The Silver Madonna and Other Tales of America's Greatest Lost Treasures (6 page)

Walz also provided Thomas other information: that placer gold could be found at various locations in the dry stream bed that ran along the canyon floor; that the entrance to one important shaft was on the north-facing slope near the head of the canyon. Walz explained that one could stand as close as ten feet to the opening of the mine and still not see it. Inside, he said, was an eighteen-inch-thick vein of almost pure gold. Standing in front of the opening, one could look out across the small valley and see the ruins of an old rock house originally constructed by the Spaniards. At the top of the slope beyond the rock house was another shaft, this one vertical and also containing a thick seam of gold.

Other directions to Walz’s gold exist, many of them cobbled together from the hints he left during his trips to town. Many of them contradict one another, and most are believed to be hoaxes.

Jacob Walz passed away in 1891 in the home of Thomas. With his death came the growing and often exaggerated tales of his gold. As a result, numerous expeditions entered the Superstition Mountains in search of what came to be called the Lost Dutchman Mine, the name by which it is best known today. Instead of a single mine, however, Walz’s holdings included several shafts, a number of placer deposits, and numerous caches.

From that time until today, hundreds of expeditions have been launched into the Superstition Mountains in search of the Lost Dutchman Mine. Dozens of men have lost their lives. During the early years, some were victims of Indian attack. Others perished from thirst, snakebite, exposure, or falls from cliffs. Those who died were believed by many to be victims of the fabled curse.

Today there exist dozens of books and thousands of articles about the Lost Dutchman Mine and several movies have been made, all of which add to the legend. Despite all of the attention given to the tale, and despite the endless quests to find the gold, the sources of the ore have remained lost. Many contend Walz covered and camouflaged the mine shafts before he died. Others suggest they were covered by landslides generated by an earthquake in 1877. Still others will argue that the gold in the mines was simply depleted as a result of the mining activities by the Spaniards, Peralta, and Walz. And there are even some who claim the gold never existed at all.

That the Spaniards found gold in the Superstition Mountains cannot be denied; it is a matter of historical record. The same can be said for the huge mining operations conducted by Don Miguel Peralta II. That Walz found gold in the range is an established fact.

The truth is, the canyon containing the mine shafts and the placer deposits has been found several times over the years by prospectors and treasure hunters. While there is evidence that many of the mines have simply played out, the fact remains that the caches secreted by Peralta and Walz have not been located. It is these sources of gold ore, along with the opportunity to recover gold from Camp Creek, that continue to lure gold-seeking adventurers into the rugged vastness of the Superstition Mountains.

Men still arrive in the range today, each coming with the belief that they will be the lucky one to find gold. Most come away empty-handed. Some never return alive, for the ongoing threats of rattlesnake bite and thirst remain. It is not uncommon to read about another hiker who has lost his life in the Superstition range. Many say accidents are inevitable. Others claim the deaths are a result of poor preparation. And there are some who maintain that all were victims of the curse.

6

The Huachuca Canyon Treasure

The state of Arizona is replete with legends of lost mines and buried treasures. Though none are as famous as that of the Lost Dutchman Mine, there exist others equally, if not more, fascinating—and promising. One of those that promises wealth beyond imagination to whomever finds it is known as the Huachuca Canyon Treasure, which consists of untold millions of dollars’ worth of gold ingots. Finding this incredible hoard is not the main obstacle, for the location is known. Recovering it, however, is fraught with challenge and obstacles.

Robert Jones was an enlisted man in the U.S. Army and was assigned to a communications division at Fort Huachuca in southeastern Arizona during the months leading up to World War II. During his stay there, the summer daytime temperatures rose to well over 100 degrees. On one of his days off, Jones decided to seek some relief from the heat by hiking and exploring the shady oak and pine canyons of the nearby Huachuca Mountains. Accompanied by a friend, he drove into Huachuca Canyon along a very old and seldom used dirt road.

Arriving at a point where the road had washed out, Jones parked his car and the two men continued up the canyon on foot along a shadowed trail. Now and again they spotted deer in the forest, squirrels and blue jays in the trees, and chipmunks among the rocks. Wary of rattlesnakes known to inhabit the area, they proceeded with caution.

As the two men made their way up the canyon, Jones noted changes in the color of the rock near the base of the rock wall. A large pile of loose rubble appeared to be talus from a former mining operation. Jones searched the area near the wastes but could not see evidence of a mine shaft. Curious, he climbed up the talus slope for a closer look. As Jones was walking along a short stretch of the canyon atop the talus, the ground suddenly gave way beneath him and he dropped thirty-two feet into an almost vertical shaft.

