Pegleg Smith's Gold

The Search for His Lost Gold

More men have sought Pegleg's black nuggets than have pursued the treasure from any other lost gold legend. Multiple versions of the Pegleg story, and various fragments of other tales of black nuggets, have all added together to create an abundance of clues and mysteries that have intrigued treasure hunters and historians for over a hundred years.

Pegleg Smith was a rugged mountain man who traded furs and supplies, rustled horses and trapped beaver. Pegleg, also known as Thomas Smith, lost his leg to an arrow during a trapping expedition in the fall of 1827. After his leg was amputated, his friends fashioned him a wooden leg, thus earning him the name Pegleg. 

View of the Borrego Badlands in Anza Borrego

The story of Pegleg’s gold begins during a trapping expedition down the Colorado River in the late 1820s or early 1830s. Having acquired a large number of pelts during their trip, the trappers selected Pegleg and another member of the group to take the supply of skins across the desert to Los Angeles for sale.  During their journey through the desert Pegleg gathered some pebbles, which he had found on top of a butte in the Colorado Desert, in what is now the Anza Borrego area. Legend has it that the butte was one of three, creating a significant landmark in most versions of the tale. Pegleg gathered the black pebbles thinking they were copper and carried them to Los Angeles, where he later discovered they were gold.   

Pegleg got drunk while in Los Angeles, started a brawl in the local saloon, and was quickly kicked out of town by the authorities. On his way out of California, he stole 300 to 400 horses and drove them to Taos, New Mexico where he planned to sell them.  Many prospectors and historians wonder why he didn’t go back to the desert and search for the butte where he discovered the gold. Instead, during the 1830s and 1840s, Pegleg settled down and started a trading post along the Oregon Trail in Idaho, specializing in the sale of horses.

It wasn't until after the 1849 Gold Rush that Pegleg returned to California to organize a prospecting party to search for the butte where he had found the black gold nuggets. The group wandered around the desert unsuccessfully. Pegleg ended up deserting them, and turned up later in Los Angeles.  In 1853, Pegleg again organized a search party that had no greater success in finding the butte, or more of his treasured black-coated gold nuggets. A third party was organized to search for another lost mine near the Virgin River, where Dutch George Yount, a trapper, claimed he had once discovered a ledge full of gold. The group was never able to relocate Dutch’s lost mine either. 

Pegleg's questionable character, and his reputation for drinking and lying have added to the controversy surrounding the legend of his lost mine. As there are many versions of the story, many contradictory facts exist to obscure the trail to the treasure. Some versions claim the butte where Pegleg found the black-coated gold nuggets was located in the Chocolate Mountains and not in the Colorado Desert. 

NASA's Operational Land Imager on the Landsat 8 satellite captured this view of Anza Borrego on November 21, 2018

There are stories of men who’ve claimed to have found Pegleg's lost gold. One account describes the journey of a discharged soldier who followed Pegleg's trail from Yuma to Los Angeles. During his travels through the desert, the soldier discovered the three buttes described in Pegleg's legend and found more gold nuggets. When he arrived in Los Angeles, he showed his friends the nuggets and organized an expedition to return to the desert to bring back more gold. The expedition never returned, and the members of the party were later found dead at the foot of the San Ysidro Mountains.

One man wrote to Desert Magazine in 1965 – saying, “I found PegLeg’s gold.” Here is the link to the story.

Prospectors are great tellers of tales, and they seem frequently to recite stories that support the fabled legend of Pegleg's lost mine.

In another story, a miner crossed the desert between Yuma and Warner's Ranch, where he climbed up one of three buttes to get a better sense of his location. When he reached the top of the butte, he discovered free particles of gold scattered about. The miner packed his saddlebags with approximately $7,000 worth of gold and continued on to Los Angeles.   When he reached Los Angeles, he became ill and was taken under the care of a Dr. DeCourcy. The miner confided his discovery to the doctor, and they made plans to search for the buttes as soon as he was well enough to travel. He died before he was ever able to return to the desert in search of his gold-covered buttes. Though Dr. DeCourcy searched for years, he was never able to find the three buttes the miner described on his deathbed. 

Picture of black gold

Three Indian legends of black-coated gold in the desert also support Pegleg's legend. The Apache Indians spoke of a place in the desert where the ground was littered with gold nuggets. It was against tribal law and the beliefs of the Apaches to tell others where the gold was located, effectively keeping the location secret from outsiders.

The second legend concerns an Indian woman who was wandering about the desert in a state of dehydration. She climbed upon one of three buttes to try and figure out where she was, and on the ground she found black-coated gold nuggets. While on the butte, she caught sight of a railroad construction camp. Making her way to it, she was given water, food and time to rest. While at the camp, she told the workers about the gold nuggets she had found. Leaving them with one of the nuggets in thanks, the Indian woman continued on her way. 

The third Indian legend is about a Yaqui Indian who lived and worked near Warner's Ranch. He made frequent trips into the desert whenever he needed money, always returning with black gold nuggets. No one was ever able to follow him into the desert to discover his secret gold mine. Later, after the Indian died in a fight, $4,000 worth of gold was found in his bunk.  

Yet another take on the legend is the hunch that Pegleg's gold belonged to Peralta. In an interesting article by Robert Buck in Desert Magazine’s 1966 June issue, the author conjectures that the gold Pegleg found may have been scattered over the hills in the Colorado Desert by some other means. He hypothesizes that it’s possible that this is what became of the cargo of the ill-fated Peralta expedition.

Here is a link to Robert Buck’s story, “Did Pegleg’s Gold Belong to Peralta?” (PDF format). There are also about 60 posts on DesertUSA’s Pegleg fourm that add many more interesting details to this story.

In addition, here are three links to more stories about Pegleg, and about some who may have found his gold nuggets. This is just a starting point to the vast and compelling series of stories and clues to the mystery of Pegleg’s treasure. We invite you to explore some old Desert Magazine stories!

Black Gold PDF - PegLeg Not a Myth PDF - More on PegLeg

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