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The episode examines the legendary tale of a rich gold mine supposedly hidden in the Superstition Mountains of Arizona, a mystery that has led hundreds of people on a seemingly endless and often dangerous search.
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00:00Arizona's superstition mountains have been a magnet for generations of adventurers and
00:09treasure hunters. Many who come to the mountains seeking riches never return.
00:14In 1860, a miner called the Dutchman staggered out of the mountains more dead than alive.
00:27Something had kept him going when others would have given up. He had been tortured by Indians
00:34and seen his partner murdered. For days he had traveled alone under the blazing sun.
00:40What was the secret that gave him the strength to survive? It was treasure, great nuggets of gold.
00:48The Dutchman said he'd found a mine full of it. He would never be strong enough to go back for more,
00:57however, and the secret of the mine's location went with him to the grave.
01:09The rugged and barren superstition mountains are sacred to Apache Indians.
01:27They say the thunder god lives here in a gold-filled cave. To trespass in the hallowed
01:47cave is to activate a terrible curse. The Apache believe that only they can travel safely through the superstitions.
01:55This series presents information based in part on theory and conjecture. The producer's purpose is to
02:11suggest some possible explanations, but not necessarily the only ones, to the mysteries we will examine.
02:17Search for treasure in the superstition mountains begins at Weaver's Needle. The remnant of an ancient
02:26volcano, it has become a beacon for adventurers. Some treasure hunters believe the megalith marks
02:33the center of a magic circle that contains the untold wealth of a lost civilization. Long before magic powers
02:41were attributed to the area, Spain's conquistadors penetrated the mountains searching for the legendary kingdom of
02:47Cebola. They believed Cebola was composed of seven cities made from pure gold. The Spaniards even resorted to
02:55torture to pry information from the natives.
02:59The Apache has always related differently to the superstitions. They only say the mountains hide a sacred cave
03:09protected by a curse guarded by rattlesnakes charged with lightning bolts.
03:15Some say the Dutchman tore his treasure from the walls of the secret Apache cave. The Dutchman did claim that his
03:26partner was murdered. Perhaps it was an act of Apache vengeance.
03:30Gold has always inspired some men to acts of violence and great sacrifice. Ancients thought the metal
03:43had magic powers, that gold harnessed the energy of the sun. For centuries, alchemists tried to create
03:51gold in their crucibles. The secret always eluded them. Today we know that gold is one of nature's basic
03:58elements. It can't be broken down into any simpler substance nor will it readily combine with another
04:04element. Thus gold endures for all time to be sought after and measured out as the universal symbol of wealth.
04:15Since the Dutchman staggered out of the mountains with his sack of gold nuggets,
04:19no significant strike has been made in the superstitions. Yet the seekers keep coming,
04:24in spite of the lack of evidence, the harshness of the country, and the history of tragedy for those
04:29who've come before. It's an obsession, seemingly shared by most gold hunters. Some look for lost
04:36minds, like the Dutchman's. Others are after the legendary vein of pure gold, flowing like a river of
04:42yellow metal from the planet's molten core. This they call the mother load.
04:48Once prospectors had only intuition and simple tools to pursue their quest. Now they have metal detectors
04:59and Geiger counters. Intuition still plays a big part. Pat Boll is a retired science professor,
05:09recently turned prospector. His intuition paid off with an offer of fifteen thousand dollars for an
05:15unusual sample of gold bearing rock. I got thirteen nine this spring when I, when I sold it, gave some
05:23to the government, and ended up with nine thousand, nine thousand dollars for twenty minutes work with a
05:31pick. This will make a prospector out of anybody. Pat Boll may never find the vein of pure gold, but he has
05:39that fever now, called the gold bug. It has driven other men to chip, blast, and borrow in the earth,
05:47searching for the ultimate source. The stampede that follows a strike is called a gold rush.
