A documented 19th-century hoax, told as exactly that
In 1856 Dr. John Evans, a government geologist, reported a ten-ton pallasite meteorite lying on a bald mountain above Port Orford, a mass of iron shot through with olive-green crystal that he valued at a fortune. He carried one sample east and died of pneumonia in 1861 before anyone could confirm the find. His sample later proved to be a chip of a Chilean meteorite he had likely picked up in Panama, and magnetometer surveys of the mountain in the 1980s found nothing at all. It is remembered now as one of the great frontier hoaxes, and hopeful hunters still climb the coast range for a rock that was never there.
A bald mountain above Port Orford, tentatively Johnson Mountain (Curry County, OR)
See it on the map
Other places on the map within a couple of hours of here.
