Hunting the Real Treasure That Inspired The Goonies | Expedition Unknown

Join Josh Gates as he hunts the legendary treasure of the 17th century Spanish galleon Santo Cristo de Burgos, the real-life story that inspired The Goonies. Journey along Oregon’s rugged coastline as he searches for the long-lost pirate treasure that has eluded explorers for centuries.

H.
>> Oh, it’s broken. It’s broken.
>> What are you?
>> I’m on the Oregon coast investigating a legend of buried treasure that inspired the classic 1985 movie, The Goonies.
We’ve been digging for hours looking for the rich stuff. And now we may have found some.
It’s a dark and stormy night, the perfect weather for a hot cup of tea and a good story. And lucky for you, I have one of the best ever told. It’s about four misfit kids from Oregon who find a pirate map that leads to the adventure of a lifetime and a treasure worth millions. Okay, you got me. I’m talking about the Goonies. But the truth is that I’ve been talking about this movie since I was about 8 years old. Sorry, Dr.
Jones, but it was Mikey, Mouth, Data, and Chunk who first inspired me to explore the legends and mysteries of the world. This year, The Goonies turns 40, and we have reason to celebrate because it turns out that my favorite movie was based on a real life legend. That’s right. There is an actual treasure on the Oregon coast that has never been found.
Huh. Must have blown a fuse.
It’s a map of the Oregon coastline and something written in Spanish.
3 2 1 Whoops.
Ye intruders beware, crushing death and grief. Wait, my dad told me all about this once.
According to local legend, shipwrecked pirates buried treasure near where the Goonies was later filmed. And recently, timbers from a Spanish gallion were found there that have been identified as a treasure ship from 1694.
And now, one researcher believes that there may be other precious cargo just waiting to be discovered, like rubies and emeralds and diamonds. And and that’s not all. The discovery of a mysterious skeleton is leading historians to a secluded beach rumored to be dripping with pirate plunder.
What if? What if, you guys, these stories could lead to real life rich stuff and solve a mystery that’s more than 300 years old? Then we wouldn’t have to leave the Goonox. So, the only question is, what are we waiting for?
While the Goonies is an extraordinary adventure, it begins in a rather ordinary setting. That’s right. This is the Goonies house. The treasure map was found in that attic. Josh Brolan was tied up with a chest exerciser in that living room. Guys, chunk truffle shuffled right here.
>> Do it.
>> Come on, do it.
>> It’s not happening. In the movie, this and all of the houses in Atoria’s goond docks are in danger of foreclosure to make way for the evil country club. And with that admittedly thin plot device, so begins a film that inspired an entire generation of rejects like me to seek out adventure. How much do I love this movie? Well, I’m wearing full denim in front of somebody’s private property.
That much? So, let’s go on one last Goonies adventure to find the real treasure. Why would a Spanish gallion be all the way up here off the coast of Oregon in the 1600s? In the 1600s, the Spanish controlled much of the North American West Coast.
By 1690s, Spain had also established colonies as far away as the Philippines while still having the resources to conquer and control Mexico as well as much of South America. Spanish treasure gallions loaded with valuable goods from Asia would sail from Manila, crossing the Pacific Ocean to Northern California before catching the southerntherly current to Mexico. Unless that is something went horribly violently wrong, which is what Matt believes happened here.
For one of those ships to blow off course in a storm and come this far north, certainly not impossible.
>> Okay, so it could happen. How do we know that it did? Well, when she wrecked, she spilled her cargo all over this coast.
And one of the things that was in that cargo was beeswax. I’m sorry, beeswax.
While it might not sound as sexy as OneEyed Willy’s treasure, in the 17th century, beeswax was worth its weight in gold. It was used for candles and to waterproof timbers on ships. It was so prized that it was even traded as currency. But honeybees were not native to North America, so the wax had to be imported from Europe and Asia over the sea in gallions.
And that beeswax turned up here.
>> Yeah. Like 90 tons of it. 90 tons of it.
>> Absolutely. Wow. The natives found it right away and started putting it to good use. They would waterproof their canoes. They’d use it to start fires.
And then later, as we started to have some white settlement in the area, they would use it as a trade medium. There even reports of homesteaders having mined it in the 1800s. One individual found 125 lb chunk. Wow. Today, several of these remarkable waxy relics still marked with the shipper’s emblems are displayed at local museums.
So much of it was found over the years.
This became known as the Beeswax wreck.
>> The ship itself is assumed to have smashed up long ago when she wrecked on the coast. But her cargo went way beyond wax.
>> This had Goonies level treasure, gold, silver, a lot of very valuable Chinese porcelain that broke up into shs that the natives would find and then carve into arrowheads and spear tips.
>> Wow, that’s incredible. porcelain from all the way across the Pacific and China being repurposed as an arrowhead.
>> Absolutely.
>> So, we have reports of all of this stuff turning up literally in the sand.
>> Right.
>> But the ship’s identity was a major mystery. To solve it, archaeologists started by radioarbonating the beeswax and identifying the porcelain asQing dynasty. Together, they narrowed the production of both relics to a 20-year window from 1680 to 1700. Okay. Okay.
