A Closer Look at an Emperor Norton Treasure Hunt Medallion
From time to time, we’ve mentioned the San Francisco Chronicle’s famous — and infamous — Emperor Norton Treasure Hunts.
Under its irrepressible editor, Scott Newhall — who envisioned himself as a journalistic reincarnation of P.T. Barnum — the Chronicle produced these large-scale urban treasure hunts from 1953 to 1962.
For each hunt, a 7-inch medallion in a wooden box was buried underground. Clues to the medallion’s whereabouts were published in the paper. And, the clever Sherlock who discovered and dug up the medallion was entitled to present it at the Chronicle’s offices in exchange for a cash prize of anywhere from one thousand to three thousand silver dollars, depending on the year.
A treasure hunt was produced in San Francisco every year. In the early years, 1953 to 1957, there also was an East Bay hunt. And, in a couple of those early years, there were three hunts, with either the North Bay or the Peninsula hosting.
As to the medallions themselves…
The buried medallion in the very first treasure hunt — held in San Francisco in May 1953 — was bronze. But, in every hunt after that, the live-action “contest medallion” was plastic — so as to make it impervious to metal detectors and put all competitors on a level playing field, armed with nothing but shovels, spades and their native smarts.
The winner, or winners, of the second and following treasure hunts were presented with a keepsake bronze version of the medallion bearing the inscription that it was “Struck for the Chronicle by Shreve & Company, San Francisco” — Shreve being the legendary San Francisco jeweler that traces its Gold Rush origins to 1852.
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IN MY APRIL 2020 ARTICLE on “artifacts of mid-20th-century ‘Norton culture,’” I took a brief look at the bronze Emperor Norton Treasure Hunt medallion and presented a half-dozen of the many photographs that the San Francisco Chronicle took in association with the treasure hunts — including this one:
San Francisco Chronicle editor Scott Newhall (right) presents the 1959 Emperor Norton Treasure Hunt booty to winners Laverne and Harry Foote. Harry was a San Francisco firefighter. Photograph: Barney Peterson / The Chronicle, 1959. © San Francisco Chronicle
Of the Emperor Norton Treasure Hunt photographs that I’ve seen, all of the photos that feature the medallion are like this one. The medallion is mid field, serving mostly as a prop. And, it’s difficult to get a sense of the real detail, or the true physicality, of the medallion.
Nor have I ever seen any solitary photos of the medallion that would reveal that.
So, I was delighted when Dan Sullivan, a new member of the Emperor Norton Trust Facebook page, shared the following this week from his family’s collection. (Click images to zoom.)
Emperor Norton Treasure Hunt medallion, 1953, front (l) and back. Photographs: Dan Sullivan
A little the worse for wear now, having become separated at some point from its protective wooden box, this is a medallion from one of the original 1953 treasure hunts.
Given that the two hunts that year — one in San Francisco, on in the East Bay — took place within a few weeks of one another, I'm guessing that the medallions were identical, using the same "before midnight June 30, 1953" deadline for "presentation to the Chronicle."
One question…
Is this the very first medallion, i.e., the bronze medallion that was buried in San Francisco in May 1953?
Or is it the keepsake medallion made for the winner of the East Bay hunt a few weeks later?
A clue to the answer to that question might be the “A” inscribed on the back of the medallion. See it?
In 1953, the San Francisco medallion was found by a man named Ashley Hollingsworth, a Menlo Park engineer; he was married to Elizabeth. It was buried at the Palace of Fine Arts.
The medallion in the East Bay was found by George Phillips, a house painter in Hayward; he was married to Janet. The medallion was buried at Tilden Park, in Orinda. The Phillipses split the $1,000 winnings with the families of Thomas Peart and James Slabey. The three families had pooled their effort to sort out the clues.
Dan Sullivan — whose mother died last year — writes:
My parents lived in San Francisco in 1953. I was born there in 1958. My mom had the medallion in an old foot locker with lots of additional San Francisco memories from those days.
None of the names of those originally associated with finding either of the 1953 medallions rings a bell with Dan — and this suggests that Dan’s mother came about the medallion some time later.
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Here’s one last image of the medallion, in different lighting, that shows the artwork and the inscription in even sharper relief (click image to zoom):
Emperor Norton Treasure Hunt medallion, 1953, front. Photograph: Dan Sullivan
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