05:54In 1878, a rush hit Bodie, California like a flash flood. Known only as a place where miners could
06:10occasionally scrape out enough ore to live on, Bodie suddenly became a boomtown, producing two hundred
06:17thousand dollars a month in gold bullion. The town grew from a three-family prospector camp to a thriving
06:25community of eight hundred buildings and ten thousand people almost instantly.
06:37Two years after it began, the boom was over.
06:47A year later, the town was nearly empty.
07:01How often this phenomenon occurred across the gold fields isn't known for sure. No one remembers what
07:07happened to camps like Suckertown, Gage Eye, Red Dog, and Hardtack. The gold didn't last long enough for
07:14them to have a past, much less a future.
07:27Today, many treasure hunters hear echoes of the gold rush and believe any one of a thousand tunnels
07:33that perforate the western mountains could tap the mother lode, or the lost Dutchman's mine.
07:39While preparing his book on the Dutchman legend, Robert Blair studied gold miners and dreamers.
07:47He concludes that without mineral evidence, miners wouldn't search the superstitions for gold.
07:52Dreamers, however, might.
07:56I suppose people go looking for the lost Dutchman for their own reasons.
07:59I can only speculate what those reasons are, but I think that a great many of these people who search in such a,
08:05an unpromising location for gold as the superstitions are going more for the adventure
08:12than they are for any serious expectation of finding a rich gold mine.
08:16I think they're going for, for their own reasons as far as their own psychology is concerned,
08:21but perhaps it's an acting out of fantasy. It's one of the few places in the United States today
08:27which is unchanged. It's a wilderness area. There are no motor vehicles in there.
08:31It's almost like the old wild west. When men went in with guns, fought it out among themselves,
08:38looking for a lost mine. Maybe the threat of Apaches is in the minds of some of these men.
08:43Maybe the man finds that when he's in the mountains that he becomes another person.
08:48He becomes more manly. The machismo effect may be working in the minds of those men
08:53who dig so endlessly in the superstitions and so fruitlessly.
09:00In 1931, an event took place which focused national attention on the superstitions.
09:06And this apparently is what has preserved the legend to this day.
09:09On a scorching summer day, a retired Washington bureaucrat, Adolph Ruth, rode into the superstitions.
09:18Carrying maps he believed would pinpoint the lost Dutchman mine, he struck out for Weaver's needle.
09:27A 66-year-old Greenhorn, Ruth had no idea the danger he faced.
09:31He'd spoken freely about his maps, saying he was confident they were genuine.
09:39Ruth seemed oblivious to the temptation his maps represented.
09:50Six months from the day he set out with his cowboy guides, an archaeological party would find Ruth's skull.
09:57News of Ruth's mysterious death would not discourage others from trying.
10:02Hundreds would come to the superstitions looking for the now famous Dutchman mine.
10:07Like Ruth, many would find only tragedy.
10:15The superstitions have claimed hundreds of lives.
10:18Every year, the toll climbs.
10:21Some perish from too much sun and lack of water.
10:24Some die violently and mysteriously.
10:28Sightseers usually seek out an experienced guide for survival.
10:33Treasure hunters, however, only want help to reach a specific point.
10:39For many who go on alone, packmaster and guide Jerry Crater is the last man they will ever see.
10:45I've been running the packing business in this country with my brother since 1968, 69.
10:54We pack prospectors, tourists, sightseers.
10:58But a large end of the business is packing prospectors that are searched for the lost Dutchman.
11:02We don't pack as many prospectors as we do treasure seekers.
11:05There's a big difference between treasure seekers and prospectors.
11:08Prospectors are looking for a vein, a clue in the middle.
11:11And treasure seekers are operating from some map they picked up in a bar or something that their great uncle handed down to them.
11:17But they're looking for clues.
11:19Dutchman hunters come from all walks of life, all parts of the country.
11:23You have very wealthy men.
11:25You have the fellow that hocked his mother's watch to rent a horse and get in here.
11:31And if they have a common denominator, it'd be the same one that a religious fanatic has.
11:39They believe.
11:45The chances of making a gold strike only based on mineral evidence are 10,000 to one.
11:52Some hedge their bet.
