Treasures and Travelers of Old

The information and photographs produced here were given to me either directly from Dr. Ainsworth or taken from his book, "The Travels of Mormon and Moroni".

The Man Behind the Finding of These Ancient Brass Plates

The plates pictured here were found while searching the under ground shaft, which was built around 450 ad. It's contents seem to be protected by a series of "booby traps", as a number of people have mysteriously been killed trying to enter the tunnel. In the early 1960's, Jose Davila, (who was able to discern what the glyphs said), took a couple of BYU archeology students to this location, where they tried lowering someone down the hole. Here is the story.

Del Allgood owned a small rock shop in Fillmore UT. He was a talented man and could do the most amazing things with an old twisted up piece of wood or a pile of ordinary rocks. If he wasn't busy creating his works of art he was in the hill's looking for more recourses to build his art with. It was during one of these excursions that he stumbled upon the mysterious symbol site in the hills above Fillmore Utah. Even though he wasn't the first to discover them, he did take an unusual interest in them in trying to figure out their meaning. Del worked at the local gas station to help subsidize his income. He loved talking to the customers about the symbols and the Spanish mines in the mountains. One day a man from Salt Lake City stopped by for a fill up. As usual Del started talking about the symbols and how they almost looked like Egyptian hieroglyphs. In an unusual turn of fate, the customer knew a professional treasure hunter named Jose Davila, who could read Egyptian. Jose is from Mexico but just happened to be in Salt Lake City that week.

Del wasted no time in getting a hold of Jose and described the symbols to Jose over the phone. He agreed to pay for a round trip bus ticket and to give him money for meals, if Jose would just come out to Fillmore and take a look at the symbols. Arrangements were made and bus tickets were purchased. When Jose arrived in Fillmore in September of 1964 Del met him at the bus station. They headed for the symbols four miles east of Fillmore in Chalk Creek canyon. They came to rest in front of a small cave. On top of the cave's entrance was an inscription of 25 characters. In Jose's own words he said: "A sober evaluation of these inscriptions led me to the conclusion that I was confronted by the first kind of Nephite Idiogramic writing that had ever been found in petroglyphs in North America." Five days later, Jose had translated a number of the symbols and was very excited about them. He says they talked about sacred records deposited there. And they gave the instructions to retrieve them.

The rest of that winter found Jose working on the translation of the symbols and surveying the area. When the snow finally melted, they started marking the area for the place to dig. Jose figured the inscriptions said to draw a square area 100 cubits per side and put intersecting diagonal lines to determine the center where they were suppose to dig. As they were marking one side of this area, they found a hand carved into a rock, but didn't think anything of it and proceeded to the center of the box they had just drawn. During the rest of the summer (1965), they proceeded to dig a 20 foot tunnel and drilled over 600 feet of exploratory holes just to eliminate possible site locations. Jose said it was an expensive summer. They spent over $1000 for drilling and over $1000 for road work, tunneling, dynamite, food and fuel. Jose spent that summer living near the site in his camper. When snow came, it forced them to stop. They had to wait until the following summer to start up again.

That summer Jose and his helpers put in an 80 foot shaft 20 foot wide. They felt they were close to breaking into the tunnel where the gold plates lay hidden. However, Jose said greedy eyes were watching their progress all the time and were just waiting for the right moment to jump in and finish the job themselves. At that moment, Devon Stanfield offered the owner of the mining claims, Harold Huntsman, $100,000.00 dollars to step in and stop Jose before he broke into the chamber, so he could retrieve the gold plates. A costly court battle broke out between Huntsmand and Jose, with Jose losing. During the court battle they reached the 80 foot mark and mushroomed the hole out at the bottom of the shaft. Their plan was to drill some exploratory holes 360 degrees around the bottom of the shaft hoping to locate the chamber, which they felt was near.

On Noveber 5, Duane White and Kent Neeley were working on the shaft. Jose was in the hospital with a ruptured appendix. Devon Standfield showed up and ordered the men to stop work and to get off the property. The men told Stansfied they were working under Jose's orders and they were not leaving. Stansfield told them he would be back Monday morning with a court order and the sheriff to kick them off the property. Duane and Kent decided they better get in and get the gold plates out before Monday. They drilled three 20 foot holes at the bottom of the shaft. The next day November 6, they loaded the holes with 91 sticks of dynamite. The large boom from the blast echoed across the valley. It was a Sunday, Jose had always preached against working on the sabbath, but they felt the situation warranted it. The blast went off at 4pm. Three air hoses were dropped down the shaft and the compressor was turned on full blast. Kent and Duane headed for town to eat while the fumes from the blast were clearing out. While eating, Kent's parents showed up. Two hours after the blast, they all headed back up the mountian to the shaft. Kent went down first to see if they had broken into the chamber. When they didn't hear from him Duane went down. He started yelling to pull him up and as they did he fell out of the 55 gallon drum he was being lowered down in. Both of them had been over come by the gasses and lack of oxegen from the explosion. Kents mother went to town for help, but the sheriff's possey had no way to retrieve the bodies. It was finally Del Allgood who retrieved them. That night Del call Jose at the hospital and gave him the bad news. In Jose's own words he say's "after Del called me that night I left emmediatley for the site and slept by it in my camper." Next morning when I took the cap off of the shaft I could still smell the gasses.

It is reported that Jose later stated that the shaft contained room after room of gold and silver objects and that the main shaft eventually leads to a large room stacked with metal plates. The plates shown above supposedly came from this shaft. It is believed that the precious metals were placed there, first, to divert any looting of the plates, (which would have been more precious to these people, than gold would have been). I don't believe that this is treasure left by the Aztecs. It was made too early and it is centered more around protecting the plates, not the gold.

Many interesting things could be written about Jose Davila. With all of the interesting and exciting things that have gone on in his life, he is a true adventure seeker. But as with all adventurers, he has had just as many heart breaking bad experiences as he has had good.

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