Once upon a time, my family visited Arizona, on vacation, and one of us picked up the book The Story of Superstition Mountain and the Lost Dutchman Gold Mine. I think Mom read it when we got back home. Years later, I tried reading it, and maybe got through a few chapters. I put it down, and I forgot about it, and when I moved to Arizona in 1996, it followed me here.

I picked it back up again, to fill the leisurely reading slot in the Jeremy-Gilby-dot-com Reading List.

It is a novelized history of the well known volcanic plug to the East of Phoenix near Apache Junction, misnamed Superstition Mountain. (It is misnamed as it is a collection of cliffs and peaks, each with their own names.)

It was a unique enough book that I thought I’d write a Book Review.

Story

From the Back Cover


The Treasure — A Shelf of Pure Gold!
“Where Weaver’s Needle casts its long shadow at four in the afternoon, there you will find a vein of rose quartz laced with gold wire – and you will be rich beyond your wildest dreams.”
In pursuit of this almost legendary lode, men and women came, and still come, to explore the cliffs and canyons of the world’s most treacherous mountain. And their remains – bleached bones, beheaded bodies – have been found up and down its craggy surface.
This is the story of those who searched for gold on the sacred mountain. It is a tale of adventure filled with violence, greed, and love, and all incredibly true!

Written in 1971, the book chronicles the discovery of the mountain by the Spaniards, to the discovery of the mine, and the history of rediscovering the same mine through the centuries.

Plot

• The Spaniards
  On Coronado’s expedition from Mexico into, now, Arizona and New Mexico, they observed the unavoidable mesa-like mountain in the desert, somewhere around 1540. It was unremarkable, because on the same expedition, Coronado and his men also found the Grand Canyon. However, even before Coronado, the Apaches had claimed this mountain as the home of their Thunder God.
• The Peralta Massacre
  In 1845, Don Miguel Peralta discovered a vein of pure gold on the mountain. He brought up men from Mexico and started excavating, which was an abomination to the Apaches. As Peralta loaded the gold concentrate onto his burros, and departed, the Apache attacked, killing Peralta and his men. The burros, however, were taken, the bags of gold left laying on the ground. Some burros escaped to die in the mountain. However, the legend began. There was not only gold in Superstition Mountain, but it was laying around in bags left unwanted by the Apache.
• The Life of Dr. Abraham D. Thorne
  Almost half the book is the story of three men, Thorne, Walz and Walker. Thorne’s story gives an account of the Apache, as he was a friend of the Apache and served as a doctor to them. He was also a very good linguist and learned to speak their language. He learned of the Gold first hand, as the Apache had taken him to a remote canyon, blindfolded, where could see rocks of Gold Concentrate on the ground and pick them up. He assumed this was the location of the Peralta mine, and tried to find the mine again, with no success. We later learn this was just a place where The Peralta Massacre had occured.
• The Life of Dr. John D. Walker
  Like Thorne, Walker was a friend of Pima Tribe. While the Apache were more war like, the Pima were more peaceful, but were very good hunters. However, it was at the urging of the Governor of the Arizona Territory (Goodwin) that the Pima and the Maricopa go to war with the Apache; which they did and were victorious over the Apache.
  It was years later when Walker crossed paths with prospector Jacob Walz, and learned about the Gold on the mountain. He spent considerable time trying to find out the location from Walz and the natives, but to no avail. He did discover Silver Mine in Vekol Arizona. He also became a judge in Pinal county.
• The story of Jacob Walz
  Walz, who lived around the Apache, had discovered the Peralta Mine, and was hauling a fortune to Phoenix. Word of this spread and the “Dutchman’s Gold Mine” came to being in the local vocabulary. Walz was sneaky enough to avoid marauders and others trying to find his mine. On his death bed, he told a woman taking care of him the way to the mine. “Where Weaver’s Needle casts its long shadow at four in the afternoon” was where she would find the mine. It sounds like something straight out of Indiana Jones.
  Julia Thomas never found the mine.
  However, that did not stop people from fabricating maps to the “Peralta Mine” or the “Lost Dutchman Mine”, and hundreds of people, prospectors and non-prospectors alike crawled all over the mountain to look for the clues to lead them to the mother lode. All were unsuccessful. However, a small mining operation on the northwest side of the mountain, on the desert floor, found a good deposit of gold. This later became the town of Goldfield. Unfortunately, after a flood, the vein was lost and the mining operation abandoned.
• The Story of Apache Junction
  Apache Junction came to being at the crossroads just at the base of Superstition Mountain. It was a perfect waypoint for would-be prospectors looking to conquer and find the Lost Dutchman Gold Mine.
  In 1955, W. Winfield Creighton, saw an opportunity and quickly turned Apache Junction into a tourist hot spot. He modernized the town, got it put on the map, added a baseball park to host Cactus League Spring Training, and built a Championship Golf Course; All under the shadow of the beautiful mountain to the east. Add the simmering history of the mountain, Creighton turned a desert dust town into a place that drew people and their tourism dollars.
• The Lost Dutchman Gold Mine
  Rediscovered by Alfred Strong Lewis, a prospector for the Goldfield mine, Lewis came upon a large boulder with some curious markings of digging. He found a secondary shaft which lead to a primary shaft.
  The Primary Shaft was indeed Peralta’s mine, it still contained the original Ironwood timbers used to brace the sides, now almost petrified from the long exposure to water and pyrite. The secondary shaft (To get around the boulder) was made by Walz himself.
  (I laughed out loud when I got to this part. The Lost Dutchman Gold Mine was nowhere near Weaver’s Needle. It wasn’t even in the Superstition Mountains, either, it was a few miles to the North West. Even on his deathbed, Walz was misdirecting would be prospectors.)
  And in fact, the Goldfield mine was probably mining a different vein, which lead to the same motherlode. Work immediately began to extract the gold from the mine, but the earth had shifted so the lines to the Mother lode were lost. More equipment could be brought in, but the return would not cover the mining investment. So the project was put on hold until the price of gold could cover the cost.
  As of the writing of this book, the mother lode was never found.

