'THE WATERHOUSE TREASURE'

            It all started, back before the turn of the last century, when a weekend hunting trip, into the North Georgia Mountains, proved to be much more of an adventure for young Will Waterhouse and his friends than they had originally planned. Although the seven friends went in search of meat, what the men found, that weekend, would become legendary.

Somewhere along the hardwood-covered mountainside, one of the dogs suddenly sounded off. A second or two later, the rest of the pack joined in, as they too struck the trail, their short choppy barks echoing through the woods. After a bit of a chase, the dogs ran their quarry into a hole in the side of the ridge, and the treed cry went up.

Immediately upon catching up to their hounds, Will Waterhouse and his hunting companions began trying to dig out what they supposed was game. They figured it was probably an old ‘coon or maybe a fat ‘possum, but it didn’t make much difference which; either would taste good slow cooked in a stew pot. Within ten minutes, though, the thrill of the chase changed to intense curiosity, as the ‘hole’ they were digging into suddenly opened up, revealing a large underground cave.

Upon realizing the vastness of the cave, and after a bit of discussion, they agreed to forego the day’s hunt and explore the winding passage further, just to see where it might lead. As in most things, Will took the lead and sent a couple of the guys back outside to gather branches and pine knots to make enough torches to ‘last all day and all night’.

As the torches were made ready, the dogs were gathered up and tied fast to nearby trees. Once everything was ready, the seven men headed single file back into the cave, with each man carrying a torch plus several extras. They worked their way deeper into the cave, until they reached a junction, about a thousand feet in, where they took the passage leading off to the right.

Another thousand feet, and the passage suddenly opened up into a large cavern, where they found a small bellows-type pump with the leather rotted off. According to the men, it resembled the type that had once been used while melting gold and silver back at the turn of the 19^th century. Further exploration revealed a large amount of metal bars piled up against one wall of the cave. The hunters estimated that there were about a thousand bars, in all, of which were described as ‘being of a uniform size’ and appearing to be made of copper.

Some of the men tried to move a few of the larger ones, but, due to the weight of the bars, they couldn't be moved. However, the seven men were able to bring eight of the smallest bars out, as proof that they had actually found something, leaving the larger and much heavier bars where they lay. It’s unknown how long it took the men to make their way back out into the open, but the tunnel back out was described as ‘meandering’.

Hours later, while sitting around camp, a legend of gold in the mountains was recalled. About how, in the early 1800’s, just before the Federal government had ordered their removal to the West, the Cherokee Indians had sealed up and hidden the entrances to their valuable gold and silver mines throughout North Georgia, in hopes of keeping the whites from locating them.

Their curiosity aroused, one of the hunting party pulled a 'copper' bar from the haversack he carried, and, using a hunting knife, ‘skinned’ the copper off of it, revealing the gold underneath. Much to their astonishment, each of the bars ended up being solid gold encased in about a ¼ inch thick coating of copper.

The next day, Will and the six others attempted to return to the cave, but once back in the area an argument ensued about its exact location. The hunting party ended up dividing and going in different directions, yet neither group was able to find their way back to the cavern. Supposedly, the last ½ mile or so back to the cave’s entrance was the greatest point of contention among the members of the hunting party, with each remembering something different.

In August of 1890, Will Waterhouse experienced instant and lasting fame when the hunting party’s adventure was reported in the Chattanooga Herald newspaper. In the article, “William (Bill) Waterhouse from Keith, Georgia,” referred to a legend about “an old rich Indian gold mine, near a certain place in Georgia”, as well as, expressed his belief that the cave had been “a storehouse of the Indians, and their principal workshop”. It concluded with the announcement that Will was “raising funds for an exploration”.

Of the further exploration we know nothing, but legend has it that the ‘find’ haunted Will to the point of frustration. One account, popular with many treasure hunters, has him losing his and his parents’ fortunes, as well as, his wife and children, over the next twenty years, searching for his lost treasure, to no avail.

Then, in 1968, nearly eighty years after the ‘cave full of gold’ was reported being found, the legend of the ‘Waterhouse Treasure’ was revived, when, author Ernest Andrews wrote about it, in his book Georgia’s Fabulous Treasure Hoards. Acknowledging that he had located a Waterhouse family who had operated a hotel in the small town of Cohutta, Georgia, a few miles east of Keith, Mr. Andrews goes on to speculate that the hunting party made their infamous find on Rocky Face Mountain, located in Whitfield County, Georgia, just north of Dalton, in the heart of what he referred to as “the old Dalton Cherokee Indian gold fields”.

Rocky Face Mountain, at Dalton, Whitfield Co. GA 

Mr. Andrews admits that this speculation is based on the mountain’s close proximity to those small communities, as no references to a definite location have yet been found. Since then, generations of treasure seekers, as well as Civil War relic hunters, have scoured both sides of Rocky Face Mountain, and although caves have been found and explored with an assorted collection of relics found, no discovery of a ‘cave full of gold’ has yet been announced.

