Gold Coins in the Genoa Hills

As the many men worked the large mines of Nevada during in 1860, the gold ore was shipped out and their payroll was shipped in.  Outlaws lost no time in taking advantage of the shipments and lightening the load of both stage coaches and trains.  As the heists became more and more frequent, one paymaster, in an effort to outwit the bandits, placed the payroll in gold coins into a nail keg and shipped it by simple freight.  But word of the paymaster’s cunning plan leaked out and as the stage was traveling back to the mines it was held up by two masked men just outside of Genoa.  Nothing but the nail keg was taken. 

A massive search for the outlaws and the gold ensued but nothing was ever found.  Before long the episode was forgotten until a dying miner in a Montana boom camp confessed to robbing the stage of its nail keg in 1860.  As the old miner laid on his deathbed he told the story of how he and a friend rolled the nail keg into the nearby trees where they opened it.  Inside they found some $20,000 in twenty dollar gold pieces.  Each of them then took $1,000 each and then buried the keg near a tall pine tree close by.  Wanted by the law, both men hightailed it out of Nevada.  However, according to the dying miner, neither one of them ever returned to retrieve their stolen cache.

Soon, the legend of the miner’s dying confession reached Genoa and a new type of gold rush broke out all over Carson Valley.  Just about every tree near Genoa was dug around as well as the road near the old stage station.  However, no one found the stolen loot.

In 1882, a large avalanche hit the area, destroying part of Genoa, carrying away countless trees on the surrounding slopes, and possibly moving the gold.  Several discoveries of coins throughout the years have given further credence to the legend. 

In 1916 a Genoa Blacksmith with his son were digging around the trees in search of the gold and found a chest with $2000 inside. Later, in 1948 an undetermined amount of gold coinage was found when construction workers were digging out a basement.  In 1961 about one hundred $20 gold pieces were found on a hillside near Genoa.  Other than these finds though, the remainder of the stolen cache is still hidden somewhere near Genoa.

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