11:53They look for gold in the rock and in legend too.
11:58Jay Heston is a prospector and gold miner.
12:01He claims no bonanzas, but he has found gold.
12:05One day I thought I would look into the lost Dutchman mine down in Arizona.
12:09But the more I looked, the more I realized I was looking for adventure or something to do more than I was looking for a mine.
12:17I don't think there's a mine there at all.
12:18I think maybe somebody may have left off some treasure at one time or another, but I think it's long since lost.
12:29With his lucky walking stick, he scours the West looking for more.
12:33A tedious and often dangerous venture.
12:35Since large gold deposits seldom lie on the surface, prospectors often use dynamite to blast out rock samples.
12:48More lost limbs and broken bodies can be attributed to accidents with dynamite than any other peril the prospector faces.
12:56Prospectors may shoot thousands of holes without hitting a rich vein of gold ore.
13:03Thank you, dear.
13:08You hear?
13:12Wow they're sort of late into falling nemlighips as they wouldn't ruin.
13:15Anyway...
13:16... label father fail, they can dro Marianne as always.
13:20But this was the most way they 재미四val aonce Whatever happens to you and the San froze worthless.
13:22By name and the doctors kept away corners of the snow.
13:26By name and the doctors keep doing the war ain's great!
13:28By name and the doctors keep coming for asking a major sunset for such an Christie moment to perish Europokon.
13:30Pockmarked with prospectors' holes, parts of the mountains look like the beachhead at Normandy on D-Day.
13:42If your intuition is right, if your luck is right, you sometimes pick up some gold.
13:47You're always looking for something better than what you've got.
13:50The astrologers say that gold is related to the sun.
13:53Maybe we're looking for that.
13:54Well, I'd never seen gold in the rock before I came here.
14:01You take a rock off of a piece of property you bought, and you break it up.
14:06You swirl the water around in a pan, and you see gold, and there's something fascinating about it.
14:12Weaver's needle is synonymous with the glint of gold for those who go in search of the lost Dutchman mine.
14:28The quest inevitably leads to the Apache Indians.
14:31Sometimes Superstition Mountain, the way the Apache talks about it, sort of remind me of a place in Florida where the astronauts take off to go to outer space,
14:42because there's a place to go where you take off to the other world.
14:46Philip Cassador is a traditional Apache in a modern world.
14:55He has spent most of his life studying the ways of his people.
14:59He is also a medicine man with deep knowledge of ancient Apache ritual and mythology.
15:04To the Apache, I think the lost Dutchman's mind has two different stories about it.
15:16One is what the white men tell, and one is what the Apache tells.
15:21I think there's Apache, when they talk about it, I think they talk about the secret cave.
15:27And in that secret cave is a lost Dutchman's mind.
15:34The mountain spirit dance celebrates the Earth's creation.
15:41Apaches say the mountain spirits protect the superstitions,
15:44and any violence or tragedy attributed to the Apaches is really the work of the spirits who live in the sacred cave.
15:52The Apache secret cave is a very sacred cave.
15:56It's a very difficult thing to get inside of it, you know, because at one side, at the entrance,
16:02there's a female rattlesnake, and on one side, there's a male rattlesnake,
16:07and there's two cups, you know, that's made out of abalone shell, one for a female and one for a male.
16:13And to get inside of it, you have to have the blue stone and the white stone.
16:18The white stone, if you're a female, then you put it into the abalone shell,
16:22and then the rattlesnake will come apart, and then you can go in there in that sacred cave.
16:30Non-Indian people that go up there, they don't carry the blue stone,
16:34and they don't know the prayer that the Apache pray before they go into that mountain.
16:39And the prayer is only made for the Apache, and that mountain is set there for a purpose,
16:43and that purpose is for Apache.
16:46And so if they go in there without these kind of things,
16:49it can change your whole body and soul, your mind and everything,
16:54because you touch something that should not be touched.
17:02How the Dutchman's mine and the sacred cave became entwined is a mystery to the Apache.