So, we’ve got a window of time that this ship must have wrecked.
>> Exactly. And over the centuries, the Spanish lost hundreds of gallions. But on the West Coast, only a handful vanished without a trace. And of those, only one was lost within that 20-year period of time, >> which is the Santa Cristo de Bergos.
>> Bingo. 432 ft long, complement of crew 45, the Santa Cristo de Burgos was capable of carrying 1,500 tons of cargo before she vanished. But the real proof, Josh, came just a couple of years ago when a local historian found ship’s timbers in a sea cave.
>> And that was found where?
>> Right out behind us.
>> Out there.
>> Yes.
>> The lost treasure of the Deberos is somewhere nearby. And Matt tells me there’s one man who’s the key to finding it. A treasure hunter and real life goon who was the first person to discover the wreck.
>> Josh, I’d like to introduce you to the man who found those timbers. Craig Andes.
>> Craig, nice to meet you. This is like a real Goonies moment. Like you actually found the remains of a Spanish gallion on the coast of Oregon.
>> Yeah, >> you’re a real Goon.
>> Yeah. Yeah. I I was a Gooni before I was before I was. But yeah, I’m still a Gooni. There was really little doubt from the spike holes in the larger beam and it was a type of wood I’ve never saw. The material is like iron.
When Craig first discovered the beams protruding from the sand, people thought he was crazy. But testing revealed that this is 300year-old Asian hardwood that only grows in the Philippines, making this a Manila gallion. one of only three ever found in North America. Not to mention the fulfillment of Craig’s childhood dreams.
>> I saw the Goonies in Colorado when I was a kid. And I came out here and my friends were, you know, talking about it and all excited about it. I don’t remember which one of my friends mentioned it, but they were say, “Hey, my dad says there’s a treasure that was buried related to the Goonies.” And I remember sitting there telling myself, “Treasure?
Spanish treasure? I’m going to find that someday.” And when it comes to this Spanish gallion, which we now know is real, it didn’t just have beeswax on board. It had very valuable Chinese porcelain, but it also had gold and silver, right?
>> Yes, there was definitely a ton of treasure on the ship.
>> The total hall can only be guessed at.
But considering that these are the dloons that inspired the Goonies, it’s safe to say the ship’s cargo would be worth millions.
Now, the legend is that pirates or Spaniards came ashore and buried this treasure somewhere on the mountain. So, somewhere here, maybe like right under our feet, there could be Spanish treasure.
>> Yes, I know there is. We just have to find it.
>> Okay. Well, should we do that?
>> We should look.
>> Let’s look.
>> Okay.
>> Come on. Here we go.
Hey, the Goonies didn’t have metal detectors, so we scour the soggy beach for hours the oldfashioned way.
At least the water’s not freezing cold.
>> Hey, here you go. Here’s a piece.
>> What did you find?
>> Uh, there’s a little See the cobalt?
>> Wait, where?
>> You see the cobalt?
>> The blue?
>> Yeah.
>> That’s not a shell.
>> No, that’s a piece of Ching Dynasty porcelain from the wrecked gallion.
What?
It absolutely is porcelain. Look at that blue patterning. That is beautiful.
Wait a minute. This isQing Dynasty porcelain on the coast of Oregon.
>> You’re the first person to touch that in over 300 years.
Intact pieces of porcelain from this dynasty founded in the 17th century have sold for millions of dollars, putting theqing in chuch-ching.
>> That was part of a big vessel. There’s thousands more pieces of that laying around here somewhere.
>> Insane. That’s a piece of treasure right there.
>> Did you really think you were going to find a piece when you came here? Was it going to be that easy?
>> No. I still can’t get over the fact that there’s the wreckage of a Spanish gallion off the coast of Atoria. Guys, we are in the Goonies right now. This is the real Goony’s treasure.
>> It really is. If we find more of this, we might be able to save the Goon Docks.
Let’s go. Come on. I’m in now. We’re not leaving.
The tide starts rushing back in, making the beach more difficult to search.
We reposition to some higher ground nearby.
Oh, you’re Is this >> Oh my word.
>> Spike.
>> That’s a spike spike from the ship.
>> That’s a ship spike.
>> Yeah, that’s all created.
>> Look at that. Look at the level of incrustation here.
>> It’s been there a long time. And you usually don’t see that level of incrustation up here in these waters.
When marine minerals stick to metal objects in the salty ocean, they slowly build into a rocky compound known as a concretion. That means this spike is old. And the fact that the sea has deposited it in the tide pools near the previously found timbers suggests it’s downright historic. So no question that’s a spike, right?
>> Oh yeah, there’s no question that’s a spike. It’s been it’s been bent in the rack.
>> Just the fact that it’s been bent like that tells you something about the violence. And that’s a lot of force.
That could easily be one of the oldest colonial artifacts found in Oregon.
>> Definitely.
>> This is a piece of a Spanish gallion.
>> Yeah, >> dude.
>> That’s amazing.