Stunned and slightly injured, Jones called out to his companion. By the time his friend arrived, Jones realized he had fallen into an old mine shaft, one that had been covered over sometime in the distant past. From where he sat at the bottom of the drop, Jones could see that the shaft leveled off and continued laterally into the bedrock of the mountain.

Responding to Jones’s request, the friend retrieved a small flashlight from the vehicle and dropped it down to him. Pointing the narrow beam, Jones followed it into the passageway for twenty yards, eventually arriving at a low-ceilinged, rectangular chamber that had been excavated out of the rock and reinforced with hand-laid stones, mortar, and timbers. Jones, who was five feet seven inches tall, could barely stand upright in the chamber.

Employing the dim illumination of the flashlight, Jones explored the chamber. As he approached one of the walls, he saw that stacked along its length were what he determined were gold and silver ingots. They were twenty inches long and he estimated there were two hundred of each. He picked up one of the gold bars and hefted it. He estimated that it weighed fifty pounds.

Near the center of chamber, Jones encountered two large wooden tubs. Each one, he explained later, was “as big as three washtubs.” One of the tubs was filled to the top with gold nuggets, the other half full with gold dust. A short distance from the tubs he found a large glass jar. Examining it in the glow of the flashlight, Jones saw that it contained what he thought was a message. With great care, he withdrew what he later described was a rolled up sheepskin on which was Spanish writing and a crude map. Unable to understand any of it, Jones placed it back into the jar and returned it to where he found it.

Jones was in the chamber for almost an hour when the flashlight began to fail. With difficulty, and with the help of his friend, he managed to climb out of the shaft. Excited, Jones told his companion what he had found inside the old mine shaft. He described what he estimated to be an incredible fortune in gold and silver ingots. As they hiked back to the location where the car was parked, the two friends made plans to return to the site and carry away as much of the gold and silver as they could manage.

Later that same afternoon when they returned to the military base, Jones and his friend sought out the company commander. After arranging a meeting, Jones explained what he found in Huachuca Canyon. The captain refused to believe any of what the sergeant told him and after a few minutes dismissed him. The two enlisted men sought help from other officers, but were unable to convince any of them of the existence of the treasure.

The following day, Jones related his adventure and discovery to First Sergeant Matt Venable. Years later when Venable was interviewed about his connection to the Huachuca Canyon treasure, he recalled that both Jones and his friend were exceptional soldiers and never known to exaggerate. After listening to Jones’s tale, Venable made a recommendation to military authorities that they consider investigating the claim. No action was taken.

Discouraged, Jones and his friend decided to bide their time and wait for the appropriate opportunity to return to the canyon and retrieve the gold and silver. The next weekend, they made their way back to the site and determined that it lay within the boundaries of the military reservation. While there, they covered the opening with logs and branches to keep others from finding it. On a nearby tree, Jones made two slashes. Using a rock hammer, he scraped his initials on a granite boulder it was necessary to pass in order to get to the opening of the concealed mine.

Jones and his friend intended to undertake a retrieval operation as soon as possible. They identified digging and mining equipment necessary to accomplish their goal. They lay awake nights talking about what they would do with the treasure once they recovered it from the old mine. When they finally fell asleep, their dreams were of wealth.

The plans had to be postponed. A few months later, war was declared and Jones and his friend were transferred out of southeastern Arizona. Jones was shipped to the Pacific and his friend sent to the African-European theater. Within a few days of arriving at his new assignment, Jones’s friend was killed. A short time later, Jones was severely wounded in a firefight on Wake Island. He spent several months recovering.

The need for medical treatment, therapy, and the financial difficulties it entailed kept Jones from returning to Huachuca Canyon. Eventually, he was discharged from the army and was given a small pension. He and his wife moved to Dallas, Texas, where she was employed as a nurse at the Dallas Medical Center.

The rehabilitation required by his wounds occupied Jones for the next eleven years. Despite everything, he remained crippled. Unable to exercise, Jones gained weight and had extreme difficulty getting around. During this time he returned to Huachuca Canyon several times, but he was unable to perform the work necessary to retrieve the treasure. In time, he formally appealed to the U.S. Army for assistance, but in every case he was informed he would not be allowed to dig for treasure on a military reservation.

In 1959 Jones sought an audience with Major General F. W. Moorman, who was the post commander of Fort Huachuca at the time. Unlike the officers he spoke with before, Moorman believed Jones’s story. He examined Jones’s military record and discovered he had been a competent and reliable soldier. Moorman arranged to have two military psychiatrists interview and evaluate Jones. Both reported that the subject was likely telling the truth about what he claimed he discovered in the old mine shaft. With this information, along with other documents supporting Jones’s credibility, Moorman approved his application to attempt a recovery of the treasure believed to lie within the old mine shaft in Huachuca Canyon. A period of two weeks was granted for the project.

