By George A Slovitsky

The Legend: In 1887, not far outside the city limits of Oatman, Arizona, lies a buried money
belt with approximately $16,000 in twenty-dollar gold pieces. Having successfully completed the
sale of his cattle, Smith, known to be a hard drinker, made his way to a local saloon to celebrate
the cattle sale. Following several whiskeys, he staggered outside, climbed into his wagon, and
headed home. Smith never made it back to his ranch. The money belt was never found.
Behind the Legend: In 1857, the Mojave Indians were placed on an Indian reservation adjacent
to the Colorado River in present-day Mohave County. The area outside the reservation was soon
opened up to settlers, and over the years many of them raised cattle to provide meat for the
Indians via government contracts.
One such settler was, Hiram Smith, who saw a chance to make a good living selling beef to the
government, so he made a bid for a contract. In 1887, he was awarded a contract. On the
appointed date, Smith delivered a herd of cattle to Fort Mojave. He had hired two herders to
drive the animals while he drove a wagon pulled by two horses. Smith was paid $16,000 in
twenty-dollar gold coins. After paying off his drovers, he placed the money into a specially made
leather money belt, which he strapped around his waist.
Despite the great weight of the money belt and the pressing need to return to his ranch, Smith,
known to be a hard drinker, made his way to a local saloon to celebrate the cattle sale. Following
several whiskeys, he staggered outside, climbed into his wagon, and headed home. Smith never
made it back to his ranch. Before leaving his ranch, Smith had told his family to come and look
for him if he did not make it home by the appointed time.
Long overdue, one of his family members, along with several neighbors, went looking for him.
They started their search along the road between Fort Mojave and a place called Cottonwood
Cove. When they did not find any sign of him having been in the area, they moved the search
farther to the south. Three days later, the search party came across the abandoned wagon and two
dead horses. Instead of turning north toward his ranch after leaving the fort, Smith had turned
south. Following his tracks, they found him three miles away near a location called Boundary
Cone and not far from the town of Oatman. He was dehydrated and near death. Smith was taken
to his ranch, where family members prayed for his recovery while nursing him back to health.
Three days after his return, he was lucid enough to explain what had happened.
He had gotten drunk, he told them, and made a wrong turn on the way home. One of the horses
pulling the wagon went lame, so Smith pulled to the side of the road and decided to walk the rest
of the way. After covering about a mile, the money belt containing the gold coins proved to be
too heavy, so he decided to remove it and hide it, intending to return for it once he got to the
ranch. He dug a shallow hole and placed the money belt in it. Looking around for something to
mark the location, he noted that he was in the area of an old, abandoned ranch. Close-by he
found a clay pot and two rusted horseshoes. He put the two horseshoes on top of the filled-in
hole containing the money belt and then put the clay pot over the horseshoes. He stumbled on for
two more miles before passing out.
Smith and his family made plans to return to the site and recover the gold coins as soon as he
regained his health. Smith would never make the trip. Two weeks after returning to his ranch,
Hiram Smith, died from complications from his ordeal.
Two of Smith's sons went in search of the money. Returning to the place where the wagon and
horses had been abandoned, they rode across the desert to the location where their father had
been found. Rather than following a straight-line route, however, Smith's wanderings had been

