Treasure Tales and Treasure Stories About Nebraska from the Archives of Lost Treasure Magazine

Sam Bass' loot -- maybe

The first Sam Bass Gang had tried robbing stages for about a year without much success when they turned up in Ogallala where they were generally thought of as well mannered for a bunch of Texas cow pokes. Six days later, they held up a Union Pacific express from San Francisco at Big Springs. After boarding the express car, they ordered the clerk, Charles Miller, to open the safe. When Miller informed them that the safe had a time lock, Bass tried to break it open with an axe -- he couldn't dent it. In frustration, he slammed the axe down on some wooden crates nearby and discovered $60,000 worth of $20 gold coins fresh out of the San Francisco Mint.

After the robbery, the six outlaws -- each carrying $10,000 in gold -- split up into three pairs. Sam Bass and Jack Davis made it through the web of posses to Texas where Davis disappeared and Bass formed a second gang. Jim Berry and Tom Nixon were cornered just outside of Mexico, Mo. Nixon escaped, but Berry was killed.

Lawmen found $3,000 in gold on him. The assumption at the time was that Nixon had robbed his partner's dead body but, given the circumstances, this is highly unlikely. It's more likely that the rest of Berry's share had already been cached back in Nebraska. Joel Collins and Bill Hefferidge were killed by a troop of soldiers near Fort Hayes, Kan.

There are conflicting reports of how much of the gold was recovered. The sack of five hundred $20 gold pieces that each man carried away from the scene of the robbery, in addition to the loot taken from the passengers, would have weighed about 40 or 50 pounds. Some sources say that about 100 pounds worth of this loot was recovered. That leaves between 150 to 200 pounds worth unaccounted for.

With the whole countryside aroused against them, it is likely that the bandits would have chosen to lighten their load pretty close to the area where they divided the loot: just south of Big Springs.