Sunday, October 19, 2003

By Dan Leeth

APACHE JUNCTION, Ariz. -- One thing became painfully clear to me at age 9. Old prospectors probably didn't wear cowboy boots.

Decades ago, my father met a mining maven named Scotty, who offered to lead us into Arizona's Superstition Mountains, the range of cliffs and crags that rise like stone galleons from the desert, 35 miles east of Phoenix. It was my first-ever hike, and I insisted on wearing Roy Rogers footwear. I soon became a tenderfoot with tender feet.

	If you go: Arizona's Superstition Mountains

Scotty led us up a cactus-carpeted canyon. Three blisters later, we stopped at a shallow cave. Countless fires built in its confines had turned the ceiling black.

"Do you think the Dutchman camped here?" I naively asked as Dad patched my tuckered toes.

"Why, sure!" Scotty exclaimed. "Heck, today we might even solve the mystery of his missing mine."

In a West riddled with tales of vanished treasures, the whereabouts of the Lost Dutchman Mine remains its most celebrated enigma. The story stars Jacob Waltz, a real prospector who immigrated to the United States about 1839. He joined the California Gold Rush and, failing there, wandered into the Arizona Territory. Sometime, probably in the 1870s, Waltz claimed he had discovered an 18-inch-wide vein of gold in the Superstitions. On his deathbed, the man attempted to disclose its whereabouts, but all he ended up bequeathing were 48 pounds of nuggets and tantalizingly vague directions.

Although my sore soles, no doubt, dashed my striking the mine on that first hike, I have never given up trying to find the Dutchman's digs. If failure foiled dreamers, we wouldn't have lotteries.

Looking for legends

Today I make another search, this time accompanied by my wife. Serious "Dutch Hunters" lug picks, shovels, panning pans, magnetometers and other burdensome tools. We carry only water and two peanut butter sandwiches. Ours is a quest for legends.

Since starting early in the day is must for any Arizona expedition, we head for the trail as soon as Starbucks opens. The Superstitions are now a Forest Service wilderness area, and we park at the Peralta Trailhead near its edge. After greeting a volunteer ranger, we set our sights on Fremont Saddle, a bit over two hiking miles away.

According to the legends, supposedly using a stone map hidden in a church basement, Don Miguel Peralta traveled north from Mexico and opened mines from which he unearthed gold in unbelievable quantities. His last foray, a procession of 400 mounted men and 200 pack mules, came about 1848.

Unfortunately for their life insurance carriers, Don Miguel's return route passed through a narrow, twisted canyon where Apache braves waited. The Indians slaughtered the entire party and covered the mines. But there was one whose location was so remote and difficult to reach, even they didn't bother. Some suggest that was the source of the Dutchman's gold.

We head up a trail resonating with sound. Mourning doves coo plaintive dirges. Canyon wrens flute descending scales. Other birds offer choruses of hoots, hooos, caws, chirps, squawks, squeaks, warbles and whistles. Insects accompany them with busy buzzing, and our ground-thumping boots add percussion.

Leaves curtain this linear concert hall with more shades of green than a Sherwin-Williams swatch book. The morning air feels cool and offers an olfactory bouquet of wildflowers, trail dust and horse puckies. A posse of cowboys rides ahead.

Cliffs of volcanic dacite line the canyon. Shallow holes pockmark the stony surface. I share with my gullible wife the tales that Dick Linge, a guide from the Dons of Arizona, told me a few years ago.

"Those holes are caused by rock peckers. Tough Arizona bird. Think of them as the Arnold Schwarzeneggers of the woodpecker family."

The Dons, who take their name from the Spanish title of distinction, may be facetious bird experts, but when it comes to preserving the Dutchman's legend, they do a fine job. Every spring, they organize a one-day extravaganza near here. During daylight hours, members lead hikes, serve food and provide entertainment. Evening brings their famous Legendrama, a less-than-serious play that spins the tale of the Dutchman.

Jacob Waltz hailed from Germany. The Dutchman nickname either came from "Deutsche," the German word for German, or his contemporaries bore a worse sense of geography than today's sixth-graders.

