There’s an old saying from Renaissance cartographers: all maps are wrong — some maps are useful.

Tonight, we’re camped along the Cossatot River in the Ouachita Mountains, where one legend keeps surfacing in different places, across different decades, carried by different men — all certain they were standing in the right spot.

This is the story of The Lost Louisiana Mine.

Of Spanish gold locked deep in quartz.

Of a leather map burned with iron.

Of Smoke Rock Creek… and a second river sixty miles south that flows the same direction through land that looks almost identical.

Somewhere in these mountains, Spanish miners worked deep shafts centuries ago.

At least one of them left behind a hammer forged in Seville in the early 1500s.

What they were chasing — and how many shafts they dug — remains unknown.

Were the men who searched for the mine wrong?

Or were they following a map that was useful… but not specific enough for a wilderness designed to repeat itself?

Tonight’s story isn’t about curses or bad luck.

It’s about geography.

And how the mountains keep their secrets.

Thanks for sitting by the fire tonight. I’m Daniel Hanson, and this is Forgotten Fortunes. Until next time… leave the wilderness as mysterious as you found it.

The Madre Vena Treasure — Mother of Veins

Before sunrise, we take a seat at a quiet diner counter, coffee steaming between us, and follow a trail that winds deep into the mountains of Arizona.

They called it Madre Vena — the Mother of Veins — a legendary gold source whispered about by Spanish miners, prospectors, and dreamers who vanished chasing it. Some claimed it fed entire mountain ranges with gold. Others said it was cursed, guarded, or deliberately erased from maps.

This isn’t a story about easy riches.

It’s about obsession…

about men who followed veins of gold until the trail went cold…

and about the thin line between fortune and disappearance.

Tonight, we trace the legends, the history, and the lingering questions surrounding one of the Southwest’s most elusive lost treasures.

Pull up a chair. The coffee’s hot.

The trail is still out there.

Thanks for sitting by the fire tonight. I’m Daniel Hanson, and this is Forgotten Fortunes. Until next time… leave the wilderness as mysterious as you found it.

🎙 Episode Title:

The Jimmy York Treasure — A Lost Fortune, a Sleeping Prophet, and a Marine Who Never Came Home

🗺 Description:

Deep in the Boston Mountains of Arkansas lies a legend older than any map — a Spanish treasure buried beneath a sleeping stone. From a mystic known as The Sleeping Prophet to a young Marine who vanished searching for gold, this is the haunting story of the Jimmy York Treasure. Told in the campfire style of Forgotten Fortunes, where history, mystery, and the human heart collide.

🕯 Sit close to the fire. Some stories don’t fade — they wait.

Research for this episode came from

Lost Treasure of The Ozarks by Phillip Steele

https://amzn.to/3XrmKfo