194103-DesertMagazin.. - Desert Magazine of the Southwest

Completely surprised and greatly outnumbered, the little band of miners and packers
was soon almost iviped out.
JLo5t Dutchman Aline
With the possible exception of
the mysterious Pegleg gold, the
"Lost Dutchman" mine in the
Superstition mountains of Arizona
is the best known and the
most persistent of all the treasure
legends in the Southwest. There
are many versions of the Dutchman's
tale of a rich ledge in the
Superstitions—and thousands of
prospectors, both tenderfeet and
veteran desert men, have searched
for it at one time or another.
John Mitchell's story in this issue
of Desert Magazine is the most
generally accepted version of the
Dutchman's fabulous ledge of
gold.
MARCH, 1941
By JOHN D. MITCHELL
Illustration by Frank Adams
(7 ACOB WALZ has become one
jl of the legendary figures of the
^7 Southwest. Unlike the mountain
men who trapped the streams and traded
with the Indians during the middle of the
19th century, Walz was a miner.
If we are to believe the tales told about
him following his arrival in Phoenix about
1864, his life was a series of episodes of
high adventure. He is best known, however,
for his asserted connection with the
Peralta gold mine, said to be located
somewhere in the recesses of the barren
and fantastic Superstition mountains 25
miles east of Phoenix.
Don Miguel Peralta is said to have discovered
the rich vein some time in the
early '50s while prospecting the rugged
Superstitions. Peralta was later joined by
his friend Don Francisco Ballesteros of
Sonora, Mexico.
Beautiful ornaments fashioned from
solid gold found in recent years in the
graves of a prehistoric Indian village in
Garden valley in the Superstitions, would
indicate that the rich ledge was known
and worked by an ancient tribe which
lived in that part of the country long before
the arrival of the Spanish invaders.
Recruiting a crew of miners and packers
among the Mexicans and Indians, Peralta
and Ballesteros built an arrastre and
opened the vein.
The ore was exceedingly rich. It was
put in leather bags and packed on the
backs of mules to the arrastre where it was
ground. As the gold was freed from the
quartz it was collected in the form of
amalgam which was smelted into bars in
a small adobe furnace.
An adobe house with a rock foundation
was built along.one side of the boulder
strewn canyon about one mile below the
mine. Near the house and camp a rock
corral was built for the mules.
With an abundance of rich ore, and the
bars of gold piling higher day by day, we
have no reason to believe that the two old
friends were unhappy. With the lofty Superstitions
towering high above them in the
deep blue Arizona sky, it can hardly be
denied that they had found a beautiful
place in which to live and work. Only one
thing threatened their security—the fierce
Apaches, whose hand was against everyone.
The ore grew richer and richer as the
inclined shaft penetrated deeper and deeper
into the mountain side. To avoid the
necessity of hoisting the ore up the shaft
it was decided to run a tunnel into the
mountain from near the canyon. Accordingly
the tunnel was started and had reached
a distance of about 50 feet when the
mine was suddenly attacked by a large
number of Apache warriors. Surprised
and greatly outnumbered the little band
of miners and packers was almost completely
wiped out.
Only one man escaped. This Mexican
hid in the rocky canyon and then made his
way to the arrastre where Peralta,Ballesteros
and the two Peralta boys were grinding
ore. Taking their rifles and ammunition
the five men hurried into the hills
from where finally, after enduring many
hardships, they made their way back to
Sonora.
Some of the ore-laden pack mules were
stampeded during the massacre and disappeared
in the hills. Years later, two
old prospectors, known as "Silverlocks"
and "Goldenlocks," found some of the
rich ore in a box canyon where it evidently
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