When the first English sailors arrived on the northern Oregon coast in the late 1700s and began trading with the Tillamook natives, they quickly learned that they were not the first after all.

The Tillamook told them of a ship that had landed 200 years earlier and apparently buried a fabulous treasure on the slopes

of Neacani Mountain. Many have searched, none have found anything. How plausible is the story?

We're going to find out right now on Skeptoid.

You're listening to Skeptoid. I'm Brian Dunning from Skeptoid.com.

The Spanish gold of Niakani Mountain.

Welcome to the show that separates fact from fiction, science from pseudoscience,

real history from fake history,

and helps us all make better life decisions by knowing what's real and what's not.

From the stormy Oregon coast in the Pacific Northwest comes a tale of buried treasure.

The story goes that sometime, in the 1600s, a Spanish ship came into Nahalem Bay just south of Neocani Mountain, where it anchored.

A party of men came ashore carrying a heavy chest.

They took it up the side of the mountain and dug a deep hole, then killed an African slave and dumped his body on top of the chest before filling in the hole.

The dead body was to deter natives from disturbing the cash.

Then they left and sailed away.

The story is known because they were being watched the whole time by indigenous people of the Tillamook tribe.

Perhaps a century or so later, when the first English explorers arrived, the

Tillamook told them this weird tale, and ever since, people have been digging holes all

over Neacani Mountain convinced that a fortune in Spanish gold was just a few more thrusts of the shovel away.

Neocani Mountain is really more of a coastal headland than a mountain, part of the Northern Oregon

Coast Range, with a height of only about 500 meters. And it's true that there has always been

a problem with people digging for treasure on it, to the point that it's been nicknamed the Mountain of a Thousand Holes.

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