Every year great numbers of people drive to Malad, hoping to strike it rich playing the Idaho lottery. Dreams of winning Powerball, Lotto America or Mega Millions draw fortune seekers, hoping for the next big jackpot. Since gambling is illegal in Utah, Malad is the closest point for many Utahans to purchase lottery tickets, where they throng when pay-offs accumulate.
Fortune seekers may be interested to learn of a Malad-area mega pay-off just waiting to be found. It’s the setting of the legend of the Iron Door Mine and its huge stash of treasure.

In the late 1800s, Malad was a main shipping point along what was then known as the Gold Road, named after the many shipments of gold shipped through town from the mine fields in Montana to Salt Lake City, UT. Drawn by slow-moving mule or ox teams, stagecoaches were comparably easy to rob and numerous robberies took place in Oneida county. The area’s rugged terrain was the perfect setting for a holdup.

In 1874 the Bank of Corinne, in Corrine Utah was robbed of $70,000 in gold coins. When a posse caught up with the bandits, six were shot and killed, but the gold was never recovered. Over the years many tales have circulated relative to this event.

The legend of the Iron Door Mine seems to have its roots from this robbery, though some accounts insist that a stagecoach robbery or multiple coach robberies provided the loot. Over time, many versions of this popular tale have propagated. The stories are similar, but details often vary widely or contradict each other, so separating fact and fiction is difficult. Following are well-known accounts of the lore of the Iron Door:

THE LEGEND

The low horizon shimmered in the hot mid-day air, and dust devils danced over the valley floor. From their homestead cabin on the western bench of the valley, they could see for miles to the north and to the south. But for some minutes now, their attention had been drawn to the southwest, and they watched with apprehensive interest as a man on horseback approached.

As he came closer they sensed that something was wrong. The horse traveled at a slow pace, and the man nearly collapsed in the saddle. Soon they could see that he was wounded. They hurried to the horse, helped him down and carried the almost unconscious man to their cabin. He had been shot at least twice, and had lost a lot of blood. As they laid him on the bed he began to talk, telling this story:
He was an outlaw having robbed the stage lines, had thrown in with two others, and the three of them had accumulated a lot of stolen gold. They hid their stolen wares in a cave in the mountains south of a town called Samaria.

He said he’d been shot by the other robbers during an argument. However, he had killed the other two, placing their bodies and gold in the cave. Then he sealed it with an iron door, since he was too weak to take the gold with him. Struggling for breath before he died, he gave a poor description of the cave’s location, only able to say that it was near the top of a peak, where the view offered escape from any approaching posse.

ANOTHER VERSION

This version told of stagecoaches operated by Wells Fargo and Ben Holiday traveling from Salt Lake to Montana being robbed as they traveled through the Malad area. About the same time a fire burnt a bank in Salt Lake to the ground and its bank-type vault was all that could be salvaged. Shortly thereafter, three suspicious-looking men showed up in Salt Lake. They bought the door, but finding it unusable, loaded it on a wagon, then headed north. After several holdups and robberies along the way, it was said they got over ten million dollars in gold and silver.

The bandits had a hidden campsite where they somehow installed the door over the mouth of a cave on a solid granite ledge, hiding the gold and silver bars from past robberies inside, somewhere in the mountains near Malad.

This version says the surviving robber, mortally wounded, arrived at a homestead west of Malad. Trying to tell them where the cave was, in his last words, he was only able to say that it was “near the top of a peak of a mountain, where you could only see it from another mountain.”

SIGHTINGS AS THE SEARCH CONTINUES

Some local residents still search for the lost gold. Several accounts of past sightings exist.

In 1891 a 13 year-old boy named Glispy Waldron claimed to have found its site. He described the door as being made from two wagon wheels and a thin sheet of Iron. His description of the area placed the Iron Door at a point similar to the robber’s description. An honest, reputable, and hard-working man, Glipsy’s statement was generally accepted as fact.

In pouring rain, a man named Nels Nelson found the Iron Door. Sure he could find the door again, he left to get his brother and some tools to open the door. But a day later he suddenly took ill, dying before he could return. Based on what Nelson had said, his brother searched for the Iron Door, but eventually gave up.

After discovering the Iron Door a sheep herder tied a sheep to a tree near the door. He left, hoping that its bleating would lead him back to the spot the next day, but the sheep and the door were never found.

Treasure hunters have searched for the great Iron Door. To people who don’t believe, the tale is just something to laugh about, but to the people who really believe, it’s a challenge. The mountain itself is a great mystery, with many shale slides, brushy thickets, caves and other natural obstructions.

One thing is certain; though lots of people have searched, they searched in vain- it is still lost.