SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — For more than a century, people across the Ozarks have believed that untold wealth lies hidden beneath their feet.
Spanish silver sealed in caves. Civil War gold buried to keep it from bushwhackers. Outlaw loot hidden along wagon roads. Maps passed down through families. Diaries discovered decades later. Men who dug, searched — and sometimes destroyed their lives — chasing what they believed the land still held.
Newspapers across southwest Missouri documented the obsession in real time, publishing story after story of treasure hunts that flared up, failed and flared again — from the late 1800s through the mid-20th century…