National Park After Dark - The Deadly Hunt for the Lost Dutchman Mine: Tonto National Forest

Episode Date: July 20, 2026

When a dying prospector revealed the secret of a hidden gold mine deep within Arizona's Superstition Mountains, he ignited a mystery that has lured people to their deaths for more than a century. Cryptic maps, mysterious stone carvings, suspicious deaths, and countless expeditions have failed to reveal it’s location. More than 130 years later, the Lost Dutchman Mine remains one of America's greatest treasure hunts. For a full list of our sources, visit npadpodcast.com/episodes For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials: Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdark Support the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page! Thank you to this week’s partners! Blueland: Reduce single-use plastic at home with Blueland's innovative household cleaning products. Get 15% off your first order at Blueland | Eco-Friendly Cleaning Products | Blueland . Smalls: Give your cat protein-packed, fresh food made with human-grade ingredients delivered right to your door. Get 60% off your first order, plus free shipping, at Fresh Human-Grade Cat Food Delivery | Smalls . Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you think wild adventures in search of lost treasure are something reserved for children's books or in the distant past, think again. Discovering a hidden stash of gold and precious gems is very much a modern day possibility. And there's lots of treasure hunters willing to risk their lives to track them down and claim them. Take, for instance, the fen treasure. Back in 2010, the Santa Fe author and artist Forrest Fenn stashed over $5 million worth of, of gold, jewelry, and valuable artifacts somewhere deep in the Rocky Mountains. All he left behind to find it was a cryptic poem he published in his memoir, The Thrill of The Chase. Five people died in pursuit of the treasure, but eventually, 10 years later in

2020, a medical student found it in Yellowstone National Park. But there's plenty of other treasures that still to this day have yet to be found. During the early 1800s, Thomas J. Beale, found a mine full of gold and silver near Santa Fe. He and a bunch of other guys loaded it up and took it to Virginia, where they buried it all. Beale then created three encoded ciphers explaining how to find the treasure. Only one of those encoded letters has been broken, the one that used the Declaration of Independence for its cipher key.

The other two ciphers are still unbroken even now, and that means the treasure is still buried out there somewhere. Another still undiscovered treasure known as the old Spanish treasure cave reportedly holds heaps of gold that Spanish conquistadors stashed somewhere in Arkansas as they flood from Native American fighters. Not to mention the pirate blackbeard's buried treasure that he never trusted anyone enough to divulge the location of. Treasure hunters have scoured the Atlantic coast from Virginia's Chesapeake Bay all the way to the islands of the Caribbean to the pirate's booty, but to no avail. Treasure hunters have become obsessed with finding hidden troves of wealth, and some end up dying in pursuit. One lost treasure that's taken over 30 lives is the lost Dutchman mine in the Supercision Mountains outside of Phoenix. It's been 135 years since a German prospector left behind a sketchy map to a mine deep in the Suaro Desert, promising hundreds of millions of dollars of gold.

Ever since then, people have searched those hills for the mine. They've starved to death, gotten shot, beheaded, massacred. But still, the lost Dutchman's mine has never been found. Welcome to National Park After Dark. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to National Park After Dark. My name is Danielle. And I'm Cassie. And I'm so excited.

I'm so excited. So excited. I have goosebumps and it's just so timely. It's something about the summer that gets me in the mood of trying to find treasure hunting. Treasure. Yeah, treasure. And I was just looking up Maine once because, especially along the coast. And there's quite a few. Really? A few. Yes. Are you going to go out this summer and treasure hunt? I kind of want to. I kind of should. You should come back from out West. We have things to do. I know. I would love to. I am missing. I will say. I am really loving being out west, but I am missing the ocean and the coast. Yeah. I do feel a little land locked. So before the summer is over, I definitely want to come visit you and treasure hunt on the coast of Maine. There's one in particular that it feels like there's a pretty, because usually it's like this general area and it's like hundreds of miles it could be in.

And this one, we could talk about it later, because I don't want everyone to go. but oh she's keeping her secret localized you don't want to tell you guys about this because we want to get rich yeah but I'm really excited to hear about this because I have heard of this legend but in all honesty I thought it was fake like I thought it was just a legend I didn't know it was

for real for real it's for real for real yeah yeah I mean there is a lot of legend behind it so we'll kind of get into that but there have been a lot of of people who have died searching for this mine and people are still out there searching for it. And it's super interesting. And I was, when I was going into this whole subject and researching it and everything, I was thinking, and I haven't covered an episode like this since the forest fen one, which was years ago now.

And I just was like, it's time. Summer is such a good time to feel adventurous and want to find hidden treasures. And unfortunately, this one gets a little dark in some places. but there is allegedly millions of dollars of gold in the superstition mountains in Arizona, which is exciting. That is exciting. I even read, so our book club voted on a different book, but the runner up was the Amalfi Coast. Did you read it?

I read it. Did you like it? Because it's about like sunken treasure and stuff and I wanted. That's fun. I'm just in the mood, you know? Okay. So good timing if you're in the mood for treasure and all. of that. I have it. So let's jump into the story because there's a lot going on. And I guess to

preface this, there are a lot of people and timelines throughout this story and how I'm going to tell it is we're going to start off at the beginning of the Lost Dutchman Mine and get into that. And then we're going to get into the people who over years and years have been trying to find it. Okay. So our story begins in February of 1891 in the area. Arizona territory when a series of powerful winter storms unleashed devastating floods across the Salt River Valley, the fertile stretch of farmland surrounding present-day Phoenix. The normally manageable salt river swelled into a raging torrent more than three miles wide, washingway homes, farms, bridges, railroad tracks, and irrigation canals. Among those caught in the disaster was 83-year-old Jacob Waltz, a German immigrant who had spent decades from, farming along the river's north bank while quietly prospecting in the nearby superstition mountains.

