Arizona's Ghost Gold

Ghost Gold of the Southwest The Legends That Never Died

Deep within the heart of anyone who lives in Arizona, or anyone who has even been to Arizona, or anyone who dreams of coming to Arizona, there lurks a common fear. It is this: "Somebody's going to find the Lost Dutchman Mine before I get to it!" And the person who finds it is going to be rich. Rich beyond his wildest dreams. Or so the story goes. But dreamers and schemers need not fear. There is plenty of gold in Arizona. Enough for everyone. Or so the story goes. For although the legend of the Lost Dutchman Mine is the most popular, there are several other fortunes in gold lying buried beneath the sands of the deserts and the rocks of the mountains. They've been there for centuries, waiting for some lucky prospector. Tales of gold in Arizona have survived continual bombardments of truth, including this broadside by Frank C. Lockwood, a noted Arizona historian: "Fabulous stories of lost mines have always hung mirage-like upon the horizons of Arizona history. These traditions are such stuff as dreams are made of. They are based on fiction, not on fact..."

They survive partially because of rebuttals such as this one by Richard Hinton in his well-accepted Handbook of Arizona. "The Jesuit fathers who built the Tumacacori Mission... amassed great wealth. When the Apaches descended upon them, not one padre escaped to tell the story of its hiding place. Possibly the love of God and Church was shared with that of silver and gold...." And they survive partially because people want to believe in them. The quest for gold in Arizona has origins as far back as 1492, and, if you're thinking that some other major occurrence happened that same year, you're right. And they're intertwined. When Christopher Columbus set out to find the New World, one of his assignments was to keep an eye out for the legendary Antillia, a mysterious island which rose from the sea and whose mists hid the Seven Cities of Cibola. Columbus extolled the virtues of gold in one of his reports as "most excellent; of gold is treasure made; the man who possessed gold does all that he desires in the world, and can even send souls to Paradise." Despite his admiration for the stuff, Columbus never found the golden Antillia. Neither did any of the other explorers commissioned by the King of Spain or Queen Isabella. This did not deter the fortune-seekers, however. They merely moved the legend inland.

In 1508, a supposedly authentic map showed the Seven Cities strung along the eastern coast of North America, from Cuba to Newfoundland. But nobody ever found them. This did not stop the gold-seekers, however. They merely moved the legend west, coupled it with some Indian beliefs, and continued the pursuit. When the Spaniards reached Mexico, they heard stories that suggested that all the Indians of Mexico had preserved a tradition that, at some stage in their history, their ancestors had lived in seven distinct but associated cities beyond the borders of their homelands. The seas lay to the east, west, and south. That meant the Seven Cities had to be to the north, toward the huge desert that today is part of Arizona. The prospect of venturing into the scorching heat of the Sonoran Desert was not very appealing, but the lure of cities where the streets were paved with gold made the decision easy. And besides, their quest would be led by a man of the cloth-Marcos de Niza, a Franciscan friar. De Niza set out from Mexico in 1538, across the Colorado River and into the desert in pursuit of the legend. After traveling almost 800 miles, so the story goes, de Niza sent his black slave, Estévan, ahead with orders to send back a cross "of one span" if he found something important and two spans if hecame across something really big. Four days later, Estévan sent a cross as large as a man and said Cibola, the first of the seven cities, was only 30 days away. A second cross arrived later, and de Niza grew anxious so he began a hurried march and encountered the Opata tribe somewhere along what is now the Mexican-Arizona border. They confirmed the stories and added more. They told him of Marita, Acus, and Totoneac. And of Ahacus, larger and richer than the others.

But then things started going bad. An Indian guide raced into camp bearing the news that Estévan had been killed by the men of Cibola. Terror seized the adventurers, primarily because most of them were simple men who had been recruited by force or promise of gold. Finally, de Niza coerced two of his men to accompany him to the outskirts of Cibola. He immediately claimed the city and the six others in the name of Spain, but prudently noted that “I am not going forward to them, in order that I might report what had been seen and done.” So the Seven Cities had been discovered, but somebody had to conquer them to get at the gold.

Or so the story goes.

The news spurred a flurry of activity. Almost a continent away, Hernando De Soto set out from Florida to claim the riches. But his party, beset with Indian attacks and floundering in uncharted territory, stalled at the Mississippi River, then disbanded when De Soto died there.

Meanwhile, back in Mexico, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado was appointed by the King of Spain to conquer the legend. One of his first recruits was Friar Marcos de Niza. Like the priest had done the first time around, Coronado sent a scout ahead. The scout never got to Cibola, but he said he'd run into some folks who'd been there, and they told him there were indeed seven cities in the area.

But there wasn't any gold.

Finally, the expedition reached the broad valley which de Niza had described as “being filled with gold and populous settlement.” But it turned out that the friar had played a little loose with the truth.

