VEGAS MYTHS BUSTED: The Lost Mormon Wagon Train Treasure
Posted on: January 12, 2026, 07:21h.
Last updated on: January 12, 2026, 09:41h.
The lost Mormon wagon train treasure is a myth often shared in treasure-hunting blogs, forums and books. Like most classic Western American folklore, it combines elements of historical fact and fiction.
Fought from May 1857 to July 1858, the Utah War (also called the Mormon War or Buchanan’s Blunder) was an armed standoff between 2,500 federal troops and 4,000 Mormon militia commanded by Utah Gov. and LDS Church president Brigham Young.
It erupted over US President James Buchanan’s concerns about Young’s theocratic control of the Utah Territory, the illegal practice of polygamy, and reports of a Mormon rebellion.
Those are the historical facts. Here comes the fiction…
Suspicious Mines
“In 1856 as trouble was mounting, Brigham Young was so wary that he ordered the church to liquidate much of its material wealth and find a place to stash its treasures,” claims a website called TreasureNet.com.
Supposedly, Mormon soldiers commandeered a cave between Pioche and Ely, Nev. to hide approximately $1.5 million in gold coins, nuggets and silver ($55 million today). But as Young’s fears grew, he ordered the treasure moved.
“The plan was to ship the cache to San Bernardino, California where it would later be shipped to another country for safe keeping,” according to Treasurenet.com.
Except that no primary sources ever mentioned a $1.5 million liquidation or a cave stash — no Young correspondence, LDS Church archives, federal reports or Deseret News articles.
The Mormon Reformation (1856-57) did see Young urge for stockpiling grain and preparing for invasion, and there are records of church leaders discussing asset protection, but that’s it.
Raiders of the Lost Nonsense
To avoid detection, a caravan of 22 Mormon wagons with armed soldiers is said to have set out. They avoiding commonly used roads and trails, which proved to be their undoing.
Unfamiliar with the route, the caravan ran out of water in what today is known as the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area. Located 20 miles west of today’s Las Vegas, it was part of the Old Spanish Trail, but by 1857, that was no longer a common route.
According to the myth, the caravan split up, with the soldiers returning to the last known water source to fill up.
That’s when the Mormons left unprotected at Red Rock were attacked by local Paiute Indians.
“It took the soldiers days to return with the water and when they did, all but one man had been slaughtered,” TreasureNet.com claims. “The soldiers searched high and low … but never recovered any of the wagons’ load. Later searches by the Mormon Church also failed to recover the cargo.”
The treasure is believed by many to be scattered or buried in caches around Red Rock. That’s why the area is still regularly scoured by the metal-detector set, though it’s against federal law to remove any cultural or historical artifacts from it.
A June 2022 post on a TreasureNet.com forum made this claim:
“I found the burned wagons in the desert slightly west of the canyon,” wrote a Bill from Cocoa Beach. Fla. “I searched the area with no other find. BUT, I told a neighbor about the story, and guest what? He told me that a lady friend of his found a gold Mormon coin very near to where I found the wagons.”
The Truth Buried Beneath the Lie
Although most of the story is bunk, the massacre — and the blame it places on the Paiutes — has a familiar ring to those who know their Mormon history…
On September 11, 1857, during the Utah War, approximately 120 men, women, and children were massacred on a wagon train bound for California.
Except Mormons were the attackers in the Mountain Meadows Massacre, not the victims.
While the Baker-Fancher party — Protestant families from Arkansas — camped about 35 miles northwest of modern-day St. George, Utah, they were attacked.
The attackers were 50–60 members of the Iron County Militia (Nauvoo Legion), local Mormon settlers inflamed by war paranoia, religious fervor and the false belief that the travelers had poisoned Mormon wells.
Some disguised themselves as Paiutes.
After a five-day siege, the militia offered a false truce. Once the emigrants surrendered their weapons, they were executed in cold blood — the largest act of civilian terrorism by Americans on US soil until Oklahoma City.
Only 17 children under age 7 were spared. They were renamed by their attackers, taken into their homes and raised Mormon.
Brigham Young attempted to cover up the massacre. In his 1858 report to the Indian Affairs Commissioner, he placed the blame entirely on Paiutes.
But federal investigators the following year exposed the truth. On direct orders from Congress and President James Buchanan, the 17 young survivors were removed from their Mormon homes and returned to their closest relatives in Arkansas.
On March 23, 1877, John D. Lee was finally convicted of leading the attack. He was returned to the site of the massacre, seated atop what would become his own coffin, and executed by firing squad.
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