Every so often, he'd return from the wilderness carrying unusually rich gold ore, but he never revealed where he found it. As floodwater swallowed his farm, Jacob ended up stranded in a tree where he remained for two days until he was rescued. The ordeal took a devastating toll on his health and he never fully recovered, eventually developing a severe case of pneumonia. Following the flood, Jacob was taken to the home of 29-year-old Julia Thomas, a German-speaking woman originally from New Orleans. Because Julia spoke German, the language Jacob spoke most fluently, the two were able to communicate with ease. She cared for him over the next several months, and as she sat by his bedside, they got to talking and struck up a friendship.

One day, while she was sitting with Jacob, he was visited by some friends who delivered five mysteriously heavy bags to him. She decided to look inside. She's like, I'm feeling a little nosy. What's in these big bags? And she looks inside and she saw heaps of gold ore twinkling back at her. After the friends left, she asked Jacob about the bags of gold and he confided a secret to her that he had been keeping for years. He said the gold was his cut from a mine hidden deep in the superstition mountains just east of Phoenix. He estimated. He estimated. that the mine was worth about $20 million. And if you're talking about that money back then, it's 1890s here, today that would be worth

roughly $700 million. I'm not a man. I see why people are going out here after this one. So Jacob told Julia he believed he had discovered the last of the Peralta mines. According to local legend, the Peralta family, a wealthy ranching family from Sonora Mexico had ventured north into the superstition mountains during the 1840s after discovering incredibly rich deposits of golds. The story claimed they secretly worked a network of mines hauling mule loads of gold back to Mexico for years. Also according to the legend, and this is all,

this is where like the legend really comes in of the history. Allegedly, allegedly, allegedly, yes. Yeah, and just where all this gold is really coming from. So according to this legend, the Apaches actually took an issue with the Peralta's blasting into the mountains and mining within their homeland. And they were repeatedly trying to drive them away. Eventually, the family loaded as much gold as they could onto pack mules and began the journey back to Mexico. But before they could escape, they were ambushed somewhere in the superstition mountains by Apache warriors. Some versions of the story describe it as massacre with only one or two members of the expedition surviving. However, many retellings of the Lost Dutchman mine claim that the Apache attack the Peraltas

because they believed the superstition mountains were sacred to a thunder god and fiercely guarded the gold hidden within them. However, I will say, this is kind of where a legend. It's like, ah, we don't know if this part is really true because in an interview conducted in 2021 and then published in 2023, the White Mountain Apache Tribe's cultural resource director rejected that explanation, saying the idea of the thunder god protecting the mountain was likely invented by non-apachi storytellers. He explained that the Apache had no use for gold and instead viewed it as something that brought greed, violence, and suffering. So if conflicts

did occur between Apache groups and outsiders in the superstition mountains, they were far more likely to be defending their land versus trying to defend this gold and this god. Whether any of the Peralta story actually happened remains subject to debate. Historians have found little evidence that the family ever mined the superstitions at all, but over time their story became inseparable from the legend of the Lost Dutchman Mine. According to that legend, after the attack, the Apache gathered the abandoned gold and destroyed the entrances to the Peralta mines sealing them forever. All except one, and Jacob had claimed that he had found it. He told Julia he couldn't believe it. He couldn't believe his eyes when he entered the mine shaft. He said he could have cut the gold straight from the walls

where it was embedded in quartz in thick, lustrous veins. Jacob promised Julia that as soon as he recovered, he would take her there himself. But unfortunately, not long after making that promise, Jacob suffered a debilitating stroke that left him partially paralyzed and confined to his bed, making the difficult journey into the superstition mountains impossible. Instead, he still wanted Julia to be able to go and see what he had been talking about, so he drew Julia a rough map and gave her a series of clues to help her find the mine on her own. He explained that the mine's entrance looked like an inverted tunnel, that it could be seen from a nearby military road, and that it lay in the shadow of Weaver's Needle, a towering thousand-foot volcanic rock spire

rising from the heart of the superstition mountains. Today, the superstition mountains are protected in what is now known as Tonto National Forest in central Arizona. So this is my tie-in to why this makes it on the episode. It's about an hour east of Phoenix and roughly two hours north of Soirro National Park. Spanning nearly 3 million acres, the forest is a striking mix of Sonoran Desert, rugged mountains, and remote wilderness where towering Sawaro cacti stand amongst dramatic rock formations and winding desert canyons. It's within this vast and unforgettable.

giving landscape that the generations of treasure hunters have searched for the lost Dutchman mine. Have you ever been to this area of Arizona? I don't think so. I haven't either. I have to look on my, this is, it's, God, something about a treasure store just gets me going. I love it so much, but. I'm sat. I'm more than sad.

