Brohman — Benton Lake is about as remote a place as you’ll find in Michigan. Located deep in the Manistee National Forest, it’s a tiny lake, just 33 acres, with no houses on it, just trees, rocks and a small rustic campground.
Oh, and quite possibly $2.1 million in buried gold.
There’s been a well-reported rumor going around for decades that, back in 1874, a band of Indian robbers held up a stagecoach that was going from Pentwater to Big Rapids. As the stagecoach skirted the northern shore of Benton Lake, the bandits held up the stagecoach and stole about $74,000 in gold. That gold would be worth just under $2.1 million today.
Not wanting to be caught with their ill-gotten bounty, the Indians supposedly put the gold inside an iron stove and buried it between two trees on the shores of Benton Lake. The idea was that when the heat died down, they would come back and get it.
They never did. And though people have been looking for it for decades, it’s supposedly still there.
There are some who say the story of the buried gold is just an old wives’ tale, but Stewart Sanders absolutely believes it’s true. And if anyone would know, it’s him.
Sanders is the Newaygo County resister of deeds, and he’s lived near Benton Lake his entire life. He fished in the lake as a kid, and his father bought an old cabin designed by Frank Lloyd Wright that used to sit on the lake. Sanders’ dad bought the cabin in 1967 for $1,500 and had it moved to nearby White Cloud. Sanders lives in that house today.
And he believes there’s gold in them thar shores.
“I believe something happened, whether it was a stagecoach robbery or maybe a train robbery,” Sanders said. “Probably some gold was buried somewhere there. People back then believe it happened and I believe it, too. Nobody has ever found that gold.”
The full story starts back in the late 1800s, when northern Newaygo County was a thriving lumber area. The town of Otia (now called Brohman) was the center of it all, as the lumbermen harvested white pine and other trees in the area around Benton Lake.
There was some friction between the lumbermen and the Indian tribes who lived in the area, and in 1874, the stagecoach robbery supposedly took place. One of the Indians apparently leaked the information to a lumberjack about burying the gold—that’s how the rumor started to spread.
By the early 1900s, the newspapers started to report on it. A story that ran in the Muskegon Chronicle in 1925 spelled it out: “The story is told that before lumbering began there, a stagecoach ran from Pentwater to Big Rapids, skirting the north shore of the lake. One day it was held up and robbed, supposedly by Indians of whom there were many in the neighborhood.”
The story went on to say that in 1903, a guy showed up saying that he knew where the gold was: “About eighteen years ago, a man came to Benton Lake saying he was from Montana. He had a map showing where a treasure was buried. He explored all summer but was unable to locate it.”
The lumbering camps died out in the late 1800s, and in 1910, Benton Lake and all the land around it was bought by a man from Chicago named Dr. Chester E. Fish. In 1913, Wright built a cabin on the property to settle a debt he owed Fish.
The land and the lake were passed down through the generations to Fish’s ancestors, and in the 1960s, young Stewart Sanders started fishing there. He also got to know Fish’s granddaughters.
“I talked to the granddaughters of Dr. Fish, and they believe the buried-gold story was a real thing,” Sanders said. “They used to dig for it as kids, but they never found anything. That would have been in the 1920s or 1930s.”
In the mid-1960s, the land and the lake were sold to the federal government and made it all part of the Manistee National Forest. The last cabin on the lake was the one that Frank Lloyd Wright built back in 1913, and that was bought and moved by Sanders’ dad.
“The mound that the house sat on is still there today,” Sanders said.
The National Forest Service built a rustic campground on the lake which is still open today. You can pay $30 a night to camp there.
A lot of people have brought metal detectors out to Benton Lake through the years (they’re legal to use in a National Forest as long as you don’t disturb any historic or archaeological sites), but Sanders doesn’t hear much about it today.
“Nobody ever comes into the county offices asking about it,” he said. “I’m not sure how many people know about the story these days.”
If you’re inclined to search for the gold yourself, the only access point to the lake is the campground—and remember to follow the rules. If you find anything and you want to do an official dig, you need to get what’s called a “Treasure Trove Special Use Permit” from the Forest Service.
Happy digging, Enjoyers.
Buddy Moorehouse teaches documentary filmmaking at Hillsdale College.
