the story of the lost dutchman mine
began
with the peralta's a family of spanish
prospectors
who were searching for gold back in the
1840s
according to legends they found some
very rich deposits
in the superstition mountains to many
miners
looking for treasure in the american
southwest particularly
in modern day arizona
the apaches were a real threat
the apaches seeing that the peralta
family
was getting ready to take all the gold
that they had secured so far
decided to lay a trap for them
and from what i understand they killed
everyone except for one little
boy who was hiding in a bush not too far
away
they spared him and he is the one that
was the eyewitness that told the entire
story
it is believed that after the massacre
the apaches
buried the peralta's gold then covered
up the mine
in an effort to restore the land to its
natural state
now the apaches consider that mountain
sacred and of course
they put a curse on any anglo
who would tread on their mountain at the
end of the mexican-american war
20 years after the peralta family was
ambushed in the superstition mountains
mexico ceded much of arizona to the
united states
hundreds of prospectors immediately
descended upon the area
hoping to strike it rich
one of those men was an immigrant turned
citizen
named jacob waltz jacob waltz was an
immigrant to the united states from
hortonburg germany
followed the gold trails into california
and when he'd come into arizona sometime
between 1865 1868 we believe he located
what's known now as the lost dutchman
mine
the dutchman mine was more than likely
one of the peralta mines
jacob walls probably went in there and
chipped out some very rich pockets of
gold
and the story of the dutchman mine grew
and grew
but it's a misnomer because when german
immigrants came to america they were
called deutsch
which is german deutschmann so
deutschmann
just got mistaken for dutchmen
during that era you were supposed to
tell everybody else where your rich mind
was
jacob waltz didn't do any of that he
kept his mind a secret
and they really did not like that and
people had followed him
through the 1870s to try to find out
where his mind was
if he thought he was being followed he
just kept right on going
into the mountains and took him on a
merry chase that's
that's common knowledge to this day
no one knows where jacob waltz's mine
was located
or how much gold he had collected but
one thing
is certain the treasure made him a very
wealthy man
he has no money has nothing but within
the next year or so
waltz builds an adobe house builds out
buildings
he has geese he has ducks he's farming
he's doing quite well
one of the oral histories we have is
that walt's actually had a locking door
and locking shutters on his windows
which is unusual for that time
according to researchers jacob waltz had
a good reason for closely guarding the
location of his mind
as it was there that he claimed he'd
discovered hundreds of pounds of rich
gold ore
the description we get from the mine
from jacob waltz is
it's um popcorn kernels of gold running
through quartz locked in hematite
he's saying is worth hundreds of
millions of dollars a gold well the
price of gold at that point
what would that be now billions
trillions probably more than anything he
could have imagined
in the decades following his incredible
discovery
jacob waltz remained an intensely
private man
although he was known to have very few
friends there were some
notable exceptions he made friends with
a woman named julia thomas
she was one-eighth black her mother had
been a slave but she was raised in a
household
that speaks german julia thomas lived in
phoenix close to where the dutchman was
she ran a bakery
supposedly she had a lot of money
problems and jacob walsh
helped her in february of 1891
when a flood washed away jacob waltz's
home
julia thomas returned his kindness
she invited him to live with her and her
roommate
a german-speaking immigrant named
reinhardt betrash
so waltz has friends that all speak
german and this is probably important
because while we know he probably spoke
english
we don't know how comfortable it would
have been for him at the time
as with most of the circumstances
surrounding his life
those involving his death remain
shrouded in mystery
in october of 1891 as jacob waltz lay on
his deathbed
gasping for breath most likely from
pneumonia
julia thomas ran for a doctor leaving
the octogenarian prospector
in the company of an acquaintance by the
name of dick holmes
when she returned waltz was dead and
dickholms
had vanished along with an item of
extraordinary value
when jacob falls died he had 48 pounds
of very rich
gold ore in a candle box under his bed
knew the math
and that was back then i think what it's
worth today
gold was 16 an ounce then it's 1600
an ounce today did waltz give the box of
gold ore to dick holmes
in the moments before his death or
was it stolen and did waltz
ever disclose either to holmes or julia
thomas
or their friend reinhard betrash the
actual location
of the lost dutchman mine these are
among the questions
that have kept researchers and treasure
hunters guessing
for more than a century what fascinates
me most about the lost dutchman mine is
that there is gold ore
that came from jacob waltz and the
question is
where did it come from and nobody has
been able to answer that yet
you