned from the then-World Champion Speed Gold-Panner and professional treasure hunter Richard Ray in 1984, with dues-paid Club Members who want to learn. I've used this technique successfully to pan gold for many years. Once you learn these secrets, you can forget about the old, slow methods of panning gold that you've heard about your entire life.

There will be only 2 requirements to sign up for these free workshops.

1) You must be a dues-paid Central Texas Treasure Club Member.

2) You must have or buy a 14" Garrett Gravity-Trap (Gold Trap) Gold Pan like the one in the photo. This is the ONLY gold pan that you may use as it's the kind I learned with and the only kind I can teach you how to use successfully and it must be the 14" pan.

Each workshop will include only 3 Members and myself and will be held at a flowing Brownwood or Brown County creek. If you have any questions, please ask them in the comments. I will go over this information in our CTTC February Newsletter that I will send out in a few days and I'll start making a list of those Members who meet the requirements and want to participate at our March 3rd meeting.

You can find these pans on ebay but I believe Garrett offers the best price.

 

 https://garrett.com/garrett-14-gold-trap-pan/ 

 

Jay Longley, President, Central Texas Treasure Club 

 

 

 

The Importance of Research by Charles Garrett

 

The Importance of Research

"Research is a key to successful treasure hunting. Without proper and adequate research, you are shooting in the dark. Your efficiency and likelihood of successful recovery increases proportionately as the amount of your research increases. Without research you may not be as successful as you should or could be since 95% of a successful recovery usually depends on research. Always remember that you must go where the treasure is located. Even the world's finest metal detector can only inform you about what is beneath its searchcoil."

Charles Garrett