The Spanish conquerers reportedly were speechless when they gazed upon the fabled cities of Mexico years before. And they were probably speechless when they gazed upon Cibola, but for a different reason.

There not only wasn't any gold, but there was no food and no major city like de Niza had described. There were only a few wretched huts.

Instead of another glittering Aztec city, they found a tenement-like cluster of buildings, made not of gold but of stone and adobe. They were looking at a Pueblo Indian village, somewhere along the Zuni River.

One of the conquistadores later summed up when he wrote in his diary: “It is a little, cramped village, looking as if it had been all crumpled up together... When they saw it, such were

Mystery Gold Found

Finding gold in Arizona isn't always a matter of panning, sluicing, digging, or blasting. Sometimes Dame Fortune takes a hand and you end up just tripping over it, as Eddie Barnell did. Out hunting rabbits north of his Winslow home recently, near the historic Beale Wagon Road, Eddie happened to spy the rusted old safe half buried in the sand. Later, checking its contents, it was found to contain eight gold nuggets, the largest about the size of a quarter. Origin of the old safe and its contents are a mystery. Loot from a century old stagecoach holdup? Mebee so. But no one is saying. - Richard G. Stahl Photo: Alan Benoit the curses some hurled at Friar Marcos de Niza that I pray God may protect him from them.

Coronado went on to explore the Great Plains, possibly still believing there was gold out there somewhere, but the legend of the Seven Cities of Cibola, so rich that the women wore armbands of pure gold, had suffered a mortal wound.

But others survive.

There is, for example, about $25,000,000 in pure gold buried in the Guadalupe Mine, a mere league south of the Tumacacori Mission.

Or so the story goes.

In the first half of the 19th century, a prospector came across traces of an old mine operating near the mission south of Tucson. It was all the proof the legend-builders needed. The mission had served, they surmised, not as a place of worship but as a mill and smelter. But where was the mine?

The answer came from the legends.

When the Jesuit priests operating the mission and the mine learned that they were to be exiled back to Spain by edict of the king, they loaded nearly 3,000 burros with silver and gold, carried it to the mine, and buried the en-trance, apparently planning to return for it.

But they never came back.

A similar thing happened at the Purisma Concepción Mine, a mere three leagues away. It holds slabs of virgin silver, and the tunnel to the mine is sealed with iron doors having copper handles.

Both legends are undoubtedly true because they have been certified by an "old Opate Indian named Steve."

Or so the story goes.

The Mine with the Iron Door also holds riches beyond the wildest imagination. It's supposedly located in Cañada de Oro, in the Santa Catalina Mountains. Its buried treasure is gold that was mined to complete the mission at San Xavier del Bac. Padre Juan Bautista Escalante, angry at being expelled from the New World, slammed the door of the mine shut and padlocked the treasure inside, never to be found again.

Or so the story goes.

San Xavier Mission also figures in the tale of a mine called La Esmeralda. When the Pima Indians rebelled against the Spanish in 1723, the padres running the mission feared for the safety of their accumulated wealth, so they hid 120,000 pesos in La Esmeralda. Later, the padres returned to claim their fortune, but at the news of their impending exile, they conceded their right to the money and abandoned the mission. The treasure is still there.

Or so the story goes.

But these are all mere fairy tales when compared to the Legend of the Lost Dutchman Mine.

It has its roots in a little bit of fact and a whole bunch of speculation, fantasy, theory, secret maps, and other forms of fiction.

The mine got its name and history about 1892, when an old prospector named Jacob Waltz died after contract-ing pneumonia. He'd been flooded out of his house in Phoenix and spent two days shivering in a tree.

They called him the Dutchman, but actually he had immigrated from Ger-many in about 1840. In that era, any-one who spoke with a Teutonic accent was called a Dutchman.

Waltz apparently had found a source of gold somewhere in the Superstition Mountains and, until his health failed, made periodic visits to bring out small amounts of gold. Rumor says that many tried to follow him but none succeeded. An outlandish tale, written and promoted by a back East author, says Waltz killed as many as 30 men who tried to find his treasure.

How he came across the mine is not certain, but there are a variety of interesting stories. One is that Waltz and his partner, Jacob Wiser, killed two Mexican miners who were remnants of the Peralta mining party of nearly 20 years earlier, and took over their claim. Then Waltz supposedly murdered his partner to assume full ownership.

The other, a more romantic yarn, is that the partners saved a young Mexican's life during a crooked card game in the Sonoran village of Arizpe. In gratitude, he told them of the mine his forefathers had worked with the Peraltas. He said he'd take them there for half the gold they could mine in a specified time, then turn the mine over to them.

The Mexican said it was the only way; he couldn't mine the land because he wasn't an American citizen. So they did it and found the mine with no trouble. But after their benefactor had departed with his half, Waltz and Wiser hit a string of bad luck, starting when a mule went on a rampage and tore up their camp. Waltz had to leave the claim to get fresh supplies.

