THE WATER TRAP MINE




3/4/99

Several years ago I had a guy tell me that his wife was a full blooded Navajo Indian and that her Grandfather was the medicine man for the tribe. He said that her grandfather didn't like him much at first, but then years later warmed up to him. He said that the grandfather eventully told him about a story that was handed down to him, about how the Navajo's brought a treasure to the mountains in Utah Valley. They hid it in a cave where a river ran through it. He told me the approximate area where this cave was suppose to be.

It just so happened to be in an area that I had already explored, and even though there happens to be several caves in this area, there was only one that had water running out of it. The water tunnel was only about three to four feet high with about two feet of water in the center of it. I had never explored this water cave because I new I was going to have to get all wet and I figured it only went back in 30 to 40 feet.

When I heard the story of the Navajo treasure, I figured this water cave had to be the place, so I got a hold of a friend of mine about a month ago and off we went to explore it. Ben went in first, after crawling in the water for about 40 feet it raised up out of the water and also opened up enough to stand up and walk in. Once inside we could tell that it was a man made tunnel with several different tunnels branching off in different directions.

At the end of one of the tunnels was a shaft in the center of the floor that dropped down only about 5 feet, then a tunnel ran both directions from there. But this shaft and tunnel was filled up with water with only about 2 inches of clearance from the water to the ceiling. We could hear water dripping down from inside the tunnel and it sounded like it was dripping down from a long ways. We figured that possibly this was a water trap and that there might be a room on the other side where the Navajo's hid there treasure.

With visions of treasures in our heads we began trying to come up with a plan to get through the water trap. At first we were going to use scuba diving tanks, but then decided the tunnel was to narrow. So we then decided to try and pump the water out. We decided the best time to do this was under the cover of darkness because this mine was on the face of a barren hill east of a city where we could easily be observed. We ended up renting a water pump, 200 feet of 2 inch hose and a generater.

At about 9:30 at night we back packed this stuff to the mine and began pumping out the water. It was a cold night that night about 15 degrees but luckily inside the mine it was about 50 degrees so even though we were soaking wet it wasn't that bad as long as we were inside. It took about 2 hours to pump the water down, once it was down, we were down the shaft and inside the tunnel, we just knew that it was going to open up into a big room full of treasure.

We followed the tunnel one direction and it dead ended with what looked like an obvious cave in. We turned around and went the other direction. At the end of the tunnel the other direction were some logs sticking out of the ground. It looked like there might be a shaft that had been filled in, but I am not sure. We finally got out of there at about 4:30 in the morning.

Is this the place where the Navajo's brought their treasure? I dont know, but I do know this, this tunnel is definitely man made and there isn't a dump near the area so someone had to scatter all the tailings around so that they couldn't be seen.

Also the entrance is very small and stays small for about 40 feet before it opens up. Both of these characteristics are something the Spaniards would do to keep there mine concealed. So in my opinion it definitely needs to be checked out futher. Maybe the Navajo treasure could still be there but buried in the water trap for safe keeping.













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