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Freddy Crystal’s Search For Montezuma’s Treasure

02/18/2021

Image Of Freddy Crystals Cave Opening, in Kanab Utah


Freddy Crystal’s Search For Montezuma’s Treasure


Freddy Crystal Was A Treasure Hunter Who Had Been Searching For Montezuma's Treasure.  He Was Described As A Heavy Set Man With A Balding Head, Who Carried Around With Him A Small Crystal Ball.  He Would Use The Ball To Look Through While He Was Searching From The Mountain Tops For The Specific Location Of Montezuma's Treasure. It Has Been Said That Freddy Crystal First Became Interested In The Treasure Of The Aztec’s After A Head Injury. That Was When He Had A Vision About The Aztecs And The Fabled Montezuma’s Treasure.  Regardless Of How Freddy Got His Start Searching For The Treasure, It Would Seem As If Freddy Crystal May Have Been A Practicing Mystic Or At Least A True Believer In The Power Of Crystals. It Was Said That He Would Constantly Rely On His Crystal Ball For Direction. This Interesting Fact About Freddy And His Crystal Can Lead One To Question If Freddy Crystal Was His Real Name? 


We, The Dillman Family Have Information From Two Credible Sources That Freddy's Treasure Hunting Partners Called Him "Johnny", And He Used A Crystal”.


These Are Definitely Some Interesting Details To Ponder That Many Researchers Of Freddy Crystal Do Not Know.  Now Maybe His Name Was Freddy Crystal And His Nick Name Was Johnny. Just Another Mystery Surrounding Freddy Crystal That Could Lead A Researcher To Want To Follow Up On In The Near Future.


The Story Of Freddy Crystal Begins In The Early 1900’S, When He Rode His Bicycle Hundreds Of Miles From Mexico Through The Rough Deserts Of The Americas Until He Reached The Southern Utah Area. Freddy Was Carrying With Him A Photo Of A Half Of A Tattered Map That He Had Reportedly Taken From A Monastery Near Sonora Mexico.  Which Freddy Believed Held Location To The Treasure Of The Aztec King, Montezuma.


Whit Robinson, Son Of Ranch Owner Oscar Robinson, (Who Originally Housed Freddy), Recounted His First Meeting Freddy Crystal Personally.  Whit Robinson, Then A Boy Growing Up On His Father's Ranch 10 Miles East Of Kanab On Us 89 Remembers, “I Was 12 Years Old When This Heavyset Balding Stranger Showed Up At The Ranch, Freddy Crystal Was His Name.) He And Bowman, (A Local Store Owner) And My Dad, Oscar Robinson Went Off By Themselves And Talked Pretty Quickly.  They Then Came Back And Dad Then Informed Us That Freddy Was Going To Stay With Us For A While. He Didn't Tell Us What His Business Was, But I Think He Said He Was Looking For Some Kind Of Manganese Ore. I Was To Be His Guide. Bowman Was Going To Grubstake Him And Dad Would Furnish Him A Place To Stay And A Horse.  I Remember, I Got Five Dollars Out Of It”.


Soon Whit Learned That Freddy’s Interest Was Not From Manganese Ore, But Montezuma’s Gold. He Had A Photo Of What Seemed To Be A Very Old Map Devoid Of Recognizable Writing But Marked With Strange Hieroglyphs. Freddy Claimed He Had Followed The Map Out Of Mexico, And He Said “That Someone In Arizona Dug Up Two Or Three Gold Bricks.” Which Led Him to Believe He Was On The Right Trail. Freddy Had Once Said That Montezuma’s Treasure Was Worth At Least 10 Million Dollars And That The Cave Would Have To Be Extremely Large To Hold All The Aztec Treasures Of Gold Dust, Gold Bars, Silver Ornaments, Shields, Gold Plates, Cuirasses, Pendants, Bracelets Studded With Emeralds, Rubies, Great Pearls, Gold Statues And Numerous Other Ancient Artifacts.


