The Missing Gold of John Ashley, is being looked for in all the wrong places.
Several people have jumped into this treasure hunt including the Famous Josh Gates, from the many Discovery Channel shows, but none are looking in the right places. They all neglect a few factors.
The Ashley Gang of South Eastern Florida have been long overlooked as some of the most notorious figures in the prohibition era. They robbed more banks than Bonny and Clyde on top of being the largest moonshiners in the state, possibly even the whole Country. Then you can also add some old fashioned Piracy, and Rum Running to that resume'. The profits much of which they swapped out for Gold and stashed most of, have still to this day never been found. The reason for this lack of finding it, is probably just some lost needed context. For most it's hard to even imagine, but in order to find it you have to put yourself in John Ashley's mud and blood covered shoes (metaphorically) to think, If I were him, what would I do with all that gold. Let's try to break that down.
Contrary to some criminals of that era, they were known to have had a very big “Robin hood” type of influence among the locals in the surrounding communities. So, we know they gave a portion of it to neighbors in need. That charity has been factored into the amounts of bank loot, and profit from piracy that is still not accounted for. To say it simply, nearly 60% of the stolen Money from the Banks is still missing, along with the profit from distilling, pirating, and running moonshine. In today's value that is roughly $750 million in gold, although some say the value is possibly even over $1 Billion.
So .. where is it. There have been intense attempts to locate it on known properties of John, and his Father, especially the locations around known stills they operated. John hated the very Idea of banks, and putting all of your eggs in one basket, so why would he bury his business capital in such an obvious spot ? The answer is clearly that he didn't. He would have expected his stills to be raided, and certainly wouldn't keep a large portion of his profits there.
The most important thing to John Ashley was his Family and Community. He would have wanted to build something for them that would far outlive him. The hard part about that plan, he was “wanted” and his face was everywhere on posters. The only way he could do it, would be through close friends, and their family. His direct family were also under the close watchful eye of the PBC Sheriff at the time George Baker. This was during a time that the Ku Klux Klan were electing their own into seats as prominent members of Society like Sheriff's and Judges. They really did not like the fact that Joe Ashley and John Ashley built a large boarding house, several churches, and several cabins for a community of people of color in the Klan affiliated Sheriff's domain. This was actually what originally drew the Palm Beach County sheriff's attention to the Ashley family, not the death of Desoto Tiger over $1,200 in furs like some stories tell. The Ashley Gang were the Merry Men and John Ashley really was a modern day Robin Hood. They would use their money to build communities before the “outlaw” labels, but after threats from the Sheriff and his local Klan member friends the Ashley Gang knew how to hit the corrupt sheriff where it hurt the most. He would begin to take their power away by robbing banks that were known to hold money for the most powerful Klan members. It worked quite well, the Sheriff began to show his corruption and true colors by acting outside of his legal parameters on more than one occasion. This is also quite possibly the reason why “the Ashley Gang” never received the media attention that Bonny and Clyde or Al Capone did, it would have shown a light on the abortion of justice that was the hunting and execution of John and the Ashley Gang.
John Ashley would not have made the mistake of burying his loot in one place, he would have spread it out. Portions of it buried near the communities he built up, and other portions would be buried for certain “Family” members, and blood relatives. We must Also assume at their execution on the Sebastian bridge that night, that while the Saint Lucie County Sheriff J.R. Merritt went to “get his car” on the other side of the bridge, the then Palm Beach County Sheriff's deputies Elmer Padgett, O.B. Padgett, Henry Stubbs and L.B. Thomas that Sheriff Baker sent from PBC got the location of one or 2 of the caches of gold. They openly went there with 2 intentions that night that they later admitted to several people. Thos intentions were to first and foremost recover the stolen bank money of the Ku Klux Klan members, and the second was to execute them on the spot, the reason they chose the bridge was because of its then isolated location, there would be no witnesses. Unfortunately for the Sheriff's that night 2 passersby in another car just so happened to get stopped at their blockade chain across the bridge right in front of the Ashley's. The 2 witnesses that would later testify to seeing all 4 men searched and handcuffed, right before being asked to drive the then Saint Lucie County Sheriff J.R. Merritt to his car conveniently just out of sight range of the entire shootout just in the opposite side of the old wooden Sebastian bridge. Did the PBC sheriff's deputies get the location of some of that treasure ? Did they split it with Sheriff J.R. Merritt ? We can look at the Last names of some of the Sheriff's, Deputies, and Ashley Gang members and see that there are Camps, Communities, Islands, and beaches named After them. Did some of that found treasure play a part in the social and financial rise of some of these families ? Perhaps, but not even half of it in total has been accounted for.
