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	Juan Ponce de Leon, circa 1513

Dr. Drucilla Grant, head of Georgia Tech's Archaeology Department, says that the massive search looks to be wraping up soon. According to Dr. Grant, recent discoveries at an excavation on Tech's campus point to the proximity of Ponce De Leon's treasure.

The History of Ponce's Gold
The search for the lost treasure of Juan Ponce de Leon, locally known as "Ponce's Gold", began in 1995 with the discovery of Ponce De Leon's diary in Cartegano, Puerto Rico. The diary, believed by historians to be authentic, describes Ponce's first trip to Florida in 1513. According to the diary, and contrary to current theory, Ponce landed not in St. Augustine, FL, but instead sailed North, eventually beaching his three ships near modern day Savannah, Georgia. The diary also describes, in never before available detail, the ships' manifests, which included an estimated two tons of gold doubloons.

According to the diary, Ponce then drove inward, stopping at modern day Athens, GA. In an entry dated April 1, 1513, he writes:

"Friday: Found what looked like a suitable place to store the riches that burdens us so... an open field, the size of four ships end to end, surrounded on the sides by hedges. It seemed perfect, but the awful odor of the site forced us to flee much westward."

Most historians believe that Ponce de Leon then circled back to the coast and set sail for St. Augustine. Dr. Grant rejects that theory, based on evidence she found on her arrival at Georgia Tech in 1995.

Georgia Tech Gets Involved
"When I moved to Atlanta, finding Ponce's Gold was the last thing on my mind," says Dr. Grant, "but when I found out that there was a Ponce de Leon Avenue running through midtown, I knew I was on to something. Certainly the street had to be named by Native Americans that must have met Ponce de Leon himself."

Dr. Grant then began a massive campaign to search for the treasure somewhere in the Atlanta area. The first phase, dubbed OLYMPICS (Obsessively Looking for, You know, Most of Ponce's gold. It's Close, Surely) lasted into the Summer of 1996. "We thought we were very close in 96," relates Dr. Grant, "We were digging downtown and were beginning to attract a lot of attention. We even had to build a huge set of stands to accommodate the thousands of people coming from around the world to watch us dig. Though that site turned out to be fruitless, we were happy that the city decided to turn the stands into a nice baseball stadium."

As it turns out, most of the new construction projects in the Atlanta area popularly attributed to civic progress are actually the result of the massive search for gold. The fact that the Atlanta population hasn't caught on comes as a surprise to Alan Arrowhead, State Transportation Secretary. An astonished Arrowhead told Routers, "People still believe that we have been digging up Techwood Drive for two years to fix the sewer. I mean, come on, sewer work doesn't take that long... we were obviously searching for the gold. And the Georgia State dorms that sank? We had dug a huge hole in search for the treasure and when it wasn't there, the displaced dirt wasn't properly filled back in. You'd have thought we'd have learned from that one, but it happened again at the State Street parking deck."

The massive effort to find the gold hasn't come without a heavy price, though. In recent years Georgia Tech has had to tighten it's financial belt to finance the explorations, going so far as initiating a plan to put parking meters in front of every available parking spot. And starting this Summer, Tech will leverage a captive labor pool by requiring all incoming freshmen to participate in excavations. In return for their help they will receive a free shovel and a commemorative "I Dig Tech" T-shirt.

Recent Breakthroughs
Though the search is soon to enter its eighth year, recent discoveries by Dr. Grant and her team lead them to believe its end is near.

	Recent images from the excavation site at the corner of North Avenue and Techwood Drive, where extensive earth-moving has been the archaeological modus operandi since the inception of the dig at this site.

Grant relates, "Ponce wrote that to find the burial place, one had to build a tall spiked pole, surround it by water, and wait for the sun during winter solstice to cast a shadow in the direction of the site. Though we actually built a bell tower, it still worked and pointed in the direction of North Avenue."

"Since that discovery, we've been focusing excavation mainly on the football stadium, in which our archeological teams have removed about 5 feet of soil so far. Our progress has been slow, but steady."

Grant marvels at the support she's gotten from the local community, saying of the workers at the site, "Our work force has just been fantastic. When we first began to dig in the stream that runs below the stadium, most of our volunteers were retired Tech alumni and local area elderly. As we've gone along, it seems that we're atracting a younger and younger crowd to help out. Every day at the site the volunteers seem more refreshed and full of vigor. They must sense that we're getting close to finding the gold, I guess."