On The Trail Of The Lost Dutchman Mine
Poking around the mythic, gold-filled mountains north of Phoenix.
Moving from near-future megapolis of Tokyo to the untamed deserts of Arizona has been a sensory shock to the system. My family turned the page and entered not only a new chapter, but a whole new book of our story. In fact, aside from the occasional posh coffee shop or luxury shopping mall, there is very little overlap between the two places. It’s a difference we have embraced in all its richness.
To jump from the Blade Runner Far East, to the Gold Fever of the Wild West.
To acclimate ourselves and get grounded in our new reality, we’ve turned to nature. Trekking out into the wilds of the desert for weekend hikes in the Sonoran wilderness and floats down the Salt River.
A couple of weekends ago, we checked out the Superstition Mountains for the first time. An area steeped in lore, spanning vast eras of history. The Superstitions are a meaningful place for Native American culture. The Spanish Conquistadors once raided this land. The Jesuits opened mines and hunted for gold. The American pioneers followed the gold rush and often caught a terminal case of gold fever. The history of the mountains is one obscured by legends, curses, massacres, demons, including the potential gates of hell and most famously a lost gold mine.
A simple Google search will reveal that the Lost Dutchman Gold Mine is one of the world’s most valuable treasures. However, despite clues handed down from generation to generation, and a handful of treasure maps, the ultimate prize has never been discovered. So you’re telling me there’s a chance?
In the mid 1850’s, legend tells of an ambitious German miner named Jacob Waltz. He supposedly discovered a gold rich deposit, deep within the Superstition Mountains, and was able to recover a massive fortune in nuggets and solid gold ore over a period of time. He kept the location secret, only revealing a handful of riddles on his deathbed to his caretaker. There are accounts of several men having been killed by Waltz, possibly to keep the location secret. After his passing, his caretaker took to the hills to trace the cryptic clues issued by the dying man. The caretaker came away empty-handed, and the legend gained traction, scale and furor from there.
In the ensuing decades, more clues emerged, including various treasure maps brought forth by parties with connection to the land. One family, the Peraltas, used to run a series of mines in the mountains, and claimed that the Dutchman’s mine, was in fact an old family mine, for which they knew the exact location. Despite these confident claims, year after year, no treasure was extracted from the mountains.
At the turn of the century, a massive earthquake rocked the exact location of the lost mine, severely altering the landscape and bringing down many iconic rocks that traced out the locations along the treasure maps. Still, the hunt remained. Darkly, over the years, like demonic clockwork, hundreds of lives were lost attempting to track down the location of the lost mine. Some believe the gold was protected by an Apache curse that brought doom upon anyone looking to claim the gold for their own profit. Others attribute the deaths to a frenzy of human behavior, in an isolated area that attracts the obsessive and unbalanced, with loads of weapons and ammunition. It’s a remote and vast area that’s tough for law enforcement to patrol. It’s easy for unsavory characters to make camp in the wilderness and look for trouble. This could be the sad reality of the famous curse.
A few years ago, an entertaining series on the History Channel followed a group of five modern treasure hunters as they looked to pick up the trail of the lost mine with a newly discovered map. The series followed their efforts talking with local experts, being tracked through the desert in the dark, being shot at, having clues unravel, rattlesnake encounters and the revealing of fresh mysteries. In the end, their efforts were unsuccessful, although they did find a historical artifact left from the Jesuit miners in a cave centuries ago.
The walls of the surrounding canyons are filled with very obvious treasure in plain sight: Indigenous petroglyphs. Scattered across the rock walls are picture stories of beasts and hunts and cosmic events. It’s like walking through a centuries old museum. You can run your hands across the coarse marks of history and have your mind fill in what life must have been like back then. It’s an overwhelming sensation to think of the generations of people who walked in this same place, and how it has remained largely unchanged since that time.
After taking our brief hike through a small portion of the Superstition Mountains, it became clear how unfindable a centuries old treasure would be here. It would take decades to literally overturn every stone that could possibly be covering a mine. Not to mention the decades of transformation that the climate and course of time has wreaked on the area. The world’s most famous mine is supremely undiscoverable. A needle lost in a series of haystacks.
Just months ago, we were surrounded by only man made structures in Tokyo. There was no hint of nature in our daily lives. Everything was considered, manufactured and tamed into modern submission. In the Arizona desert, within these Superstition Mountains you are surrounded by the absence of man. Nature has grown wild and untouched. You couldn’t tame this harsh environment if you wanted to. It’s just too vast and rugged.
We will continue our weekend treks. Sometimes to the Superstitions. Turning over a few rocks, just in case. Following the glitter in the stones scattered along the trail and taking a closer look, just in case. But mostly we will be content with the break from modern life and the chance to commune with forgotten areas and distinctive landscapes.
Andrew “Oyl” Miller is an advertising Creative Director and Copywriter. He spent 15 years working at Wieden+Kennedy on brands like Nike, PlayStation and IKEA. You can check out his work on his website.