The Lost Treasure

Somewhere along the line, a legend grew about Fowler’s Bluff. The small rise of land 12 miles up the Suwannee River reportedly provided haven to pirates like Lafitte, Jose Gaspar, Billy “Bowlegs” Rogers, and Black Caesar. These men would sail up the river to avoid the Navy, careen their ships, and lie low. Or so the legend went.

A 1945 Saturday Evening Post article fanned the legend’s flames. According to this, Lafitte buried three 3 x 2 x2.5 feet chests of treasure at Fowler’s Bluff. Somewhere along the line, a map was made (a treasure map is a prerequisite of any treasure story). A former cabin boy of Lafitte’s came back to the area in 1888 and rented shovels, pickaxes, and wagons. He and a helper secretly dug in the swamps around Fowler’s Bluff, firing weapons at anyone who drew too close. On his deathbed (another prerequisite of the genre) the man gave the map to Emmett Baird, a sawmill operator in Gainesville. On the oiled map were three spots near big live oaks (live oaks in Florida being as plentiful as mountains in Colorado). After spending time around Fowler’s Bluff, Baird magically reappeared in Gainesville. He started a bank and hardware store and purchased a large home.

One final ingredient to a good treasure story is a curse. And Lafitte’s Loot has that as well. A lumber camp in that area saw its workers decimated by smallpox. In 1910, an excavation near the Bluff uncovered a number of skeletons buried face down. Did their disquiet spirits protect the treasure? Had they double-crossed someone in the search for the buried gold? A fiction writer could only speculate.