>> Right there. We’re going to walk right past it.
>> Just wedged here in these rocks for centuries.
>> Yeah.
>> Wow. You know, people always say to me, I want to go have an adventure, you know, and they think they have to go half a world away to have it.
>> I mean, we’re in Oregon. We’re in the US holding a piece of a Spanish gallion.
>> Amazing.
Amazing.
>> To determine where the pirate ship wrecked, Doug and JB lead me out onto a spit of land that matches the one in the newspaper photo.
>> All right, this is the spot. All right, so we’ve got the Salmon River here.
>> Yeah.
>> And it is literally flowing out into the ocean >> right there. So, let’s look at this photo from 31. Yeah.
>> Here we go.
>> So, right over there, that formation in the top right hand part of the photo is Cascade Head, which is this land mass right here.
>> Then we have the three rocks.
>> I mean, definitely definitely those are those three rocks. No question. And let’s look at where Kulkin’s put that X.
>> Right about >> right here.
>> I mean, like literally right here.
Right. We are standing on this X. Mhm.
Yeah.
>> So, at high tide, I assume all this is underwater.
>> That’s right.
>> So, you could easily imagine a ship running around here on this sand.
>> Yeah, you bet.
>> So, if I’m trying to get my treasure off this ship, >> where am I taking it?
>> High ground, >> right?
>> Right over here.
>> Definitely above the high tide mark.
Maybe up in those dunes.
>> Yeah.
>> Back by those trees.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. What do you think? Should we get rich?
>> Let’s do it.
>> Let’s do it.
The hit turns out to be more scrap metal, but soon we get to sink our teeth into something significant.
I got a hit.
A strong clear hit right there. Let’s see what that is. All right.
Okay. Hold on.
Something here.
>> Can you feel it? Just be careful of this log. I don’t want this to roll. You feel it?
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. What is it?
>> Feels flat.
>> If this log rolls, we’re all going to be flat.
>> Sorry. Got it.
>> That’s >> a nail.
>> That is a very old nail.
>> It’s an old square head nail.
>> Look at that.
>> That’s incredible. That’s almost like a spike.
>> Yeah.
>> So, where there’s nails, there’s chests.
>> Where there’s chest, there’s balloons.
>> So, let’s keep looking around here. See if there’s anything else.
>> That’s a great start.
The nail is an encouraging discovery.
So, we return to the detectors. Even though the sun may be setting, I’m not ready to say good night to this adventure.
It’s got to be something out here.
Now, that is a good hit.
It’s pretty deep.
There he is.
OH, GUYS, COME HERE. HEY, COME HERE.
COME HERE. Oh my word.
It’s not aluminum.
Look at this.
Look at this. Look.
>> Oh, >> is that a coin?
>> What is that?
>> I don’t know what it is.
>> Oh, it’s broken.
>> Broken.
>> What are you?
Is there writing on it?
Oh, look at that. There’s like a tip on it. Oh, there’s a figure on it.
>> Whoa.
>> These look like pins. Like maybe it’s set in something, >> right? Yes. It’s like It’s like a pendant, right?
>> It definitely looks pretty old.
>> Oh, there’s writing on it.
>> Look at that.
>> S M D >> and then P I L A R >> P R.
>> Look at that. Is that Is that two two figures? Somebody with a with a with a crown it looks like on >> someone.
And then someone down below.
>> Yes. Someone down there.
>> This is an image, I think, of the Virgin Mary, >> I believe. So, yeah. And Par is associated, I believe, with Spain.
>> That’s right. Yeah.
>> Our Lady of the Pillar is one name for the Virgin Mary, who is said to have miraculously appeared to the Apostle James on a pillar in what is now Spain.
From then on, she became the patroness of Spain and protector of all Hispanic people. If a Spanish ship did come this way, this talisman could easily have been aboard. So this is not only a Christian Catholic pendant, >> but this par means that it is associated with Spain in particular.
>> Exactly.
>> Yeah. I mean, did this come here on a Spanish ship?
>> And I would definitely call that treasure >> for sure.
>> And lots of people traveling by ship would carry things like that. Ship would be full of things like that.
>> I mean, think about this. We’re in this area where these skeletons were found where there is this story, this long-standing story that pirates or Spaniards were here. And this is a Spanish medal >> right within the space that we said is where the X marks the spot.
>> X marks the spot.
>> That is beautiful.
>> Yeah, >> guys, I think we just saved the >> Goon docks, >> right?
>> Oh, like it’s the end of the movie. The sun is setting. We’re here on the beach.
You guys are going to come live with me now. I’m going to take care of you cuz I love you.
>> What am I sloth? You are.
>> Well, you know, guys, I just I’m just saying. Just saying. This is I feel very emotional right now.
>> Yeah.
>> I wonder what else is down here.
>> Well, we’re not leaving. We’re not leaving. Don’t worry. All right, back to it. Let’s search this whole area. Who knows? There could be a bag of treasure right beneath this.
>> Exactly.
>> Unbelievable, guys. Yeah. Nice work.
Excellent. Fantastic.