What it’s like searching for lost treasure in Arizona’s Superstition Mountains.
Several years ago, I found myself on a group backpacking trip in Arizona’s Superstition Mountains. We spent our days hiking this high desert landscape of craggy peaks, saguaro cacti and sagebrush, and perennial blue skies, while at night, we’d gather around the campfire, sharing tall tales, ghost stories, and a local legend or two. One evening, under the stars, someone brought up the Lost Dutchman Mine. It turns out this ear-perking narrative of stashed gold, lives lost, and a seemingly endless treasure hunt got its roots over a century earlier in that same, greater Phoenix desert wilderness where we happened to be. I’ve been thinking about it ever since.
As it turns out, many people consider the Lost Dutchman Mine one of the most famous lost treasures in American history. Over the last several decades, dozens of books, films, and television episodes have been written and made about the subject. While some say the story is pure legend, others believe that the treasure is real. In fact, thousands of people have searched for the Lost Dutchman Mine since the late 19th century, more than 100 people have claimed to have found it, and at least 30 people have died in the process. There are many “Dutch Hunters” still active today.
The Legend of the Lost Dutchman
The story of the Lost Dutchman centers around Jacob Waltz, a German immigrant. Waltz, nicknamed “The Dutchman,” supposedly discovered a rich gold mine developed in the 1840s by a Mexican family called the Peraltas. According to the story, a group of Apache people ambushed the Peraltas as they carried gold back to Mexico, killing all but one or two of them. Those who escaped fled back south, and eventually, the mine was lost.
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Then, in the 1870s, Waltz (through the help of a Peralta descendant) claimed to have found it. Together with a partner, Jacob Weiser, they worked the mine and allegedly hid some of its gold in the Superstition Wilderness—a 160,200-acre expanse that encompasses the aforementioned mountains—before Weiser was mysteriously killed.
Waltz kept the location of the gold mine secret until his dying days, finally revealing its whereabouts to a neighbor, Julia Thomas, in his final hours. After Waltz died, Thomas and two companions set out on the first ever quest for the “Lost Dutchman” treasure. For three weeks, they scoured the Superstitions with little potable water in unbearable heat, ending their search exhausted and unsuccessful. But while their dreams of finding buried treasure didn’t amount to anything, the Lost Dutchman legend was born.
“I am a geologist, and geologically speaking, gold could definitely be in the Superstition Wilderness,” says Sara Toms-Bergquist, a park ranger at the 280-acre Lost Dutchman State Park, located at the base of the Superstition Mountains. “One of the ways that gold is brought to the surface is by volcanism and earthquakes, and this whole mountain range was uplifted due to magma.”
The Dutch Hunters
“Most people picture Dutch Hunters as old guys with a dog and a beat-up pickup,” says Wayne Tuttle, a Phoenix-based electric company supervisor who’s spent well over four decades looking for the Lost Dutchman Mine. “But our list includes some pretty prominent people.”
Bob Corbin, Arizona’s former attorney general and president of the NRA, was a long-time Dutch Hunter, as was U.S. presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and American painter and sculptor Ted DeGrazia. Waltz himself is a member of the Superstition Mountain Historical Society, a Dons of Arizona board member (the Dons are a non-profit devoted to preserving Arizona’s legends and lore), and even starred in both a History Channel TV show and produces a YouTube channel series devoted to the legends of the Superstition Wilderness. His first foray into the region was with his dad and a group of men in the early 1970s.
“I was about 9 or 10 with nothing but a sack lunch and a canteen full of grape Kool-Aid, and I thought to myself, ‘What is this place?’” Later that year, he received a copy of author Curt Gentry’s book, The Killer Mountains: Great Story of the Last Search for the Lost Dutchman Mine, and he’s been conducting his own searches ever since.
As a kid, Toms-Bergquist would also spend days in the Superstitions with her dad, seeking out the Lost Dutchman treasure. It was, she says, a combination of father-daughter time, a true love of the wilderness, and real-life gold hunting. “My dad would claim that he could find it, but we clearly never did.”
The Search
When it comes to how they search, Dutch Hunters run the gamut from those keen on sharing their info to those who remain pretty elusive. The latter, says Toms-Bergquist, tend to come out in the summer months, when the temperatures are soaring, and the area’s not so busy, “because they don’t want people to follow them.” And while there’s never been any concrete evidence of someone finding the Lost Dutchman treasure, “their tales tend to be pretty grandiose.”
Of course, tackling the Superstition Wilderness requires plenty of forethought. Many treasure hunters search in the area of Weaver’s Needle, a 1,000-foot-high column of rock with a shadow that reputedly points to a rich vein of gold. However, Dutch hunting is as much about research as it is the hunt itself. According to Tuttle, “The time you put into planning, going over maps, checking out where you’ve been and where you’re heading, going through existing archives, and unraveling tales is probably about 50 percent of your time.”
You also have to consider the landscape. The Superstition Wilderness is a mix of barren peaks and deep, long canyons that can look quite similar to one another if you’re unfamiliar with them, especially when you’re dealing with excesses of 115 degrees Fahrenheit heat come summer.
“You really have to have a knowledge of the mountains and know what to look for to find your way around,” says Tuttle. Technology doesn’t really work because the rock’s high iron content interferes with it. “Believe me, we thought of this stuff years ago.”
A Quest for Adventure
For many, the never-ending quest tends to be more about the adventure than the treasure itself, since all the gold would belong to the government. That’s because the Superstition Wilderness is USDA Forest Service land.
Tuttle says that when it comes to whether or not the mine exists, the documentation is definitive. “And we know Jacob Waltz was a real person,” he says. “He’s even buried in Phoenix.”
Toms-Bergquist, however, now spends much more of her time talking about the Lost Dutchman treasure than actively looking for it. Still, this doesn’t mean she hasn’t caught herself hoping occasionally.
“Recently, I went hiking with my dog, and he stopped to drink out of a seasonal spring,” she says. “I absentmindedly picked up a clump of rocks from the water and thought, ‘I wonder if there’s any gold in here.’ I mean, I actually said it out loud!”
I found myself contemplating much of the same as we continued our journey through the mountains. After all, with a name like Superstition, magic was undoubtedly in the air. Maybe there was something equally captivating hidden in the wilderness, as well. Something that’s waiting for me to lay claim….