Characters

There were a plethora of characters in this tale, I’ll highlight a few:

• Superstition Mountain – The Protagonist
  A holy site for the Apache. An object of greed for the white man. The mountain has taken the lives of men in both names.
• Don Miguel Peralta
  Original Prospector of the Superstition Mountains. He started the Peralta Mine to the Northwest, and was ambushed by the Apache for desecrating the home of their Thunder God.
• Dr. Abraham Thorne
  Veteran of the Civil War, Thorne escaped from the pressures of life and lived among the Apache; teaching them medicine, and teaching the women how to successfully midwife. He decreased labor deaths among the Apache. Through Thorne, the reader interacts with such Apache as Cochise and Geronimo.
  However, the historical record suggests There was never a Dr. Thorne
• Dr. John D. Walker
  Serving as an unofficial ambassador to the Pima culture, Walker was forced to lead the Pima/Maracopa attack on the Apache. He fell in love and married a Pima, Chur-ga, and they had a daughter Juanita. He met Walz, but could not learn the location of the Dutchman’s mine. As I mentioned above, he made a comfortable life for himself, with the Vekol Silver Mine, and as a respected figure in Pinal County. Unfortunately, due to Arizona laws regarding marriage did not recognize Walker’s marriage to Chur-ga was not recognized, and Juanita was an illegitimate daughter. Juanita died in abject poverty after her parents passed away, as her father’s fortune was taken by unknown cousins.
• Jacob Walz – The Dutchman
  A loner who found his way into Apache culture. Walz married an Apache Ken-tee. After Ken-tee was murdered, he lived a life of solitude, and discovered the Peralta Mine. For years he moved to and from Phoenix, with a fortune of gold. He was so rich, he gave away unprocessed nuggets on cuff links to people who were barely friends. He was famous for avoiding those who would cause him trouble, or to steal the mine from him. And he was sneaky to his death, leading hundreds of people on a wild goose chase, until the mid-20th century.
• Julia Thomas
  A friend of Walz, who tried to nurse him to health as he died of old age. The connection to Weaver’s Needle started through her.
• Charles Hall
  One of the founders of the Goldfield Mine, which is connected to the Lost Dutchman Mine. Hall and his partners retired rich from their excavations.
• Adolph Ruth
  This amateur prospector is one of the most famous and mysterious deaths on the mountain. Only a few people knew he was on the mountain, and he had nothing of value to steal, and it was not the Apache. Who killed Adolph Ruth?
• Herbert Leroy Shockey
  One of the most vicious killers on the mountain. He killed a pair of elderly prospectors with only the intent of he wanted to kill someone. He was caught, arrested, and sentenced to two life senteces without the possibility of parole.
• Alfred Strong Lewis
  Rediscover of the Lost Dutchman Mine. Along with a partnership, which almost became a corporation, the mining operation continued again in the 20th Century, until the gold revenues no longer made a profit.
• Beatrice Lewis – The Old Lady with the Shotgun
  After the death of her husband, and the end of the profits to the Goldfield/Duchman mine, Beatrice stayed in her cabin to keep guard over the claim. She fended off many a would be marauder through her old age, and died peacefully of a heart attack in her sleep. Her shotgun was still within reach.

Readability

This was a nice read for me. A little history, a little culture, and perhaps some fiction. I’ve always enjoyed reading about local history, after I moved out here. (I’m now joking with an Apache friend of mine on where the Goldmine is. He just smiles with a laugh, and a shaking of his head.) The chapters were brief and interlaced the stories of Thorne, Walker and Walz early on, then proceeded through to 1971.

Believability

Even though this is considered Non-Fiction, the book reads like fiction, especially with the stories of Thorne, Walker, and Walz. It was hard to believe there was enough research done to come up with the level of detail told in the book.
Additionally, the “modern” account of the Superstition area was quite dated. It lost its timelessness here, as Arizona has changed quite a bit in 40 years.

Overall

I’m happy I finally crossed this off my Reading List, it had been on my bookshelf for years. The pages are yellow now. But it gave me a better local appreciation of my home.

Overall: 3.5 stars.

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