I am in it. But my recent trip to Guadalupe National Park, which I, I am. know is not near this, but in the general southwestern area, I picked up a book at the visitor center called Legends and Lore of the Guadalupe Mountains. And there is a lot, a lot of, there's so many things to find, allegedly, if we're to believe, legends and lore. And a lot of it does have to do with, it was just sparking my memory because you're talking about different Apache raids and conflicts and things like that and the male routes that used to go through there. There was a lot of, I'm not saying just by Apache, but kind of conflicts going on with

the settlers and the Apache and robberies and things like that and people looting the mail that was also transporting a lot of golden things of the like and being stashed and lost amongst the Guadalupe Mountains. So. Okay. So hold on, Tonto National Forest, you're saying? Yeah. Yeah, it's not too far from Suaro, and I have been to Suarro.

Well, I feel like a lot of people must, I mean, Sedona is immediately north of this. Yeah, and it's not far from Phoenix, which is obviously a huge hub. So I'm sure this is. Wait. Oh, my God, I was just there. I was just at petrified forest, and that's also nearby. Missed opportunity. Yeah, so you're right there. You could have found the treasure.

God. You could have gone treasure hunting. Although I don't know if you'll want to after I tell you all the stories and lore around the people who have gone searching for it. You did mention beeheadings, which is a little frightening. But okay, continue. Kind of puts a damper on the whole fun treasure home thing. So going back into, I just explained to you guys why this counts as a National Park After Dark episode. But going back into what Jacob was relaying to Julia about how to find this said mine,

he said that from the mine's location, she would be able to see four mountain peaks, a detail he seemed to believe would help her pinpoint the exact spot. However, he never clarified how those peaks would appear from the mine itself. So she didn't know where they meant to be visible all at once, lined up side by side, like across the horizon four peaks, or would it be layered where it was four peaks, then another peak and another peak or like slightly diagonal? She just didn't know which way she was supposed to be looking. And there are quite a few mountains here. So it didn't really help her pinpoint where he was talking about. As the weeks passed, Jacob's condition

continued to deteriorate. Already weakened by pneumonia and left partially paralyzed after suffering a stroke, his health never recovered. On October 25th, 1891, Jacob Waltz died before anyone could verify whether his directions were complete, taking the mine's exact location with him to the grave. Friends who had known Jacob for years recalled that he frequently returned from the superstition mountains carrying unusually rich gold ore, yet he never revealed where he found it. For Julia, that was all the proof that she needed that this mine was real. Convinced Jacob's story had been true, Julia wasted little time.

Before caring for him, she had owned a small bakery and confectionery in Phoenix, one of the few businesses operated by a woman in the growing frontier town. Believing that the fortune hidden in the superstition mountains was real, she sold her business and used the proceeds to finance an expedition in search of this mine. Am I, Julia reincarnated? I like her a lot. It's like, this makes sense. You got the tea.

You're getting out of the business. You're going to go make it rich. You're going in the mountains. Yeah. You've been late as her, like, sitting on this guy's deathbed and he's like, I have a secret. It's like, tell me more. Tell me everything. And don't just stay alive.

Cryptic messages that don't even make sense. And I don't understand your maps. I know you just have a stroke and you're going through it. But be more specific, please. It's like, this is $20 million at this time. $700 million today. It's like I need to know where this is. With the money, Julia purchased camping supplies, horses, and a wagon,

then partnered with two German brothers, Herman and Reinhardt Petrash, who agreed to help her search for the legendary mine. It didn't take long to realize she had made a costly mistake. The wagon proved nearly useless against the steep rocky terrain of the mountains, forcing the group to abandon it and redistribute their supplies onto the horses before continuing on foot through the wilderness. For nearly three weeks, they searched canyons and rugged mountain slopes trying to decipher Jacob's rough map and cryptic clues.

But the Arizona desert showed little mercy. As their food and water dwindled, the expedition was forced to turn back, returning to Phoenix empty-handed. The failed search left Julia with nothing. Hoping someone else might be able to solve the mystery, she shared Jacob's story with the Arizona Weekly Gazette. On December 13th, 1891, the newspaper published an article titled A Queer Quest, Another Lost Mine, Being Hunted by a Woman.

Like breaking news. Breaking news, a woman could do things. But at the time, women were rarely associated with prospecting or frontier exploration. So this idea of a woman leading a search for a lost gold mine actually captivated the public. were like, what is this woman doing? What is she searching for? And almost overnight, the legend spread beyond Arizona. Treasure hunters, prospectors, adventurers, and fortune seekers descended onto the superstition mountains, all searching for what became known as the lost Dutchman mine. Which ironically, Jacob Waltz wasn't Dutch at all, so to be like the lost Dutchman, he was German. But in the

19th century, many English speakers mistakenly referred to Germans as Dutch, likely because they confused the German word Deutsch, meaning German with Dutch. So they're like, oh, Deutsch, Dutch, but it means German. Yeah. So the nickname stuck and so did the legend. But at least Julia and the brothers made it back from the superstition mountains alive. That was far more than others could say. Long before the lost Dutchman mind became one of a America's most famous treasure legends, the superstitions had already earned a reputation as a place where people disappeared. According to one of the earliest stories connected to the legend, just a few years before Jacob Waltz claimed to have discovered the mine, two U.S. soldiers rode into Phoenix

carrying saddlebags filled with remarkably rich gold ore. A local merchant was stunned by its quality and asked where they had found it. The soldiers refused to reveal the location, but agreed to return to the mountains and bring back more. However, they never returned. Weeks later, searchers found the bodies of two soldiers deep in the superstitions. They had been stripped naked, both had been shot in the head, and the gold they had carried into Phoenix had vanished. No one was ever charged with the killings, and no one knows exactly what happened. Some believe they had been murdered for their gold. Others blamed Apache warriors, while still others suspected rival prospectors hoping to keep the discovery for themselves. Whatever the truth, the death only deepens the mountain's growing reputation as a

dangerous place. And their story would become the first of many stories in which people ventured into the superstition mountains searching for gold and never came back. So now we get to get into all of all of the lore around the people trying to find this mine. And we're going to, we'll see if people listening still. Like, I feel like whenever I hear a treasure story or a mine or something, I'm like, oh, yeah, I would love to do that. I want to look into this and figure out the clues and stuff. And I'm so curious if people will feel that way once they know what's been happening to all the

