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we're going to be talking with Larry Hedrick who is the co-creator of the
Superstition Mountain Museum this man is a wealth of knowledge about the
mountains up here and he's going to share some of those interesting stories
with us right now
tell us about the first time you went up in the Superstitions
well that was.. that was about 1973 or four somewhere in there I
had taken a class at the high school and Apache Junction called prospecting the
Superstitions and I became friendly with the teacher that was teaching that class
in fact I took two of them in a row and he was after the class was over he took
people on horseback rides through the superstitions so we went from Peralta
Road to first water road with about 30 or 40 people it was amazing I've got
some pictures of the horses on the switchbacks no list and that was my
first trip to there but it really didn't have anything to do with the Dutchman
you know the story's been told over and over many different ways about the
Dutchman or the Deutsch 'men when he was here but there's little that's known
about him when he came from Germany but you.. you
research this is that correct the Dutchman of course was a real person
ah
everything is just about everything is known about him here in America when he
arrived except how he got to California with the 49ers they don't know if he
went around the horn or he walked across the intimus or that he went overland or
what that's about the only thing they don't know about him being here
But in 2004 two Doctors. Doctor Ortell and his brother both Germans one still living in
Germany and one still here
their father was a... was a genealogist
and they've done genealogy too and they had become interested somehow in the
Lost Dutchman legend and they decided to try to find this guy now there's been a
lot of books written about Jacob waltz and one of them
had his birthplace and all that and they disproved this completely so much so
that the the author removed the book from from being printed but they have
documented him to the point that there's no doubt he was born in a town called
and I'll probably mispronounced some of these names of Volinow
which is in
the kingdom of Württemberg and southern Germany first time I saw a map of it I
thought it was huge but really it's it's it's not all that, that big but Volinlow
is over on the far eastern edge of Wittenberg and and almost to the
boundaries of Bavaria and he was born in I think it was September 2nd 1810
and his father they've got a little bit later I'll tell you how they come up
with this information but his father gave him 250 gulden to come to America
now Gulen was a coin that they contain gold and it was said to be at a
substantial amount of money at that time I found out later that a Gulden is worth
about 80 euros at this date and anyway he he left home and went to Heilbronn
which was about 10 miles away he bought a shotgun double-barrel
shotgun they got the name of the guy that sold it to him he bought about 55
pounds of food stuffs a fur cap and he had a box made that was what they call
4 shoes S.c.h.u.e. which means of shoe being about 12 inches so this box is
about 4 feet long and he had a special strap made board so he could carry it
which I assume was perfect and he instead of paying for it was a
250 Gould and said his dad gave him he charged it all and and headed for
America but he didn't go where most Germans go to leave he didn't immigrate
out of Amsterdam or any places like that and left for America at La Havre France
this led me to believe that and I don't know that it's true but he must have
been a little bit of trouble who knows what but the lot of soldiers were coming
home from the wars at that time work was hard to get and whatever trouble maybe
he was trying to avoid conscription's I don't know maybe he had woman troubles
I have no idea but why conceal the gun in a box it wasn't against the law under
me no and a shotgun and why leave and from France instead of the normal
channels that most Germans and he did not do it with legal immigration.
So anyway when he stepped off the boat in New York in 1839 he was worth about
three thousand dollars so he didn't live because from poverty didn't leave
because of poverty or anything like that he was educated to University of
Hohenheim down just south of Stuttgart and his two
brothers were educated there and when his father died in 1843 the money that
he gave him the two hundred and fifty gulden the two hundred and forty-four
gulden and that he charged and a hundred and ninety-six gulden for his education
were all held against his inheritance that had to be accounted for before
anybody else got anything. His mother died eight years later and that the
government went through his kind of what we call probate..Probate and all
five of these brothers and his sister got 2700 gulden and he got 2100 gulden
and change because his 600 and some Gulen was held out and it was never
claimed he never claimed it and that's that's the story of Jacob waltz in
Germany which only a handful of people even though anything about it's only
been published in the Superstition Mountain Journal and things like that so
not that many people have been exposed to the truth of that matter where did
the date 1808 come from on his grave. Oh some people believe he was born in 1808
rather than 1810 but it's fairly proven that it's 1810. what got him
interested in mining well you know I looked up the University of Hohenheim
and it was an agricultural school back in those days
today it offers geology a lot of rumors have floated that that Waltz was
trained in geology but I could find no evidence that back that far they were
teaching geology because it was strictly in agricultural school but he had a
degree in business administration they wrote that down in their documentation
so I don't think he knew of course didn't know anything about California
back then you know the Indians along the east were not a big problem. so why did
he need the shotgun who knows but after arriving at New York he went to New
Orleans and any what to work in the Georgia Gold Fields but that story is so
well known you know we don't what he what he did here after he got here is
just really documented well but nobody hardly knows anything about him in
Germany and what about his partner the other Jacob there's no evidence he had a
partner Weiser was the name given they had a list of all the people that was on
the passenger ship there was no wiser the if he had if
he had some kind of a partner would have been after he got back to Arizona he
came in with one of the Walker mining parties but he didn't go on with them to
who discovered rich hill up Wickenburg you know he stopped in the La Paz but then
eventually he come on over to the Prescott area where he had two claims I
think it was the General Lee and the Grant what his Civil War beliefs were
nobody knows but he did name them that and it did produce some gold but I don't
think it was anything significant
thank you for joining us for this edition of
mysteries of the Superstition Mountains and join us next time for some more
great tales and remember we're actually going to be going up there and we're
going to be seen a lot of these places so stick around we're just waiting for
it to cool down a bit right here on mysteries of the Superstition Mountains
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