17:07They maintain, however, that looking for gold is no excuse for violating the cave.
17:23Mysteries are Glenn McGill's business.
17:25He's a private detective in Oklahoma City.
17:28Patience and attention to detail are the virtues of his trade.
17:32McGill believes, with the right techniques, that any mystery can be solved,
17:39including the whereabouts of the Lost Dutchman Mine.
17:43The Lost Dutchman Mine is a different world altogether.
17:46It's out of character for us who are in the investigation business
17:49to get involved in this sort of thing, far out as you might say.
17:53In 1963, a group of Denver attorneys hired McGill to find the mine.
17:58With conviction and a spirit of adventure, he took the case.
18:07McGill thinks he found the mine in 1966, but not the vein of gold.
18:12In the fall of 1976, an amateur photographer documented McGill's 49th expedition
18:19into the superstitions.
18:21McGill admits spending thousands of dollars,
18:27as well as sacrificing family relations and business gains
18:31during his 14-year search for the gold.
18:39He is confident that he now knows where the gold is
18:43and believes the payoff will match the sacrifice.
18:46Things come into focus at this very specific spot in the superstition mountains.
18:52The maps, the legend, the statements, the witnesses, our investigation,
18:58the evidence, all comes together at one spot, and that's where we're digging.
19:02If our estimates are right, and we believe that they are,
19:05then the mine itself is composed of a vein of gold that is over 18 miles long.
19:11McGill also believes the mine carries a curse that may be influencing his life.
19:16It's no doubt taken some tolls upon me and my family
19:20and some of my very close friends.
19:22You might even say that it's been responsible for shortening my life to some degree.
19:27I'm not in the best of health today as I was when I first started this investigation.
19:35Whether there is magic in Weaver's Needle or not,
19:38it will undoubtedly remain the lodestone for new generations of seekers.
19:42The Dutchman said he found gold there.
19:54If it happened once, it could happen again.
19:57Dutchman hunters have never been popular among the Apaches,
20:04who still regard the superstition mountains as sacred.
20:08The environmentalists don't like gold seekers either.
20:10They want to preserve the mountain as a wilderness area.
20:14The Apaches and the environmentalists have won their case in Congress.
20:18In 1984, the superstition mountains will be off limits to treasure hunters and prospectors.
20:23Passing a law is one thing.
20:26Banishing a dream is another.
20:29The dream is constantly being revived by stories like the one told by prospector Milt Rose.
20:34I talked to three men who were with the Dutchman when he died and helped draw the map that he drew.
20:42They drew me a map of this thing and put all the names and things on it that should be there.
20:50And then I went to look for it from there and found it.
20:53And there was gold there, and I got about $18,000 out of a pocket,
20:58which it proved to be, and it didn't last very long.
21:01The Lost Dutchman Mine has no relation to the superstitions or to the weaver's needle.
21:09It is in the Four Peaks Country at about 4,800 feet in a big canyon.
21:15My personal feeling about the Lost Dutchman Mine is that there's more gold in my back teeth
21:19than there is in this whole range of mountains.
21:21And I just don't believe it's here.
21:23I've packed them in for 10 years and have yet to pack a horse sample out.
21:26Even if you ground up the superstition mountains and ran them through a sieve
21:30and found not one ounce of gold,
21:33there are those who would say you should have dug a foot down deeper
21:36and you would have found the real gold.
21:38People dream.
21:40They hear these stories and they're greedy.
21:42They think that God meant them to find this gold and preserved it for them,
21:46and they're going to go and find it, so they go in there by the thousands.
21:49There was over 10,000 people from 1878 to 1891 in the superstitions
21:54before the Dutchman died and left his legend.
22:19This is a theme we Hope segmented, but in February 2nd,
22:31Oh, I'm Sniper now to allow a song as those gods in my hometown.
22:34Well, what did you do out there?
22:38I wasn't asking the Genevieve đâu in this season.
22:40They were big, so they were big, so they were one of the first ones
22:44you can Danny V presage and see you football games,
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