Whit Goes On To Say, “The Map Looks Just Like The Stump Of An Old Tree With Dry Limbs Going Off Of It.” One Day While Searching Amid The Cliffs Northeast Of Kanab, Whit And Freddie Came Upon The Cottonwood Canyon Area, And It Was Quite A Climb To Get There, Whit Recalled, But When Freddy Got To Looking At The Canyon And The White Ledges, He Figured He Didn't Need To Look Anymore For The Topography Before Them Perfectly Mimicked The Tree Like Lines Of His Map.


Vaughn Judd, (Oscar Robinson’s Grandson) Told My Grandfather, Raymond Dillman And My Two Uncles, John & Paul Dillman, That Freddy Crystal Was In Kanab Utah For A Couple Of Years, The First Time He Came To Town, And Then He Just Came Up Missing. “He Just Picked Up And Left, Nobody Knew Where He Went, But He Had Lived On My Mother’s Family Ranch, The Oscar Robinson Ranch, In Johnson Canyon.”


When Freddy Crystal Did Make It Back To Kanab Utah After His First Unsuccessful Attempt To Find The Treasure, He Had The Other Half Of The Map. That Night Freddy Hired Cowhide Adams To Help Him And He Told Merle Cowhide Adams That He Had Been Shot And Stabbed While He Was Attempting To Steal The Actual Map. So, When He Returned To Kanab, He Began Searching The Mountains Again And Soon After, He Believed He Found The Mountain Peak He Was Looking For. He Was Confident That He Had Finally Found The Treasure And Filed A Claim On White Mountain, (The Location Now Known As Montezuma's Mine Or Freddy’s Cave.)


Subsequent Trips Into Cottonwood Canyon Took Freddy, Cowhide, And Alvin Judd To A Small Cave Filled With Sand. Freddy Dug His Knife Into A Crevice And It Soon Broke Through The Hard Crust Of Sand Which To A Careless Eye Seemed To Be A Part Of The Rock. "Gimme A Hand," Freddy Said, And Their Knives And Rapidly Scooping Hands Shortly Revealed A Wide, Sand-Choked Opening. Darkness Overtook Them And They Had To Call It Quits For The Day.  Early The Next Morning, Freddy, Cowhide, And Robinson's Son In Law, Alvin Judd, Returned To The Treasure Site.  In The Full Light Of Morning They Saw That The Crevice Was Actually The Mouth Of A Tunnel. They Dug For Several Days And Had Scraped Out A Good Sixty Feet Of Sand, When They Hit A Plugged Up Hole Sixteen Feet Long By Fourteen Feet Wide. The Obstruction Was A Wall Of Roughly Cut Blocks Of Blue Limestone Cemented Together With Marsh Mortar. Whoever Had Placed The Blocks In The Tunnel Had Gone To A Lot Of Trouble For The Nearest Deposit Of Blue Limestone Was Thirty Miles Away.


Freddy, Cowhide, And Alvin Began To Dig Out The Granite Wall. They Tore It Down Only To Discover Another Tunnel Also Sand Filled, Leading Further Into The Mountain. Cowhide Remembers: “That Tunnel Was Practically Full Of Sand And It Had Been Made With Pretty Ancient Tools Because It Wasn't Square Just Kind Of An Oval Rounding, It Was Small Enough That The Man Had To Have A Short Shovel And Be On His Knees To Go Into It And Shovel That Dirt Back.) Freddy And His Companions Soon Realized That The Job Was Too Big For Them. It Had Taken Hundreds, Perhaps Thousands Of Laborers To Transport The Treasure Into The Tunnel And To Seal It In Such A Way.  Obviously, It Would Require More Than A Handful Of Men To Dig It Out. Kanab's People, (With Their Mormon Heritage) Took Easily To Group Endeavors And Group Economies And Soon The Town Had Come With All Its Forces Toward The One Goal Of Unearthing Montezuma's Treasure.