In his absence, according to one version, Apache Indians swooped down on the camp, killed Wiser, and scattered the gold to the four winds. When Waltz returned, he panicked, gathered up what gold he could, and lit out for Tucson. But another version says that Wiser wasn't dead, and managed to drag himself to the home of a nearby "ex-Army surgeon" who extended his life for a while. In gratitude, Wiser allegedly drew a map showing the location of the mine, then died.

Waltz eventually settled in Phoenix, where he met Julie Thomas, operator of an ice cream store. She asked him for a loan, he gave it to her, and she cared for him when he became elderly and enfeebled. And as the old prospector told her tales of lay dying, he allegedly told the woman and her errand boy about the mine, then drew a map. When Waltz died, they went searching.

Didn't have much luck, though. An item in the Phoenix Weekly Gazette, in the summer of 1892, sarcastically noted that a Mrs. E. W. Thomas, "formerly of the Thomas ice cream parlors, is now in the Superstition Mountains... She is prospecting for a lost mine, the location to which she believes she holds the key. But somehow, she has failed, after two months work, to locate the bonanza, although aided by two men (her errand boy's brother went along). The story of the mine is founded on the death-bed revelation of the ancient miner, usual in such cases . . ."

Julie Thomas eventually abandoned her search and took up psychic read-ings. But others have persisted.

The end of an era for the Lost Dutchman legend came in April of this year, with the death of George "Brownie" Holmes in Phoenix. Brownie's father Dick had sat by the bedside of a dying German immigrant prospector in Phoenix in 1891 a death watch that was to change the course of more than a few lives. The dying prospector was Jacob Waltz, "the Dutchman." It was to Dick Holmes, and one other, that the Dutchman was said to have revealed the details of his fabulously rich mine in the Superstition Mountains. Neither man was able to find the lost treasure. Then, in 1908, unable to carry on the search, Dick Holmes took his young son, Brownie, to the mountain and familiarized him with the clues to the mine. Brownie continued the search without success throughout his lifetime. Whatever secrets he had about the Lost Dutchman and its fabulous treasure died with Brownie on April 11, the morning of his 88th birthday.

There's a story that Dr. Abraham Thorne was kidnapped by Apaches because they needed a medicine man. He healed their sick, and the grateful Indians took him blindfolded to a place where gold nuggets lay thick upon the ground and told him to take as many as he wanted. Thorne took off his underwear, stuffed it full, and was led blindfolded from the site. He remembered certain landmarks but was never able to find the exact spot.

Or so the story goes.

Another one says that two young ex-soldiers got lost in the Superstitions and stumbled across an old mining claim. They picked up some of the pretty rocks then staggered into a nearby silver mine where they were told that the rocks were almost solid gold. The mine owner outfitted them for a return trip, but neither was ever heard from again, although the body of one was found with a bullet hole in the skull a short time later.

The legendary mine they supposedly found, then lost, dates back to the 1840s, when one Don Miguel Peralta and about 250 of his men came across the gold while exploring a land grant given to the family years earlier by the King of Spain. They took huge deposits of rich ore out of the mine, but as they left for Mexico, the Apaches attacked and killed everyone except Peralta's two sons, who slipped from their horses and hid in a crevice. After the attack, they found their way out of the mountains and allegedly are the progenitors of the "Peralta Stones" and the various maps which still flourish today. But the mine was lost forever because the Apaches filled the entrance with rocks.

There's another Peralta mixed up in the legend, but this one was a general in the Mexican army, and he spelled his name Peralto. The outcome was about the same, though.

With a squad of about 300 men, Gen. Peralto extracted tons of gold-laden ore from the mine and was on the verge of becoming one of the richest men in Mexico. But the Apache leader Geron-imo thwarted that plan. Geronimo, fearing that he would soon be captured, plotted to kill or drive off every Mexican miner, then conceal the mines so that if he was apprehended, he had some bargaining power. He'd reveal the locations of the mines to the hard-pressed U.S. Army in exchange for his release. So he swept down upon Gen. Peralto's mining operation, left no survivors, buried the mine, and eventually was captured. There are tales that he made the offer of gold mines for free-dom, but it was never accepted.

Or so the story goes.

The legends persist.

On Jan. 25, 1980, Phoenix Gazette reporter Bayne Freeland wrote a story about a California treasure hunter who claimed to have found the lost Dutchman Mine by using aerial photography, sophisticated equipment, and the legendary Peralta Stones, which look like a hard-to-decipher map.

The following week, Freeland reported that a New Mexico mining outfit claimed it had also found a gold mine by using the Peralta Stones. But this one was near Albuquerque.

Two weeks later, Freeland reported that another fortune seeker claimed he had found the mine by using the Peralta Stones and a brass dousing rod.

And so the story goes.

And goes....