Gold Treasure Tales in
Nevada County

Probably the most well known and most important lost treasure story that is told in Nevada County is about Lingard’s lost lake of gold. Lingard was a prospector that found a lake in the eastern Nevada County. This lake was told to be covered with nuggets. It is said that Lingard used to buy supplies and would pay with big gold nuggets of pure gold at the mining camps. He continued doing this until he ran out of gold and was broke. The people asked him what had happened and he told them that he had been trying to find gold in the eastern Nevada County and ran into a small lake up in the mountains. He told the people that the lake could not be seen unless you were right on top of it.

He said that the stream bed and the area where the lake entered was covered with gold nuggets. He took all of the nuggets he could and then went to the camp to purchase supplies so that he could set up a camp and mine the gold he had found. To his dismay he was not able to find the lake again though and he had already spent all of the gold he had picked up and was completely out of money. Upon hearing this, several men decided to finance a search to look for the lake.

So Lindgard and these men then went out to look for this lake and they spent several weeks until the men came up with the idea that Lindgard had been lying to them or that he was hiding the gold. The men were very upset and started talking about hanging him. It is said that he left one night quietly and nobody ever heard of him again.

Another story tells of a treasure that was said to have been buried along Deer Creek. An old prospector gave his granddaughter a gold nugget that was worth $5,000 before he passed away and he told her that he had buried more nuggets by the creek. The granddaughter looked for the nuggets for many years but was never able to find any.