The City Council Saw No Point In Sharing The Fabulous Hoard With The Outside World. They Clamped A Strict Censorship On All Outgoing News. Because Of The City's Isolation This Was Simple. Nothing Leaked Out Except Occasional Rumors. Oscar Robinson Became The Diggers Water Master, No Simple Chore Since It Was Many Miles From His Ranch To White Mountain.


At Sunrise Each Morning, The Kanabians Would Evacuate Their Town Leaving Only A Few People Behind As Guards And Watchmen As The Rest Trooped Up To White Mountain And Work Until Sunset. When They Would Return Home. With The Exception Of A Few Skeptics Who Insisted On Hard And Immediate Cash, The Kanabians Expected To Be Paid For Their Labor With Gold Bricks From The Enormous Aztec Treasure. A Large Tent City Complete With Commissary Sprang Up At The Foot Of  White Mountain And Alvin Judd Was Its Overseer For The Two Years It Existed.


The Treasure Hunters Dug And Blasted Week After Week And Carried The Dirt And Rock Out In Buckets And Wheelbarrows. Cowhide Adams Recounted One Of The Booby Traps They Encountered, “We Got Into The Tunnel About 20 Feet After We Broke Down That Granite Wall And All At Once A Big Rock Fell Right Out Of The Right Hand Side Of That Tunnel It Rolled In And Pinned Fred's Leg To The Floor, If He Had Been Alone He Would Had Never Gotten Out From Under It.”


A Year Passed Fruitlessly And Still The Diggers Didn’t Discover A Single Piece Of Gold Or Silver. The Number Of Persons Willing To Continue Dwindled Each Day. Finally, It Was Just Freddy, Cowhide, And Alvin That Stayed To The End Of The Dig. Cowhide Said, “We Found Some Bones And Charcoal In There And The Sand Was Different From What You Would Expect For The Area. It Had To Of Been Deliberately Filled In Slowly A Shovel At A Time. Someone Had Gone Through A Lot Of Work To Dig Out And Create These Elaborate Tunnel Systems And Then Fill It Back Up And Seal It The Way They Did.  Freddy, Cowhide, And Alvin Worked Their Way To The End Of The Tunnel, And Old Fred Never Let Anybody Get In Front Of Him. Cowhide Said “Freddy Thought Every Time He Stuck His Shovel In That Sand There Would Be A Gold Brick On The End Of It.”


Cowhide Adams Explained To My Grandfather The Entire Freddy Crystal Story And How He And Freddy Found The Opening And Dug Out The Cave Entrance, And How Freddy Crystal Was Caught In A Booby Trap That Pinning His Leg By A Boulder That Came Rolling Out Of The Wall Just Like The Movie, (Indiana Jones, In The Raiders Of The Lost Ark.)


Freddy's Belief In His Finding Of The Sealed Entrance Was So Infectious That He Was Able To Enlist Many In The Town Of Kanab To Participate In His Claim With The Assurance Of Payment When Montezuma's Treasure Was Exhumed. People Who Had Laughed At Freddy For Years Were Now Probably Ready To Drop Everything And Take Up Shovels To Find Out What Was In That Tunnel.


Everybody Was Really Excited. They Went In The Cave And They Cleaned Out The Main Cavern Believing The Treasure Was Almost In Their Reach. Imagine Their Surprise When They Emptied The Entire Cave And Tunnel System That Went All The Way Through To The Other Side Of The Mountain And No Artifacts Or Anything Of Any Significant Monetary Value Would Ever Be Uncovered. All They Found Were A Few Bones, Charcoal, And The Sand And Dirt Which They Had Spent Months Removing. Disillusioned And Angry, The Towns People Would Write Freddy Off As A Nutcase And Freddie Would End Up Disappearing Almost Instantly Without A Trace.


It’s Completely Understandable Why The Entire Town Of Kanab Spent Two Solid Years Gouging Out The Side Of White Mountain. $10,000,000 Was A Lot Of Money In Their Time And That Was Freddy’s Crystals Conservative Estimate Of The Worth Of The Aztec Gold. Although It Is More Likely That The Treasure's True Value Is Much Higher In The Billions.


