The island and its treasure-coast history are documented
John Singer was the brother of Isaac Singer, whose sewing machine paid for a good deal of the family's early capital. In 1847 John and his wife Johanna were wrecked on Padre Island, stayed, and built a driftwood house on the site of the old Rancho Santa Cruz. By 1851 they had bought the ranch out of the Padre José Nicolás Ballí estate and built a house they called Las Cruces on the old foundations.
They did well. Then the war came, they were known Union sympathisers on a barrier island next to the strategically vital Brazos Santiago Pass, and in 1861 they were ordered off. Before leaving they buried what they had, reported at around sixty two thousand dollars in coin and jewellery, and marked it against landmarks around the ranch.
They came back in 1865 to a house destroyed by soldiers and a hurricane, and to dunes that had walked. Every landmark was gone. Singer searched for years and never found it.
The island has a second and much better documented treasure story underneath that one. On 29 April 1554 three ships of a Spanish plate fleet, carrying something like ninety one thousand pounds of silver and gold, wrecked on this coast in a storm, with heavy loss of life among roughly three hundred people aboard.
And here is the rule that matters. When a salvage company began working the 1554 wrecks without a permit in 1967, the resulting litigation produced the ANTIQUITIES CODE OF TEXAS, which bans treasure salvage in Texas waters outright. Most of the island is Padre Island National Seashore, federal land, where digging and removing artefacts is prohibited under federal law as well.
Walk the beach after a storm. Look at what the sand gives up. Leave it exactly where it lies and report anything significant to the rangers.
This is remote ground. The closest other places on the map are a long way off.