Just Google the last names of these people and you can see them in the names of places around the Treasure Coast.
Middleton - UpTheGrove - Merritt - Ashley - Baker - Padgett - and Lowe just to name a few.
Ashley also had Hideouts from Sebastian, to Fort Pierce in the Northern reaches of his gangs empire, to Okeechobee in the west, and as far south as The Florida Everglades, and modern Miami- Dade county. He also had ties to a prominent Pineapple Farming Family of what is now known as Viking - Indrio in Fort Pierce founded by the Helseth Family and the Patriarch Jans Helseth. It was possibly his ties to this family that caused the refusal of Henry Flagler to stop sending the Helseths fertilizer for their pineapple farms for 2 years causing their failure and the end of the town around their farms known as “Viking” Fort Pierce. The Ashley's were far more than a “Gang” in this area. To some they were, and still are Folk Heroes, it just depends on who you ask. It would be foolish of me to openly disclose the locations of these places, but if you can follow the clues in the article above, we might just meet by bumping into each other there with our metal detectors.
Happy Hunting
Links to Sources of Images and reference materials.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Ashley_(bandit)
The Ashley Gang - West Palm Beach History - WestPalmBeach.com https://www.westpalmbeach.com/the-ashley-gang/
The Ashley Gang: What really happened | Indian River Magazine https://indianrivermagazine.com/the-ashley-gang-what-really-happened/
New exhibit at Stuart's Elliott Museum gives peek into lives of the Ashley Gang https://www.tcpalm.com/story/opinion/2022/01/28/elliott-museum-exhibit-highlights-ashley-gangs-exploits-opinion/9232491002/
Ashley Gang, and Black community faced Treasure Coast KKK corruption | Opinion https://www.tcpalm.com/story/opinion/2022/02/25/ashley-gang-black-community-faced-treasure-coast-corruption-opinion/6910916001/
The Ashley Gang and Frontier Justice | Jupiter, FL https://www.jupiter.fl.us/DocumentCenter/View/6989/Ashley-Gang-and-Frontier-Justice
The Ashley Gang - Historical Society of Martin County - YouTube
Ashley Gang Exhibit Lands at Elliott Museum - Stuart Magazine https://www.stuartmagazine.com/things-to-do/around-town-things-to-do/ashley-gang-exhibit-lands-at-elliott-museum/
Hanford Mobley of the Ashley Gang - Florida Memory https://www.floridamemory.com/items/show/144140
FLORIDA SHERIFF'S “MAN TRAP” WIPES OUT THE ASHLEY GANG https://www.nytimes.com/1924/11/16/archives/florida-sheriffs-man-trap-wipes-out-the-ashley-gang-outlaws-robbed.html
"Notorious Ashley Gang" The Making of a Legend - WQCS https://www.wqcs.org/community-calendar/event/notorious-ashley-gang-the-making-of-a-legend-14-01-2022-13-11-03
POST TIME: The movie that butchered the Ashley Gang https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/history/2020/12/17/post-time-movie-butchered-ashley-gang/3429905001/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Upthegrove
If you want to find it the clues are there. It's not just one cache it's probably closer to a dozen. They were builders and brick masons on top of Family Farmers. Real silver dollar coins, and gold were all John Ashley would deal with, often melting the gold down into bars.