Pegleg Smith’s lost black gold

Mountain man Thomas L. "Pegleg" Smith swore that around 1829, lost between three desert buttes, he pocketed heavy black-crusted pebbles that turned out to be gold under the tarnish. He could never find the buttes again, and neither has anyone since, though the annual Pegleg Liars Contest at his monument keeps the search warm every April. The classic lost bonanza of the California desert.