Although the find was originally reported in August of 1890, no one knows for sure when it actually occurred, but it probably hadn't just happened. For one thing, summertime in North Georgia is certainly not the best time to be traipsing around in the woods, for days at a time, hunting anything, especially ‘meat’. Warm weather was when you ate a lot of fish or chicken, not wild game.

Secondly, consider exploring such a cave, of crawling back up in a dark hole in the ground, where you’d be apt to find a big ol’ timber rattler curled up in the cool shade trying to escape the late summer heat. Just the thought of it sends shivers up and down my spine. So more than likely, the hunting trip took place during the fall or winter of 1889, instead.

In 1890, 24-year-old Will Waterhouse was relatively new to the Catoosa County community of Keith, having just moved there early that year. Up until then, he had lived practically all of his life at Cohutta Springs, in northern Murray County, where just a few miles to the east rise the majestic Cohutta Mountains.

The Cohutta Mountains of Murray Co. GA

Newspaper accounts of that day place the find as being “in the fastness of the mountains”, which aptly describes the Cohutta Mountain Range, where numerous stories of cached or lost gold still abound. Waterhouse himself admitted to having remembered hearing a legend about an old rich Indian gold mine near a certain place in Georgia, which lead him to believe that they might have found a kind of storehouse for the fabled mine.

In his book, Mr. Andrews revealed several such stories, all of which closely surround the area in which young Waterhouse grew up. There’s also a Rocky Face Mountain located just upstream from Hassler’s Mill, which is at the center of Mr. Andrews’ Lost Cohutta Mountain Gold Mines story, lending even more credence to the idea that maybe what Will and his hunting partners found was in the Cohutta Mountains, not in Whitfield County, as has been assumed up to this point.

If they had been in the Cohutta Mountain Range, though, then the extensive logging operations in and around them by the Conasauga Lumber Company during the early part of the 20^th Century, most likely sealed the hunting party’s original opening back up, whether it was by design or by accident. Nowadays, the majority of the Cohutta Mountains is national forest land, as well as, a federal wilderness area, and remains as wild and untamed as ever. As rugged a place as there ever was.

Whether Will Waterhouse’s ‘cave full of gold’ was found on Rocky Face, just north of Dalton, or somewhere deep in the Cohutta Mountains though, is still yet to be determined. Even today, more than 100+ years since eyes were last laid on it, folks still seek Mr. Waterhouse’s ‘treasure’.

Chances are though that it’ll continue to stay “hidden” for nigh on to eternity, or at least ‘til another hunter’s dog runs a critter into a certain burrow, and once again the hunters get curious and decide to explore the hole a bit more thoroughly.

                                                                                                       - Barry D. Jennings

W.L. Waterhouse & family in front of their
                     'boarding house' home in  Cohutta, GA (Ca. 1907)

THE ORIGINS OF THIS ARTICLE -The author and his family have lived, for the past 22-years, in the house that W.L. Waterhouse had built, in 1906. While researching the history of the house, he became interested in Mr. Waterhouse and his family, and in the process turned up several references to a report of his finding a ‘cave full of gold’ in 1890, now known simply as the 'Waterhouse Treasure'. The more he investigated the story, the more enthralled he became with it. Through this research, not only has he met several very interesting relatives of Mr. Waterhouse’s, but has also become acquainted, through old newspaper articles and such, with quite a bit of the forgotten history of early Cohutta, Georgia. He is currently researching several different leads concerning the early days of this small North Georgia community.

W.L. Waterhouse Place (Ca. Present-day)

Source Reference:

1.        Chattanooga Herald newspaper, Chattanooga, Tennessee: August 8, 1890

2.       North Georgia Citizen newspaper, Dalton, Georgia: September 8, 1892; January 14, 1904; January 21, 1904; January 28, 1904; September 28, 1904; October 26, 1905; November 2, 1905; December 6, 1905; January 11, 1906; March 5, 1906; April 5, 1906, September 6, 1906; September 20, 1906; August 15, 1907

3.       Georgia’s Fabulous Treasure Hoards, by Edward Andrews (1968)

4.       Cohutta Town, His Memories of Cohutta Growing Up, by Rev. John Clarke Williamson (1970)

5.       Cave of Treasure, by Michael Paul Henson (Page 44 of the November 1993 issue of Lost Treasure magazine)

6.       USGS 1:24,000 topographical maps, Tennga & Crandall quadrangles (Georgia), Tunnel Hill & Dalton North quadrangles (Georgia)

7.       Correspondence with Fred Lawrence Abel, William Lea Waterhouse’s last surviving grandson, 2006.