WHEN I WAS growing up in the San Gabriel Valley in the late 1960s, people still believed in treasure. My parents took my three siblings and me gold panning on the East Fork of the San Gabriel River, and families all over Southern California stashed sluice boxes in their station wagons for impromptu prospecting jaunts to the Mojave.
Rock-hounding and gold-seeking were nearly as popular as stamp collecting in those days. We tore maps to buried treasure out of magazines and studied stories about dehydrated prospectors who stumbled into town muttering "Black Butte" or some such clue with their last breath, all the while clutching a scrap of bandanna concealing a lump of gold.
Great article on the treasure hunting impulse.
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