Waltz and his partner, Jacob Weiser, drifted into a small Mexican town, according to legend. When a poker fight erupted, Waltz protected one man's life. In gratitude, the saved senor, a Peralta relative, gave the partners a map and rights to the family's Arizona diggings. Waltz became sole owner some time later, when he found his buddy Weiser spread-eagled over a campfire.

Treasures of nature

Our shady canyon narrows as we move onward. Its luxuriant growth comes courtesy of a trickling stream, which we easily cross near a plunge pool. In less crowded days, it might have made an inviting bathtub for a skinny-dipping Dutchman. But not today.

Earlier risers than us have already reached their goal and are now descending in droves. Some, looking gray and grandparently, may have already exceeded the geezerly Dutchman in both years and health.

The man who bragged about owning the world's richest mine lived his final years raising chickens from his adobe shack along the Salt River south of Phoenix. When the stream flooded in 1891, Waltz sheltered in a tree. The 81-year-old Dutchman contracted a lingering case of pneumonia from the incident. He spent his final months in the care of Julia Thomas, a German-speaking divorcee. On his deathbed, he tried to disclose the location of his masked mine, but those in attendance were too tanked to take notes.

Our trail leaves the canyon bottom, and we start switchbacking into the morning light, which glints off cholia and saguaro needles. Wildflowers and cactus blossoms dollop the rocky hillsides with color. Century plants stalk upward in their one shot at reproduction before death.

As we approach, quail yip and take flight. Like the Wright brothers, they barely clear the ground before touching down again. Two buzzards glide on overhead thermals. Perhaps they hope we will become carrion kibbles, but we disappoint them. Fremont Saddle looms just ahead.

The cowboys stand atop the pass that separates Peralta Canyon from the sweeping vista beyond. They gaze in contemplative silence while their hobbled horses browse nearby.

"Anything that hauls our fat behinds up here deserves a break," says one of the riders.

We plop our own chubby cheeks on rocks and stare out at a topographic jumble of peaks, bluffs, mesas and drainages. Weavers Needle, a thousand-foot-high stone thumb, dominates the naked landscape.

The hunt continues

Waltz claimed his mine lay within sight of Weavers Needle, off a gulch in a canyon running north and south like the ones we see ahead. If you pass three red hills, he said, you have gone too far. Then he bragged that in this tumbled land where even a lizard could get lost, you could walk within 10 feet of his mine and never see it.

Undeterred, many have tried to find it. For more than a century, a motley assortment of searchers have spent lifetimes tracking the vein in vain. Too many found those lives foreshortened by accidents or bullets.

"Does a mine really exist?" my wife asks.

Waltz's contemporaries certainly thought so. The people who knew the Dutchman best became the first to search for his treasure. Documentary evidence suggests the man used gold nuggets to pay debts, and he did have the box of ore at his death. On the other hand, tax records show Waltz possessed only $250 in personal property, and he owned only a quarter section of land south of Phoenix.

Local experts express divergent opinions as to whether the Dutchman's gold still lies somewhere beyond our feet.

"I believe there is a lost Dutchman Mine," says Mike Smith of Pro-Mack South, a modern prospecting supply store. "All the old maps show Superstition mineral sites way before the Dutchman story ever came out."

Luis Ruiz of the Bluebird Mine and Snack Bar disagrees. He thinks the Dutchman's nuggets came from Goldfield, a mining camp north of Apache Junction, which operated from 1892 to 1950.

"No gold's ever been found out there in the Superstitions in the last 110 years," he says. "If the place was rich, it wouldn't be a wilderness."

Longtime Dutch Hunter and novelist Ron Goldman, owner of the Goldfield Livery, offers yet a different opinion. He speculates the Dutchman's mine may already have been found and quietly cleaned out.

"I think it was totally gutted in the '20s," Goldman says. "Think about it. If you found the mine and staked a claim, foes would come right to you. Your best bet would be to keep your mouth shut."

History many never reveal the truth of the Dutchman's claim, which is fine by me. The lingering mystery offers an excuse to keep coming back. Tomorrow we will tread a different trail in yet another stunning and futile search for the lost lode.

Meanwhile, I look forward to returning to the car. I'm dying to shed these blasted boots.

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