The most famous outlaw of the Gold Rush was run down by the California Rangers at Arroyo de Cantua in 1853. The man was real, the ambush was real, and the lore says the gold he took in three violent years is cached along his trails through the Coast Range and the southern Mother Lode. None of it has ever been verifiably recovered.
Arroyo de Cantua country, western Fresno County
See it on the map