People had long searched for lands of great riches, and as early as the 16th Century explorers were in Texas, drawn by Indian reports of the Seven Cities of Gold, which were never found but helped create enduring legends of wealth. In Montague County, however, parts of U.S. Highway 81 and adjacent U.S. Highway 287 were literally paved with gold. In 1936, while the Texas Highway Department was paving the two highways, sand for the concrete was taken from a nearby pit opened three years earlier. When the grains glistened strongly during mixing, samples were sent to a Fort Worth laboratory, which reported that the sand contained gold. The pit's owner then searched unsuccessfully for a mother lode, but assays of his extensive soundings yielded no more than 54 cents per ton of ore, and the gold was deeply embedded in the sand rather than free. He resumed ordinary sand production, yet the pit eventually yielded $250,000 in gold as part of the sand itself. It was estimated that as much as $31,000 of that gold was spread along 39 miles of roadway, with about $25,000 in U.S. Highway 81 and $6,000 in U.S. Highway 287, while the rest went into other regional construction, including many concrete buildings.