Chicomoztoc

By Mike Nelson

The members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as the Mormons, were driven out of the Midwest in the early beginnings of their Church because of religious persecution. They traveled through a thousand miles of wilderness to settle the harsh, basically unwanted Salt Lake Basin in Utah, in hopes of being left alone to worship as they pleased.

The Ute Indians, on the other hand, had all but been driven into extinction by the white man's thirst for new arable lands. The reservation that had been set aside for the Ute and Ouray Indians on the southern slope of the Uinta Mountain Range, like other so-called Indian lands, was deemed by some to be worthless.

Legend and folklore tell the tale of a goldmine, known as the Lost Rhoades Mine that was rumored to be located somewhere in the rugged Uinta Mountains. Those rumors have it that when the leader of the fledgling Mormon Church, Brigham Young, found out that there was gold on Indian lands in the Uinta Mountains he entered into a pact of secrecy with Chief Wakara, of the Ute Indian Tribe. That pact was designed to help finance the struggling Church and protect both of their societies from an influx of miners who would basically destroy both of their fragile societies.

Many have searched the Uintas over the following decades looking for the mine but none were successful.

Now nearly 200 years after the establishment of the Church, a fly fisherman finds a golden artifact in a wild Uinta stream that could bring back the lust for gold. The problem is, there is much more hidden away in those mountains than a mere gold mine.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0GKYMLTKT
• ISBN13: 9798274697354
• Release Date: January 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 252 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"