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smalls.com slash NPAD. One last time, that's 60% off your first order plus free shipping and free treats for life when you head to smalls.com slash NPAD. In 1914, the legend took a surprising twist when a businessman named Erwin Ruth traveled to Mexico. While he was there on business, he happened to meet a distant relative of the Peralta family. The two became friendly and the relative eventually gave Irwin what he claimed was a map leading to the family's secret gold mine in Arizona. Irwin returned to the United States and shared the map with his father, Adolf Ruth. Convinced it might be authentic, Adolf had the document.

examined by an expert who concluded it appeared to date back to the early 1800s around the same time the Peralta family was supposedly mining in the region. Adolf spent years studying the map alongside the rugged geography of the superstition mountains. Eventually, he became convinced that generations of treasure hunters had been searching in the wrong place. Instead of looking near Weaver's Needle, as Jacob Walt's clues seem to suggest, Adolf believed the legendary mine was actually hidden near blacktopped mesa, a broad, flat-topped volcanic mesa several miles north of Weaver's Needle in the northern reaches of the superstition mountains. By the summer of 1931, Adolf decided it was finally time to test his theory.

He set out alone, he was 66 years old, stood barely five feet tall weighing just over 100 pounds, and he walked with a pronounced limp from chronic arthritis and suffered from persistent pain. But despite his age and his failing health, he was convinced he was on the verge of solving one of the greatest treasure mysteries in the American West. On July 14, 1931, Adolf paid several men to drive him to Willow Springs, one of the primary gateways into the superstition mountains. There, they unloaded his supplies, wished him luck, and watched as the elderly treasure hunter disappeared into the desert alone. A week passed with no word from Adolf. Friends initially assumed

he was staying longer than planned, but as the days stretched on, concern began to grow. A search party headed into the mountains soon located his campsite. His bedroll, cooking utensils, food, and personal belongings were still there, indicating he had planned to return. But Adolf Ruth was nowhere to be found and neither was the map he was carrying. Months passed, With no signs of Ruth, summer gave way to fall and fall turned into winter. With each passing week, hope that the elderly treasure hunter would be found alive faded. Then, in December of 1931, someone stumbled across a human skull in the superstition mountains. It eventually was found it belonged to Adolf Ruth.

But there was one major problem. There was no sign of his body. His skull had two holes in it, which some experts believe were bullet holes, turning what had been a disappearance into a possible murder investigation. Several weeks later, in January of 1932, searchers finally located the rest of Adolf's skeletal remains and a small drainage on the eastern slope of the blacktop mesa, roughly three quarters of a mile from where his skull had been found.

His personal belongings were scattered nearby, including his pistol, which still contained all of its unfired rounds. But one item was mysteriously missing. The Peralta map he carried. Yes. Everything else is with him, but the map is gone. The plot thickens. Does.

Then came one final chilling detail. Among Adolf's recovered belongings was a note. In it, he claimed he had found the mine and included directions to it. At the end, he wrote the Latin phrase, Weenie, wee-weeiki, meaning, I came, I saw, I call. conquered. Okay. Like, did you? You're not alive, but you're dead. Like, I don't think you conquered, but it is chilling that you claim that you found it. He also scribbled something about a strange circle and a field of black basaltic rock. And basalt is a kind of rock created by

volcanoes. And volcanoes are also known to produce precious metals. So maybe he was onto something. It was kind of this thought where he's writing about all this stuff. So people were like, okay, is Black Tamp Mesa sitting on this pile of gold? Is there something under here? Like what actually happened to him? Of course, there's all this mystery going on of what happened to Adolf. And some investigators believed that he died from exposure, thirst, or heart failure. But then it doesn't really explain the holes in his skull.

So there were just a lot of questions of what was going. on, but that note saying that he found the mine really added to a lot of mystery, but still no one to this day knows what happened to him. And I'm assuming the map has also never been recovered? No, it has not, but the map resources. Time passed. Yeah, we'll get into it. Time passed and a new generation of treasure hunters came sniffing around the superstitions in search of gold. By the 1950s and 60s, advances in technologies such as aerial photography, improved mapping techniques, and access to helicopters were giving searchers an entirely new advantage. One of the most determined was a private investigator from Oklahoma City named Glenn McGuinness. Unlike many of the prospectors before him, Glenn wasn't interested in chasing campfire stories.

