The Lost Dutchman's gold mine

Thomas and the Petrasch brothers searched in the summer of 1892; Bicknell published in 1895; a steady trickle of searchers followed, and the Goldfield strikes of 1892 to 1893 kept the idea of gold in the area alive⁠[4]. Adolph Ruth, a retired federal meat inspector in his late sixties or seventies (accounts differ) with a Peralta map from a man his son had helped, went into the range from the Barkley ranch on 13 June 1931 against the rancher's advice and did not return. His skull was found in December 1931 in La Barge Canyon and his skeleton in January 1932 on Black Top Mesa, three-quarters of a mile away, with his pistol fully loaded and, by one account, a note in his chequebook claiming he had found the mine. Aleš Hrdlička of the Smithsonian said the two holes in the skull were from a shot at close range; the sheriff ruled thirst or heart disease and held no inquest; a later historian concluded heat killed him⁠[6]⁠[12]⁠[1].

The deaths since are a mixed list. Some were shootings (John Burns 1951, Joseph Kelley 1952, Charles Massey 1955, Martin Zywotho 1956), some disappearances in rough country (James Cravey 1947, James Kidd 1949), and the recent cases were exposure: Jesse Capen of Denver vanished in December 2009 and his remains were found by volunteers in a crevice half a mile from his camp in 2012; Curtis Merworth, Malcom Meeks and Ardean Charles of Utah went missing in July 2010 and their remains were found in January 2011⁠[1]⁠[8]⁠[7]. The Superstitions are a wilderness of cliffs, canyons and summer heat over 40 degrees, and most of the toll needs no mine to explain it.

Organised searches include Glen Magill's expeditions of the late 1960s, which twice announced the mine and twice withdrew, and countless private ones; Tom Kollenborn, who chronicled the range for fifty years, said he never found evidence the mine existed⁠[1]⁠[11].

The legend's own reading is a rich lode in the Superstitions, worked by Waltz and perhaps by Spaniards before him, with ore hidden near Weavers Needle⁠[13]. It predicts a gold-bearing vein in the range and a record of Waltz converting gold to money. Neither is found: the range's rocks are tuff and lava without significant mineralisation, and Waltz's finances show a farmer who died poor, with the claims of large mint sales resting on a treasure writer's unverified report⁠[9]⁠[10]⁠[1].

A second reading is that Waltz had real gold from somewhere else: high-graded ore from the Vulture mine near Wickenburg, where he is rumoured to have fenced for miners, a small find in the Bradshaws, or the Goldfield ground on the range's edge, where John Wilburn argued the Bulldog mine fits Waltz's description⁠[1]. It predicts that any genuine Waltz ore would match one of those districts, which an assay could test if a specimen with provenance existed.

The third reading, Blair's, is that an old man's deathbed talk about gold, perhaps with a small cache, was turned by Thomas's search, Bicknell's article and the 1930s revival into a composite legend borrowing from other tales, and that the Ruth sensation fixed it in the national imagination⁠[2]⁠[1]. It predicts what the record shows: no pre-1892 mention, contradictions between the main lines of the story, and a Peralta story that is traceable to a California mine and a land fraud.

Nothing short of a documented vein would settle it for the mine; two things would settle most of the rest. An assay and provenance study of any ore attributed to Waltz still in private hands, matched against the Vulture, Bradshaw and Goldfield signatures, would tell where his gold came from⁠[1]. And a publication of the Waltz documents (the 1848 affidavit, naturalisation, claims, homestead, probate and the 1892 newspapers) with the Thomas and Holmes accounts side by side would give the public what Blair assembled and what the legend's retellers leave out⁠[2]⁠[3]. On the ground, the state survey's mapping already shows where gold can and cannot be expected⁠[9].