Cutting in half the eastern part of the Santa Monica Rocky Mountains in the Hollywood Hills and directly opposite the metropolis of Los Angeles, California, is a low mountain pass called the Cahuenga Pass.
The locals sometimes call it El Portozuelo (small passage). The pass connects the Los Angeles area with the San Fernando Valley and has a very rich history.
In the 1800s, several battles between Californian settlers and Mexicans took place here, and the most famous legend tells of lost treasures that were supposedly cursed by dark forces.
In 1864, amid tensions between California and Mexico, France appointed the Austrian Archduke Maximillian and his wife Charlotte as Emperor and Empress of Mexico. And naturally, this very much angered the then President of Mexico Benito Juarez.
In order to challenge the monarchical power and support democracy, Juarez sent four of his agents to San Francisco to purchase weapons for Juarez's soldiers. The agents had with them gold, silver and precious stones worth about 200 thousand dollars and their way lay through the Kauenga pass.
What happened next is known only from local legends of varying degrees of truthfulness. So it is reported that one of the agents died mysteriously on the way, presumably he was killed by French spies. And when the rest of the group, exhausted and ragged, finally almost reached San Francisco, a detachment of armed Frenchmen blocked their way.
In a panic, the agents turned back and settled in the San Mateo area, after which they decided to divide the treasure into 6 parts and hide them in different places until the threat from the French passed. After that, the agents went somewhere, probably coming up with a plan of what to do next.
However, a lone shepherd Diego Moreno watched their actions, and when the agents left, he found all the pieces of the treasure, dug them up and decided to take them back to Mexico to hide them more safely as his "rainy day contribution".
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Thus, when the agents soon returned for the treasure, they found nothing. They immediately began to accuse each other of stealing treasures, and then began shooting at each other with guns. In this shootout, only one agent survived.
This was only the beginning of a series of deaths associated with this treasure.
Diego Moreno, meanwhile, was taking the stolen treasure to Mexico and on the way stopped at a tavern near the Cauenga Pass and very close to Los Angeles. It was in this tavern at night that he had an ominous dream in which someone warned him that if Diego entered Los Angeles with treasures, he would die.
The next morning Diego woke up so scared that he decided to hide the treasure somewhere else. He buried it somewhere under an ash tree and went about his business to the city, intending to seize the treasure on the way back.
However, he did not come back. Suddenly Diego was struck by a mysterious illness and he soon died. However, before his death, he managed to meet his old friend Jesus Martinez and tell him about the treasures.
After the death of Diego Moreno, Martinez and his stepson José Gumisendo Correa went in search of the treasure. At the same time, they were not even sure if the treasure existed in reality, because when Moreno told them about it, he was already in a fever and delirium.
Nevertheless, according to legend, they managed to find the very same ash tree and they began to dig a hole under it. And at that moment Martinez fell dead, struck by a heart attack.
Young Jose was so scared that he decided that a curse lay on the treasure if both of its owners mysteriously died in just a few days. The boy ran away and returned to Los Angeles, intending not to tell anyone about the treasure.
By the way, President Juarez, even without weapons bought by agents, defeated the French forces, and when he captured the capital of Mexico in 1867, he shot Maximillian I, who remained the last Mexican emperor in history.
In 1885, another shepherd named Basqui was digging a hole under the same tree for some purpose and came across part of the treasure, that is, one of six bags of precious stones, gold and silver. For some reason, Basque did not dig further, perhaps he decided that there was nothing else in the hole, and he took only one bag he found.
Basques decided to leave for Spain and live there on a grand scale. In order to secretly transport the found treasures on a ship, he spent a lot of effort to sew stones and coins into the lining of his clothes.
However, this was what killed him. When the ship had almost reached the coast of Spain and the land appeared in front of him, the Basques with joy bent over the side so much that they fell into the water. And due to the weight of the coins and stones, he instantly went to the bottom.
The treasure took his next victim in 1895. Young Jose Correa grew up and decided that the curse was only his childhood fright. To help in the excavation of the treasure, he trusted his cousin, and then they argued about how they would share the treasure and the brother shot José. At the same time, Jose did not have time to tell him the exact location of the treasure.
Soon thereafter, somewhere in Arizona, the last of Juarez's agents was killed in a fight. After that, there was no one left who knew the exact location of the treasure.
Kauenga pass today.
In 1939, the most famous attempt to find the lost treasure took place. Mining expert Henry Jones, along with mechanic Walter Combe and his uncle, Ennis Combe, set off on a big treasure hunt.
However, the big problem was that the Cauenga Pass began to be actively built up by the expanding Los Angeles (now there is a region of prestigious villas there). So when the team, armed with sophisticated instruments, allegedly found signs of finding the treasure at a depth of 15 feet, it turned out to be on the site of the famous Hollywood "bowl" Hollywood Bowl - a concert arena, built in 1922.
Surprisingly, they still managed to get permission to dig under the arena, though in exchange for a percentage of the treasure. However, the further they dug, the more their fear of the curse grew. Unable to withstand the stress, the Combs fled the project, but Jones nevertheless continued to dig hard under the constant attention of curious newsmen, filmmakers and local onlookers.
Jones dug to the mark, but suddenly found nothing there. He decided that he was wrong with the zone and started digging nearby. Jones and his workers dug for 24 days until they came across a huge boulder. Jones' disappointment was immeasurable.
In subsequent years, there were other hunters for the cursed and lost treasure, but none of them found even a coin. There is a suspicion that the treasure was stumbled upon during the development of this area at the beginning of the 20th century and was stolen by one of the workers.