He wanted evidence. He's like, great, all these legends are cool, whatever, but I want evidence that this place actually exists. His investigation eventually led him to Adolf Ruth's son, Erwin. Erwin confirmed what many had long suspected. The original Peralta map had vanished with his father somewhere in the superstition mountains. However, fortunately, Adolf had made a hand-drawn copy before setting out on his final expedition, leaving it behind with his family. It was that surviving copy that Erwin placed in Glenn's hands for him to look at.

as well. So the map is back. Rather than immediately heading into the mountains, Glenn decided to travel to Mexico where he met the descendants of the Peralta family. He's like, this map is great, but I want to verify that this is actually accurate in any capacity before I go trying to use it to find this mine. Well, especially because, and I know it feels legit based on what you said and the research they did to corroborate, like, okay, it seems to be on track with the time frame of when the family was actually around there and all that. But it just seems weird to me that it's like actually it wasn't this Wheeler Peak that seemed like a pretty big detail in the original telling, like of when the guy told Julia. Yeah. Yeah.

And now it's actually a mesa miles away from that one physical landmark that was seems pretty. dominant to locating the mine. I don't know. Yeah. And for whatever reason he decided that everything from the map and the clues and stuff, he felt that it was this blacktop mesa. And then, of course, he gets this map from the Peralta family. And now it's like this new location that they're looking at. But yeah, there's just so much confusion and legend around this that he's like, I want to go straight to the source. I'm going to talk to the Peralta family and see if now this hand-drawn replica of this other map that this guy had and disappeared with. is actually accurate.

So he goes and he speaks with them. And they couldn't verify whether the map itself was genuine. I mean, they weren't like there during this time. And they couldn't tell if it was completely accurate. But they did help Glenn interpret its Spanish place name, symbols, and handwritten notes. Working together, they deciphered the map's clues, leading Glenn to develop a new theory. He became convinced they pointed not to the area around.

blacktop mesa, but he believed that this map was actually indicating a place known as Canyon Fresco. The location appeared to match nearly every clue Jacob Waltz had supposedly left behind. It was visible from an old military road. It lay in the shadow of Weaver's Needle. And from the canyon, the four mountain peaks described by Jacob could all be seen. In December of 1964, Glenn hired a helicopter to survey the area from above. He spent out of hours photographing the rugged landscape before painstakingly comparing the aerial images to the Peralta map. One location kept drawing his attention. An unusually lush patch of vegetation atop Bluff Springs Mountain were a natural spring nourished deep greenery surrounded by otherwise dry,

rocky terrain. To Glenn, it matched the map and Jacob's clues better than anywhere else he had ever seen. So Glenn became convinced he had finally found Canyon Fresco. and where the location of the Lost Dutchman mine was. But one thing that Glenn didn't think about was that desert ecosystems changed drastically over relatively short periods of time. The landscape he was looking at in 1964 wasn't necessarily the same one Jacob Waltz had described nearly 75 years earlier. A spring could shift or dry up, vegetation could spread or disappear, and landmarks that

once stood out could look totally different over this amount of time. So even though he was really convinced, he wasn't really considering that landscapes change. But he was convinced that he solved a mystery that had baffled treasure hunters for generations. He coughed up thousands and thousands of dollars to investigate. Right off the bat, he found some promising clues, including old iron horseshoes believed to date back to the early 1800s around the time the Peralta family was said to have been mining the region. then he couldn't believe his eyes. He discovered a narrow vertical mine shaft just like the one the old German prospector Jacob Waltz had described. Even more convincing, the shaft was reinforced with heavy timber supports that resembled traditional 19th century Mexican mining construction.

To Glenn, every clue seemed to be pointing in the same direction. Giddy with anticipation he started digging, only to find there wasn't a trace of gold in this mine. Meanwhile, there was a whole different angle unfolding in this mine saga. So let's just rewind a little bit to the late 1940s. An Oregon police officer named Travis Tomlson was driving through southern Arizona while he was on vacation. After the long drive, he pulled over along U.S. Highway 60 near Apache Junction, about 10 miles west of the superstition mountains, and he stopped just to stretch his legs.

As he wandered through the desert, weaving between towering soaros and volcanic boulders, he stubbed his toe on a strange rock. When he bent down to investigate, he realized that it wasn't an ordinary rock at all, but a carefully carved stone tablet covered in peculiar symbols and images. Intrigued, Travis returned to the area

several more times over the following years. During those trips, he uncovered three additional carved stone tablets nearby. Together, the four stones fit like a puzzle. The stones were covered with mysterious carvings. One depicted a priest standing beside a cross. Another featured a horse. A third displayed a heart with inscriptions inside, including the name Miguel, the first name of one of the Peralta family members associated with the legend.

Other inscriptions, when translated from Spanish, appeared to, to read the pasture north of the river, while another phrase was interpreted as 18 places to get to the heart. Chiseled into one of the stones was the day 1847, just one year before the legendary Peralt massacre was said to have taken place. If the stones were genuine, they could have been the most significant clue ever discovered in the search of the last Dutchman mine. But not everyone was convinced. Almost from the moment they were found, people questioned whether the so-called Peralta stones were authentic. Some believed they had been carved much more recently and were nothing more than an elaborate hoax. Skeptics pointed to the heart-shaped carvings in particular, arguing that its smooth, precise lines appeared too perfect to have been made with the 19th century

hand tools and instead looked as though they had been cut with modern machinery. They're basically like, these are fake, this is just a hoax. We don't believe this is linked at all to the Peralta family. To me, not knowing the size and shape of these stones, to me, they seem like headstones. Oh, I didn't even think of that. Like a priest next to a crossed hearts, like references to, and maybe things are getting lost in translation or their origins to phrases. I'm not sure, but there are so many different nods to, from different cultures of, you know, Vahala or the other side or heaven or whatever and like the other side type of thing. Like, I don't know. It just to me, and with dates on them. And I, to me, it just seems like death markers. Yeah, that you just like took away from someone's grave. You know, I think he could have just solved the mystery of the Peralta Stones.

