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For those not familiar with the legend of the Lost Dutchman Mine, let me fill you in. Back in the 1870s, Jacob Waltz claimed to have found a fabulous ledge of gold in the Superstition Mountains east of Phoenix. Since he was German, I can only assume his “Dutchman” moniker came from some misguided love of Heineken beer. The “Lost” part is evident to anyone who has tried to follow one of those maps to his mine.
From the clues he gave on his deathbed in 1891, his treasure trove is supposedly located somewhere in the vicinity of Weaver’s Needle, a towering monolith of rock, which I assume was named for the ‘50s folk group that once featured Pete Seeger. Unfortunately, at age 81, he apparently forgot some of the details describing exactly how the mine could be found and where he put his mule keys. People have been searching for both ever since.
Using the reasoning powers I perfected while studying French at the University of Arizona, I figure that the Dutchman was probably a bit of an egotist and thus wouldn’t locate his mine on someone else’s trail. So today, on our first attempt to locate his diggings, we naturally followed “Dutchman’s Trail” from the First Water Trailhead. Other than a mother from Michigan hiking with her two daughters, we had the path to ourselves.
We hiked to the lofty summit of Parker Pass from which we had a great view of Weaver’s Needle. We did not however, find anything golden other than petals on scores of cactus blossoms. I can only assume the Michigan mother and her offspring carted the real gold out.
Those young girls looked awfully happy to be heading back towards their car.