The show's web site touts "The promise of a $200 million mother lode has
lured thousands of treasure hunters and continues to claim the lives of
those eager to decipher the legend’s clues and riddles."
And that's the part that is worrisome. For years, treasure hunters, many of them with no experience of trekking through rugged and arid terrain, would come by the AZGS office to pour over topographic maps hoping to strike it rich.
In 2010, 3 Utah men hiked in, looking for the Lost Dutchman. Their remains were found 6 months later. The estimates are that 50 and perhaps as many as 70, people have died exploring the mountains. Members of sheriff search and rescue groups lament how many people go in woefully unprepared for the rigors, lulled by the mountains relative proximity to a major metropolitan area.
And that's the part that is worrisome. For years, treasure hunters, many of them with no experience of trekking through rugged and arid terrain, would come by the AZGS office to pour over topographic maps hoping to strike it rich.
In 2010, 3 Utah men hiked in, looking for the Lost Dutchman. Their remains were found 6 months later. The estimates are that 50 and perhaps as many as 70, people have died exploring the mountains. Members of sheriff search and rescue groups lament how many people go in woefully unprepared for the rigors, lulled by the mountains relative proximity to a major metropolitan area.
Will the tv show spawn a new rush of would=be prospectors with gold in their eyes?
Just read an article that Jacob Waltz worked at the Vulture Mine in Wickenburg and probably high graded (stole) ore from the mine. The ore found at the time of his death resembled the ore from the Wickenburg mine more than any located in the Superstition Mountain Wilderness area.
ReplyDeleteHaving read about his character he would probably be laughing at all the fools running around in the heat to strike it rich a hundred miles or less from where the real cache is located. He was not a very good person at all. He is buried in the Pioneer Cemetery on 15th Avenue in Phoenix.
I also came across this theory in several old documents I read in old mine files at ADMMR in the 1970s. The documents I read surmised that Jacob Waltz had taken ore from the Vulture while working there and that he claimed it was from the Superstition Mountains area. The Vulture Mine ore and Waltz's ore sample had very similar assays and looked quite similar.
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