Great. Happy to have contributed. Well, for other people who were skeptic, thought I was a hoax. And some people really believe that it was linked to it. So just because some people didn't believe it, didn't stop other people from continuing the search. Over the years, countless treasure hunters tried to decipher the mysterious stones, but none could unlock their secrets, which is crazy because Daniel just figured it out. Eventually, the stones actually ended up tucked away in a museum in Phoenix where they sat for years. Then around 2009, a new team took on the challenge. A missile systems engineer and a computer scientist believed modern technology could succeed. seed where decades of treasure hunters had failed. They spent years studying the stones,

digitally analyzing the carvings, comparing them with historic mining records, topographical maps, and aerial photographs in search of a hidden pattern. Eventually, they focused on the heart-shaped carvings and its inscriptions. The engineer concluded that the heart-match symbols used on some 19th century mining maps and theorized it wasn't simply a decorative carving it all, but a directional marker pointing to the mine. After overlaying the stone's markings onto topographical maps and aerial imagery, the pair became convinced that the heart pointed to Deering Canyon, a rugged canyon deep within what is now Tonto National Forest. Located on the western side of the superstition mountains, the canyon lies just a few miles northwest of Weaver's Needle,

placing it squarely in the heart of the landscape most often associated with the Lost Dutchman mine. So like many before them, they launched an expedition. But I don't know. I feel like a heart on a gravestone also makes sense. So I'm kind of with you. I don't know. It's like did he find them all kind of clustered in the same area? Did he search a lot? He found him over years in the same general region, but I imagine they weren't right next to each other. You know, if it took him years to find four of them. Oh, yeah, that's true. You know? I don't know. I just feel like especially in the 18th and 19th centuries in this part of the country, you just get buried where you fall or, you know, I'm not really envisioning like a family plot type of thing that, you know,

everyone's kind of clustered together and it looks very clearly like a burial ground, but it's more of just like scattered or, I don't know. It's just the first thing that came to mind, but it is fun to think that there are markers leading to a lost mine. So I'm also on board with that. That is way more fun than a grave. Yeah. Yeah. So let's just go with that. I will let them graven go. I think you could be onto something, though. But yeah, so they're convinced that they found this clue. So they launched an expedition. And once they got there, the pair found what appeared to be an old mine shaft that had long since been filled by decades of erosion, rockfall, and desert sediment.

Hoping to see what lay beneath the surface without disturbing the ground, the engineer used a device known as a ground phase required. quarter. A controversial piece of equipment, some treasure hunters believe, can detect underground voids and mineral deposits. The images it produced appear to show pinkish white veins running through the walls of the buried shaft, the same color as the gold-bearing courts Jacob Waltz had once described. Why is it controversial? I don't, I think it's controversial because they don't, some people don't believe it works. Okay. I don't think there's like a mysterious, like, like ooh ah thing i think it's just people are like you could use that but it doesn't work like it's controversial whether or not it actually does anything i didn't know if it was controversial over

because this is actually a question i was going to ask you at the end but what your feelings are on when it comes to treasure hunting and finding you know lost loot or stashes of whatever whatever it is yeah are you like a treasure hunting purist where you me the technology. Really? Yeah. I'm not. Help me. I need help. I feel like I'm not. You wouldn't want any type. Like you wouldn't want to, if you were in the, you wouldn't want to take it a helicopter over the superstition mountains and get an aerial view of the location you would want to hike into it or ride horses into it. I feel like it just kind of takes away from, like if, I don't know, I'm really torn because there are clear advantages to what technology has to,

offer, but I feel like it kind of takes some of the air out of the whole thing. Like, imagine you're like, I've been pouring over historical records and looking at maps and having boots on the ground and doing all this. And yeah, you're hitting a lot of dead ends, but you're like really putting the work into it versus someone on their computer and looking at maps or using pieces of computer equipment or machinery to do it for you. And it's like, oh, yeah, found it. You could have both.

I'm in it for the money, honey. I don't care how I get it. Okay. Okay. See, I feel like I'd be like, congrats, but you did it wrong. I don't have as much respect. The respect is. I'm sorry you're worth millions of dollars now.

I don't respect you, though. Yeah. And that's the truth. I don't need respect for $700 million. That's fine. And now I have my answer. Keep going. That's why I didn't know if it was controversial.

Like, people looked down on it. But, okay. Okay. Okay, so they find... It's using the machine. Yeah, so they're using this machine. They found what maybe could be this mine that they've been looking for the whole time. And if the readings were accurate, whatever was hidden below lay just two feet beneath their feet. So they're standing on top of it.