Jones formed a small company to administer and oversee the recovery attempt. Each member was to share in the wealth that was retrieved. On the morning of the first day of the allotted period, the group entered Huachuca Canyon. The participants followed Jones, who limped his way along the route using a cane, and eventually came to the boulder where he had caved his initials eighteen years earlier. Nearby were found the two slashes he made on the tree. A few minutes later, Jones was standing atop the logs and branches and other forest debris he and his friend had laid across the opening of the old mine. The material was pulled away, and moments later two of the team members descended into the shaft.

As they climbed down into the shaft, the men noted that it was clearly manmade and at least two hundred years old, maybe more. Halfway down they encountered a problem. Since Jones climbed out of the vertical shaft nearly two decades earlier, a portion of it had collapsed, filling the bottom with tons of rock. The treasure recovery team was now faced with the huge task of removing large and heavy rock in order to gain access to the treasure chamber. The equipment they carried with them was not up to this task. After returning to Fort Huachuca, Jones petitioned the military for permission to bring some heavy excavation equipment into the area in order to remove the rock fill. The army agreed to his plan but only at his own expense.

On hearing of Jones’s plight, Moorman took pity on him and authorized the use of a military bulldozer that was brought to the site. With the bulldozer, much of the talus was cleared away and the opening of the shaft enlarged. Approximately half of the rock debris that had accumulated in the bottom of the shaft was removed. At that point, however, the diggers encountered another problem, a serious one. The remainder of the vertical shaft was not only filled with boulders but also with water, making further excavation difficult to impossible.

The operation was halted. Jones preoccupied himself with formulating alternative plans, but by the time he had come up with a new strategy for recovering the treasure, his allotted time had expired and he was ordered to vacate the canyon.

During the month of September 1959, Jones and his team returned to Fort Huachuca to attempt to negotiate another attempt at recovering the treasure. His request was granted, and Jones ordered a drilling rig to be transported to the site. With the rig, he succeeded in boring a hole into the main chamber where the gold and silver were stored. Jones reasoned that if water was located here then it could be pumped out through the hole while the debris filling the shaft was removed. As water pumps were being hooked up to generators, two bulldozers worked to enlarge the shaft and remove the boulders blocking the team’s access. It would just be a matter of time, Jones was convinced, before they would reach the gold and silver ingots.

When another dozen feet of rock debris had been cleared from the entrance, another problem arose—water began seeping in at a faster rate. More pumps were brought to the site and work continued around the clock for the next three days and nights.

To the dismay of the engineer and geologist on the team, the seeping water was causing minor cave-ins in the old and highly weathered granite. The situation had become so dangerous that the recovery attempt was abandoned. Jones retreated to consider other strategies.

During the lull in the digging, Jones brought in another professional geologist to consult on the project. Following an inspection of the site, he agreed that they were digging into a manmade shaft, most likely one that had been excavated by early Spanish miners in this area. The geologist also declared the site unsafe and recommended the area be abandoned and sealed off.

Jones was not to be deterred, and after all of the equipment and personnel were removed from the area, he began to consider other options. By now, however, the activity in Huachuca Canyon and the revelation of the possibility of a huge treasure being found there attracted the attention of newspaper and television reporters from around the country. They arrived in large numbers to cover the progress of the recovery operation. As their numbers swelled in the canyon, military officials grew concerned about safety and security and threatened to terminate any and all excavation activity.

As reporters swarmed into the region, a representative from the U.S. Treasury Department arrived at the site and announced that he was empowered to assume possession of any and all treasure that might be recovered. Following an inventory of the hoard, he said 60 percent of whatever was found would go directly to the government. Jones would be eligible to receive the remaining 40 percent but it would be taxed.

Two weeks later, a large crane with a clam shovel was transported to the site. With the crane, another five feet of debris was removed. At this point, the workers encountered an exceptionally large boulder that had become wedged tight at the bottom of the shaft near the point where it went from vertical to horizontal. In order to reduce the resistance, a hole was bored into the rock and stuffed with explosive material. The subsequent blast created more problems than it solved—tons of adjacent rock were dislodged and collapsed into the shaft, completely refilling it. According to the consulting geologist, it was likely that the chamber containing the gold and silver ingots had also collapsed.

For another five days, men and machines labored to remove the additional rock. As they worked, they discovered that all traces of the original shaft had been obliterated. At this point, Jones was forced to abandon the project. Jones informed military authorities that he would attempt to acquire additional backing for another attempt at retrieving the treasure. The army decision makers, however, informed him that under no circumstances would he be allowed to dig in Huachuca Canyon again.