History & local legend
On June 17, 1948, United Airlines Flight 624 crashed near the Mid Valley Colliery outside Wilburton and Aristes in Columbia County. All thirty-nine passengers and four crew members died. The Douglas DC-6 had been approaching the New York area when its crew responded to a suspected cargo fire and began an emergency descent. Among the passengers were Broadway producer Earl Carroll and actress Beryl Wallace.
A treasure story later attached itself to the disaster. In versions circulated among treasure hunters, the crew threw baggage from the descending aircraft, including a leather mailbag said to contain $200,000. The missing bag supposedly remained somewhere along the plane's final approach.
A discussion on TreasureNet in 2007 and 2008 shows how differently the story was remembered: one participant said the money had been recovered, while another recalled reading that the bag was never found. The lost fortune belongs to those later retellings, rather than to the established account of the crash.
Sources
- Civil Aeronautics Board, investigation SA-172, collision site, crew, passengers and June 17, 1948 crash
- Associated Press, June 18, 1948, Big Spring Daily Herald, wallet and $1,024 cash reported by searchers
- TreasureNet, firsthand community discussion of this specific DC-6 and family recollection, lost-mailbag version in circulation since at least 2007
- Valley Girl Views, compilation of 1948 regional coverage, Mid-Valley Colliery, recovered mail and postal slips
- Centralia PA, township and accident-site context
- Virtual Globetrotting, Wilburton crash area, coordinate reference