That's nothing. However, there was just one problem. Deering Canyon lay within the federally protected superstition wilderness inside Tom. National Forest. Believing they had discovered an archaeological site, the pair documented their findings and consulted with the U.S. Forest Service. According to them, the Forest Service agreed the site appeared to be archaeological in nature, meaning that it was protected under federal law. Excavating the site would have required permits from multiple government agencies and without them digging was simply not an option and they were also it seems like they weren't able to get them

either so devastated they had to walk away never knowing whether they had just stood above the legendary lost dutchman mine doing the right thing just cost 700 million dollars yeah it's like just dig it up just don't say anything no it's the right it's the right it's the right it is the right thing to do for sure but nobody was curious nobody was like you know maybe you did just stumble on seven you're just going to leave seven hundred million dollars under the two feet under the surface and even if it wasn't whoever was saying yes we agree this is probably archaeological in nature you don't want to know what that is like push the permits through let's go yeah let's find out what this is like there are people behind the process of doing it and I know the process can be long and arduous but

get people on your set like make friends fence in permit offices. And I couldn't find exactly like why this wasn't pushed further. But it was just kind of like, yeah, we think it's archaeological. You can't touch it. And that was it. Like it was never really, from what I could see, was never really dove into any farther. The Hulu original series Furious is coming to Disney Plus.

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AI Cloud ERP for any size business. But of course, these two were not the only ones who were scrambling to kind of discover this mine's mystery. A Phoenix local named Ted Cox collected thousands of pages of notes about his own investigation into the mine. He had been searching for it since he was a little boy after hearing his father's stories about the legend. His father had been living in Phoenix when Jacob Waltz died and left behind the map. But Ted had yet another theory about the mine's location. He believed everybody had been looking

on the wrong side of the superstition mountains. According to Ted, the mine was on the east side, not the west side where everyone else had been looking. He found an old mine shaft that checked off all of Waltz's boxes. There was even a horse-shaped rock nearby. Convinced, he had found the right place, Ted started digging. But Ted soon discovered there wasn't any gold there. His research eventually led him to a different conclusion. He became convinced that the lost Dutchman mine was none other than the silver chief mine and that all of its gold had already been excavated years earlier by an old prospector named James Rogers. The silver chief had been one of the most productive mines in the area, making James and his partner nearly a million dollars in the

late 1800s. So he's like, the secret lost mine was never a secret. People knew where it was and it was actively being mined was basically his conclusion from everything. And tests were conducted comparing Jacob Waltz gold ore to the ore from the silver chief mine. One of Waltz's surviving pieces of gold had been fashioned into a small matchbox. Using modern scientific analysis, researchers found it was made from the same type of ore that came, from the silver chief mine. Both samples were embedded in the same kind of quartz and both contained unusually high concentrations of mercury a relatively rare characteristic. So they're like it's, we can't verify that this definitely came from this mine, but it's certainly possible.

But also, if you think about that, if it did come from this mine, it means that that mine was completely eradicated of all of its gold and that there's not $700 million sitting beneath it. the surface anymore. It's been taken. So that's kind of a bummer. Yeah, less fun. Less fun for sure. There was one other possibility proposed by a bona fide geologist named John D. Wilburn. In 1975, he published a book called The Riddle of the Lost Dutchman Mine, laying out his own theory about the mystery. Wilburn believed Nurse Julia Thomas's map had been wrong from the very beginning, whether intentionally or by accident. He argued that Julia's clues had pointed treasure hunters into the volcanic core of the superstition mountains, where the geology didn't support the kind of rich gold deposits

Jacob Waltz had described. Instead, he believed searchers should have been looking where rich gold deposits were actually known to exist. That led Wilburn to the ghost town of Goldfield, located at the western base of the superstition mountains. During the late 1800s, Goldfield had been one of Arizona Territory's richest mining camps and was home to the Bulldog Mine, one of the most productive gold mines in the superstitions. Wilburn believed the old German prospector Jacob Waltz had likely worked there for many years, beginning around 1868. Over the course of its operation, the Bulldog Mine produced more than a million dollars worth of high-quality gold ore. It also happened to be within sight of the military road

matching one of Walt's most well-known clues. But by 1897, the mine had been played out, Goldfield had been abandoned, and little remained of the once booming town besides a handful of weather buildings and desert brush. Then, in March 2003, heavy equipment destroyed the entrance to the historic Bulldog mine, eliminating a shaft that had stood for well over a century.

If Wilburn's theory had been correct, any remaining evidence may have been, destroyed along with it. And of course, over the years, there's been a lot of people who have continued to search for this mine, despite there's all these different theories and what's been going on. And today, people are still out there trying to find it. But the riddle of the Lost Dutchman mine continues to captivate treasure hunters, historians, and adventures alike.

So while it has never been found to this day, the next time you visit Tonto National Forest enjoy the view, but watch your step. The next clue to the Last Dutchman Mine might be hiding right underneath your feet. And that is my story of The Last Touchman Mine. I think it's so wild that so much has happened just because we believed this one guy. This one guy. You know what I mean? This is what I'm going to do when I die.

I'm going to leave a deathbed confession of something wild. Yeah. And I know it was more than just a deathbed confession because allegedly Julia saw all this gold and it feel. And other people too. And it felt like it gave more substance and like substantiated what he was saying. So I understand that. But like still, you're kind of just taking his word for it. Yeah.