erratic. Despite several attempts, the sons were never able to locate the gold.
In time, the story of Hiram Smith's lost fortune circulated throughout the area, and treasure
hunters arrived almost daily, trying to find the clay pot and the two horseshoes. None were
successful, and gradually the excitement died down. Years passed, and Hiram Smith and his lost
gold-filled money belt were forgotten.
In 1910, rancher P. W. Sayles was riding along his fence line not far from the Colorado River.
Occasionally, he would stop and repair a broken strand or reset a leaning post. As he replaced his
tools in a saddlebag following one repair, Sayles noticed something out of the ordinary not far
away. Walking over, he saw an old olla, the Spanish term for a clay pot. Artifacts, both Indian
and those from early Spanish and Mexican settlements are very common in the area. This
particular pot, however, was in good condition, so Sayles decided to take it back to the ranch for
his wife. When he picked up the olla, he was surprised to find two old horseshoes laying on the
ground.
Weeks later, the Sayles family had a visitor from a nearby ranch. As the man was leaving,
Sayles pointed to the olla and related the story of its discovery. His visitor, familiar with the tale
of Hiram Smith's lost gold, told him the story, explaining that the contents of the buried money
belt contained a fortune in twenty-dollar gold pieces.
Enthused about finding the belt and its contents, Sayles returned to the location where he
thought he had found the pot. Since finding the pot, heavy rains, as well as high winds, had
removed all traces of his presence. Sayles, carrying a shovel, walked miles throughout the desert
not far from his fence line in hopes of finding the horseshoes. Now and then, when something
looked right, he would dig a hole, sometimes several, but had no luck. Sayles once told a friend
that he guessed he had dug more than two hundred holes out in the desert near his fence. Sayles
eventually gave up trying to find the location of where he had found the clay pot and nearly all
hope of discovering the money belt.
My Notes: Many year later, Sayles told his story to a man named Fred Bullard, the editor of the
Searchlight, Nevada, newspaper. Bullard printed the story, and before long the desert was
swarming with hopeful treasure hunters. The money belt and its contents, however, were never
found. Given the current price of gold, along with the antique value of the coins, the coins within
Hiram Smith’s money belt, would be worth a fortune.
Assuming the money belt lies only a few inches from the surface, it is possible that it could be
found using a metal detector. The only detail you have to worked out is…where do I start the
search along the old fence line.
A word or two of caution, you will need to check and see if the area you want to explore is open
to the public, and not on private land, or land the Government has posted.
A hint where to start looking: This will take some serious map reading that include ranches and
their respective fence lines from the 1890s through 1915. Boundary Cone Rd heads west out of
Oatman along the edge of Fort Mojave, towards the Colorado River. I’d concentrate my search
from Needles in the south to Bullhead City to the north using Boundary Cone Road as the mid-
way point. Follow the fence line a few feet on either side. Fence lines move with time and the
resale of the property.
One other item to think about did Hiram sell his cattle at Fort Mojave or Oatman? It’s very
unlikely he headed east or south after sell the cattle and the search party looked to the north,
leaving west as the most likely direction he headed. Good Luck and Happy Hunting!!!
A Little History: Oatman is a small community in the Black Mountains of Mohave County,
Arizona, is located at an elevation of 2,710 feet. It began as a small mining camp when two

prospectors struck a $10 million gold find in 1915, though the vicinity had already been settled
for a number of years, Oatman's population grew to more than 3,500 in the course of a year.
The name Oatman was chosen in honor of Olive Oatman, a young Illinois girl who was
captured and enslaved by Indians, probably from the Tolkepayas tribe, during the massacre of
her pioneering family while on their journey westward in 1851. She was later sold or traded to
the Mohave people, who adopted her and tattooed her face in the custom of the tribe. She was
released in 1856 at Fort Yuma.
Sometime in 1863, probably early spring, prospector Johnny Moss discovered gold in the
Black Mountains and staked several claims, one named The Moss, after himself, and another
after Olive Oatman, whose story was well known. For the next half-century, mining waxed and
waned in the remote district until new technology, reduced transportation costs, and new gold
discoveries brought prosperity back to Oatman in the early 20th century. The opening of the Tom
Reed mine, followed by the discovery of a rich ore body on the nearby United Eastern Mining
Company's property in 1915, brought one of the desert's last gold rushes. The boom of 1915–17
gave Oatman all the characters and characteristics of any gold rush boomtown. For about a
decade, the mines of Oatman were among the largest gold producers in the American West.
In 1921, a fire burned down many of Oatman's smaller buildings, but spared the Oatman Hotel
built in 1902. It remains the oldest two-story adobe structure in Mohave County and is a Mohave
County historical landmark. One of the hotel's major attractions is a room designated as the suite
where Clark Gable and Carole Lombard supposedly spent their honeymoon after their 1939
wedding in Kingman, Arizona. In actuality, Gable and Lombard returned directly to Los Angeles
after their wedding for a press conference the next morning and did not take a honeymoon until
much later in Baja California.
In 1924, the town's main employer, United Eastern Mines, permanently shut down its
operations after producing $13,600,000 (equivalent to $215,038,447 in 2021) worth of gold. The
price of gold at that time was government-controlled with a market value of $20 per ounce.
The district had produced $40,000,000 (equivalent to $736,923,000 in 2021) in gold by 1941,
when the remainder of the town's gold mining operations were ordered shut down by the
government as part of the country's war effort, because other metals were needed. Oatman was
fortunate it was located on busy U.S. Route 66 and was able to cater to travelers driving between
Kingman, Arizona, and Needles, California. Yet even that advantage was short-lived, because
the town was completely bypassed in 1953 when a new route was built between Kingman and
Needles. By the 1960s, Oatman was all but abandoned. As of 2022, the town survives as a
nostalgic Route 66 stop that prides itself on maintaining a Wild West feel down to the wooden
sidewalks, staged shootouts, and kitschy shops.
The 2020 census, put Oatman’s population at 102.