Bernal. Diaz, One Of Cortes Chroniclers Wrote In 1519 That: "It Seemed As If All The Riches Of The World Were In That Room (There Was) A Wheel Like A Sun, As Big As A Cartwheel, With Many Sorts Of Pictures On It, The Whole Of Fine Gold. Then Another Wheel Was Presented Of Greater Size Made Of Silver Of Great Brilliancy In Imitation Of The Moon. Then They Brought Twenty Golden Ducks And Many Articles Of Gold Worked In The Shape Tigers And Lions."


The Spaniards Eventually Conquered The Aztec Capital But By Time Cortes And His Men Retook The City The Great Treasure Hoards Seen And The Multiple Golden Statues Had All Been Sent Away.  Not A Single Aztec Could Be Made To Talk About Where Some Of The Treasure Was Dumped Into The Lakes And Canals. Most Of It Was Moved Far Away From The City By Montezuma's Aztec Warriors And Tamenes (Men Of Burden). Each Warrior And Tamene Could Carry Fifty Pounds Worth Of Gold And Jewels In Large Leather Bags Strapped To Their Back And They Could Easily Travel Twenty Miles Per Day And It Is Said That They Could Travel Up To 150 Miles Per Day After Eating Coco Leaves.


Freddy Crystal Did Make An Amazing Discovery Of Caves And Tunnels, But Freddy Just Disappeared Again. Mr. Vaughn Judd Told My Grandfather, Freddy Just Came Up Missing And That His Dad (Alvin Judd) Had Also Been Working With Freddy Crystal And Cowhide Adams, And His Dad (Alvin Judd) Told Him, That Somebody Killed Freddy Crystal Up There Near Where They Lived And They Don't Know If It Was For The Maps Or What.


Cowhide Adams Was With Freddie To The Very End Of The Digging, And Cowhide Adams Told My Grandfather (Raymond Dillman) That Freddy Was Found Seven Miles Outside Of Town With His Throat Cut And His Maps Missing. So What Did Happen To Freddy Crystal? You Would Have To Think That There Would Be Some Record Somewhere About His Death, Unless A Body Was Never Found Or His Name Wasn't Freddy Crystal.  Either Way This Is Another Mystery That Surrounds Freddy Crystal. We Have No Reason To Doubt Cowhide Adams.  Freddy Was Most Likely Killed For His Maps And We Have A Pretty Good Theory About Who Did It And Why But We Will Save That Story For Another Time.


We, The Dillman Family Do Believe That The Empty White Mountain Cave System Was Designed To Keep People Distracted, And To Possibly Create Even More Debris To Cover The Real Entrance That May Lie Below So Anyone Who Found That Opening Wouldn't Find What Was Hidden Near The Cave And Give Up.


Since The Early Nineteen Hundreds, When Freddy Crystal Last Graced The Mountains Of Southern Utah, There Had Been No New Notable Chapters Written In The History About The Search For Montezuma's Treasure.


It Would Not Be Until 1982, When Raymond Dillman And The Dillman Family Would Find Their Way To The Deserts Of Southern Utah, Using Only The Peralta Stone Tablets As Their Guide. This Is The Site Where Raymond Dillman And Family, Would Unearth The Amazing Ancient Aztec Artifacts, Signs, Symbols, And Another Mysteries Stone Tablet In Johnson Canyon On The Same Ranch That Freddy Crystal Called His Home While Searching For The Treasure In The White Mountains. Freddy Crystal Had No Idea That What He Was Looking For Was Resting Below His Feet Of The Ranch That He Had Been Sleeping And Working On To Fund His Digs.


So, Was It The Curse Of Montezuma’s Treasure, That Freddy Found Or Was There A Greedy Treasure Hunter Willing To Kill Freddy For His Maps. We May Never Know.


It Is Said By The Native Americans, That Only The Chosen Ones Shall Find The Treasure.


Last Updated 02/18/2021


Copyright Dan Dillman For The Dillman Family 1964-2021