And he could have been lying. Yeah. Right. He could have just been. He was a prospector. He could have just had gold from that. Right. So, all right, well, what have, this wasn't prepared. So if you don't have an answer on the spot, I understand. But do you have a, aside from this, do you have a lost treasure, unsolved mystery, legend, lore type of thing that you would want the answer to the most? Like if there was one story that you want a conclusion or it to be found or, or.

whatever do you have one of those you know i don't have like one that i'm like dying to know but how i mentioned at the beginning that virginia treasure uh in my intro oh right yeah that i mentioned i think that that one would be super interesting okay yeah to i don't know there's just like in blackbeard's treasure obviously too is like a there's just so many there's so many yeah i would it was be so cool to find a treasure though. Oh my God. And you know what? You, I know you would, you're going to be like, give you the 700 mil treasures, but treasure really is what you make of it. And it could just be something small. Right. Go geocaching then, if that's how you feel. You're like, go geocaching and get the fuck away from me. And don't bring me. Yeah. It's like, I'm in it for the money. Yeah. I'm not. Geo-cashing is cool. I would do that for the adventure. But if I'm in it for the money,

I'm in it for the money. No, I understand. I just, I think treasure hunting is so fun, particularly because not just like for the money and stuff, but because it really brings together so many different aspects of what I find the most interesting in this world. And that's like examining history and picking through history to find like different clues and obviously getting outside and adventuring around and going through separating fact from fiction. And I just think it's just the coolest thing ever. And yeah, yeah, I would do crazy things to know what is under the ground in Oak Island. The Oak Island mystery.

I don't know that one. Oh, my God. Tell me. Did you not see any of my? my Instagram stories when I was in my Halifax trip? No, you've been offline. No, I'm offline. I didn't see a single one.

Well, that's fucked up, first of all, because that was a crazy cool thing that I did. So I take offense to that. I am offended that you didn't tell me personally. Well, you didn't ask. I didn't know you were on a treasure run out there. It was a side quest upon a side quest. I will know from now on whenever you're somewhere to ask if you were on a treasured run. Thank you.

Well, so I'm, this is like, I will do an episode on it. It's not tied to national parks at all. But this is actually the impetus of my, well, I wouldn't say the impetus, but because my dad was really the person who got me interested in wanting to know more about legends and lost treasure and things like that. But when I was a sophomore in high school in my English class, one of our assignments was our teacher, Dr. Brown. Dr. Brown. She wasn't a doctor.

Mrs. Brown. Maybe she's a doctor now. Who knows? But Mrs. Brown, she had a bunch of different subjects of papers to write, and she kind of just put them all in a hat, like strips of paper with a subject on it, put them in a hat, and everyone had to go around and pick one out and whatever you got, you had to write a paper on. And I picked the Oak Island mystery. And I had no idea what it was.

and thus began my treasure hunting awakening. Long story short, it's up in Nova Scotia. And in, I think it was the 1700s, this kid exploring around found this strange depression. And it's right on the water on the shoreline. He found a strange depression in the earth. And fast forward to present day, there has been like maybe six or seven. Discovery Channel seasons on finding what this treasure is about. People have died trying to look for it.

It's been the longest running treasure hunt in the history of North America. And it is absolutely insane. There's lots to it. I'm in. And I bought a book, obviously, I went, because we went to, I'm like, we're so close. We got to go. So we go to the site. It's off limits.

You can't go near it. except for on special tours. And we got there on a day they weren't doing tours. And they were also actively filming. Oh. So. For like a movie? No, for like TV shows and specials and documentaries.

Gotcha. Yeah. So, but there was a memorial I got to see of the people who died, trying to look for it. And yeah, it's, it's a crazy, crazy story. I would love to know what is fucking under there. Me and everyone else in his. history. Yeah, that's my answer. But I'll tell you more about it maybe in an episode someday.

Cool. I would love to learn my. Yeah. I think treasures, it's just so interesting and it's just so intriguing to, it adds another layer of exploration, which is fun. And if you can get rich doing it. I know this one was more of just natural gold deposits and things like that. But so many people used to bury their loot. Yeah. They're out there. You could be walking over millions of dollars and you never know. I mean, look at the Forest Fen one. It was in Yellowstone National Park. Millions of people were not that far away from being multi-millionaires and you all missed out, including myself. I didn't even know what was happening. So, anyhow, it wasn't even that far. Like where he, where he buried it was not that far or hard to get to. So. Yeah. And if you miss that episode,

that Cassie did in 2021 or 2022. Yeah. Just know there's been updates. I think it was episode 24. Yeah, because when I did it, it had not been, the location had not been revealed yet. It had been found, but the location had not been revealed yet. Now we know that it was found in Yellowstone National Park at Forest Fend's favorite fishing spot there. But at the time of the episode recording, it had not been found yet.

Okay. get back here so we can go do some treasure hunting some treasure hinting i'm ready for i'll do some treasure hunting that would be fun okay great start training ember how to like scent detect hmm probably she does track like she does animal track so just out because she's a predator but um that's unhelpful for our operation but but maybe i could teach her to sniff out other things yeah i'm thinking like usually, you know what, if we're thinking traditional buried treasure, it's usually in like a wooden chest. So like the scent of like decaying wood or something like that.

And metal. And metal, rusted metal. Yeah. Gold. That's the way to do it. You got to get, you got to think outside the box. It's not just about you. It's what others can bring to the team.

And dogs can bring a lot. Like sonic radar. We're purists. We're not using. Half of us are purists. The other half is not. Okay. All right.

Well, everyone, please enjoy the view. But watch you back. Bye. Bye. Thanks for joining us for another episode. We hope you learned something new and have another location to put on your list. If you want more MPAD content, make sure to follow along with our adventures on all socials at National Park After Dark. For more stories just like this one with the added bonus of exclusive content, you can join us on Patreon or Apple.

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