Rumors circulated through Frederick County in September 1922 that Frederick County had a gold cache worth $20,000 (about $365,000 in today’s dollars), and it was hidden in Boyer’s Mill.

“The story had spread that John Kelly, Sandy Spring bandit and murderer, now serving a term of life imprisonment for his connection with the crime, had told a convict that the Sandy Spring bandits had hidden $20,000 of the money in the walls of Boyer's Mill,” The Frederick News reported. “The tale spread like wildfire about the countryside and on Sunday morning a gang of six men started picking at the mill walls.”

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