The Spanish gold of the Wichitas

The granite Wichita Mountains rise straight off the Oklahoma plains, and they carry one of the most persistent lost-treasure traditions in the state: Spanish miners working the range in the 1700s, walling up their diggings and their bullion when the Comanche pushed them out, and leaving carved rocks as markers. Treasure hunters have chased the markers for a century. There is no documented Spanish mining district here, and geologists do not find the ore. The mountains are a National Wildlife Refuge with free-roaming bison and elk, digging is illegal, and they are worth the drive on their own terms.