Remember earlier articles I wrote about the carvings near Lake Cisco and others in the Cisco area, carvings on rocks (the Battle Creek Map pointed 1200 yards to a ridge that had a capital “F”carved on a rock; capital F's were cut all over the Clyde and Aspermont rocks) that tied in some way with the Clyde Map, the Aspermont Spider Rock Map, and the Rotan Map. Carvings near Cisco soon led me 105 miles up NE of Aspermont. The symbols seemed to reverse and led back to the Cisco and Clyde area. A focal point of information has been Eastland.
Initially, Dave Arnold showed up on the Sembritzki land NE of Clyde in 1902, saying that he was led there by a sheepskin treasure map which called for a treasure buried there. Dr. C. L. Terrell of Haskell financed a dig near Clyde in 1905, but also financed a second dig NE of Aspermont in 1908, near the Forks of the Brazos River, where the so-called Spider Rock Map was dug up. No treasure was found at either site, but copper plates, copper daggers, some Spanish epaulettes, a silver cross, a Spanish sword, and 42 gold buttons were found. An Abilene photographer, Gurney E. Ward, worked at the Clyde site from 1907 to 1911. Both seemed to disappear off of the face of the earth about 1913. Although others dug at both sites over the next 80 years, no more artifacts were discovered, and what was buried at those sites, who buried the map rocks and other items, and the date of these burials remains a mystery today that has not been solved. Two of the most notable searchers at Clyde were Joe Woods of Abilene, and Joe Cauble, later of Snyder. They dug there between 1937 and 1939. I interviewed both of them extensively in the early 1970s.
I also interviewed several eye-witnesses who could remember back to 1902 and 1908. Anne Sembritzki Fuquay was a 16-year-old girl who remembered seeing Dave Arnold and seeing his sheepskin map; she also told me that her father and mother were with him when they dug up the Clyde Map Rock—they had to chop it out of the roots of a big oak tree that had grown over it. I also interviewed Mrs. Epply and her sister Mrs. Whorley, in Haskell, who were 13 and 14 year olds when Dave Arnold stayed with their family while he was digging for the Aspermont Spider Rock Map. I asked, “Do you think it was a hoax?” They said, “No, we think he was honest, but they dug up the plot rock and he couldn't read a foreign thing that was on it.”
