$400 Million in Gold Bars: Is It Still Lost or Being Hidden? 

Did the FBI dig up a cache of lost Civil War gold worth about $400 million from a remote Pennsylvania forest nearly three years ago?  It is still a mystery, but one that may be on its way to being solved.  
 
A Pennsylvania Appeals Court recently provided the name of the federal magistrate judge who ordered all records of the March 2018 excavation in a rural part of Pennsylvania called Dent’s Run to be sealed from public view. The name allows searchers to petition that U.S. judge to unseal the records in the case. The case is being pursued on behalf of Finders Keepers LLC, a treasure hunting company that maintains it pointed Federal agents to a site excavators found. They suspect the site might have held a lost consignment of gold being transported by the Union Army during the Civil War from Wheeling, West Virginia, to Philadelphia. The gold bars, weighing 50 pounds each, never reached its destination. It was lost or stolen, so the legend goes. The story has fascinated treasure hunters for 157 years. 
 
Federal authorities are refusing to tell Finders Keepers or anyone else what, if anything, they found. If gold was indeed at the bottom of that hole, Finders Keepers maintains they have a right to a share of the profit. The company is skeptical of the FBI’s claim it found nothing during the Dent’s Run dig in 2018. The veil of secrecy over the matter adds to their suspicions. 
 
“They had 50 agents there…We have witnesses that they were there all night with armored cars. So, what are we supposed to believe?” said William J. Cluck, who represents Finders Keepers. “We are convinced that they found gold.” 

Photo: AP