The Port Orford meteorite

In 1856 Dr. John Evans, a government geologist, reported a ten-ton pallasite meteorite lying on a bald mountain above Port Orford, a mass of iron shot through with olive-green crystal that he valued at a fortune. He carried one sample east and died of pneumonia in 1861 before anyone could confirm the find. His sample later proved to be a chip of a Chilean meteorite he had likely picked up in Panama, and magnetometer surveys of the mountain in the 1980s found nothing at all. It is remembered now as one of the great frontier hoaxes, and hopeful hunters still climb the coast range for a rock that was never there.