A Mine At Arizona's Rugged Superstition Mountains That Is Believed To Contain The Richest Deposits Of Gold In America
The Superstition Mountains in Arizona cover 250 square-miles of desolate, rugged terrain and according to historians, somewhere in these mountains lie the richest deposits of gold in America - the Lost Dutchmen’s Gold Mine. The exact location of the Lost Dutchman Mine - supposedly discovered by a German prospector named Jacob Waltz in 1876.-remains a mystery. Today, the lost gold would be worth more than $200 million dollars.
For the last 150 years, people have risked their lives to go in search of Arizona’s lost gold, silver and other buried treasures. As recent as January 2011, the Arizona Republic reported more remains found in the Superstition Mountains, suspected to be three Utah friends who disappeared the previous July while searching for the riches of the fabled Lost Dutchman Mine.
“These sites exist in some of the most rugged, dangerous wilderness areas of the U.S. Forest Service,” said George E. Johnston, president emeritus of the Superstition Mountain Museum. “It’s hard to separate the legend and the lore from the lies,” he said. “But there’s enough to it to encourage people to go after that gold. For almost 120 years now, they’ve been looking for it.” The lure, he said, continues to draw treasure hunters from all over the world to the Superstitions.
According to historian Tom Kollenborn, the Superstition Mountains outside of Apache Junction, and an hour from downtown Phoenix, were and still are an unlikely place to strike it rich.
“Jacob Waltz was a student of mining and he knew what he was doing. The old timers were very, very astute to the fact of geology. They knew what they were looking for. If you’re going to go out in these mountains anywhere and look for gold, you really want to go places where it has been found. Superstitions would be an exception. You wouldn’t go in there.”
But Waltz prospected in those rugged mountains and apparently he was rewarded. When Waltz was 80 years old, he decided to hide his mine to protect it. He dug a hole six feet deep at its entrance. He then laid in two rows of logs and topped them with dirt and stones. Waltz, who was nicknamed “The Dutchman”, bragged that you could drive a pack train over the entrance to the mine and never know it was there.
Several months after Waltz closed up the mine, he contracted pneumonia and was taken to the home of his friend, Julia Thomas. According to Johnston, it was on his deathbed that Waltz revealed he had gold from the mine stashed under his bed. “ He said, that’s what I’ve been living on all these years,” Kollenborn recalled. “ They took out the box, they opened it had about $8,000 in it which was a lot in those days. He told them that there was enough to make millionaires out of 20 men.”
As his end drew near, The Dutchman gave Thomas and a local miner, Rhinehart Petrasch, clues to the mine’s location. But Waltz died before he could give them a map that showed exactly where the mine lay. According to Johnston, the only directions Thomas and Petrasch had when they ventured into the mountains were the verbal clues Waltz had given them on his death bed
“He told them that ‘the setting sun shines into the entrance to my mind and glitters on the gold, so it must have faced to the west. He directed them to take the first gorge on the south side from the west end of the range and they would be able to see Weaver’s Needle to the south, from above his mine.”
Thomas and Petrasch were so anxious to get in the mountains, they actually went in mid-summer when the desert was over 100 degrees. They never found it. Thomas gave up and went home, but Petrasch killed himself in despair.
When Jacob Waltz died, he left a trunk of ore, a list of clues, and a legend of lost treasure which has captured the dreams of three generations. There are still 30 active mines in the Apache Junction area and a ghost town offering mine tours. The Superstition Mountains have been reclassified as a federally owned wilderness area, but this doesn’t prevent modern prospectors from still searching for the Lost Dutchman Gold Mine.
Candice Reed
A graduate of Kelsey-Jenny College in Communications as well as a certified grant writer, Candice has written for The Los Angeles Times & The New York Times. She loves entertaining and all things French.
Make Sure To Stay At:
Lost Dutchman State Park, located in the Sonoran Desert, 40 miles east of Phoenix. Offering a variety of hiking trails, nature trails, picnic facilities, 134 campsites, a dump station, restrooms, showers, and group use areas.