Lost Dutchman's Gold Mine - Stories About The Mine

Stories About The Mine

John D Wilburn in his book "Dutchman's Lost Ledge of Gold", 1990, points out that the Bulldog Gold Mine near Goldfield, Arizona, fits very well the description Jacob Waltz gave as the location of his 'lost mine'. He states that geology indicates that there is no gold in the Superstition Mountains, which are igneous in origin.

Granger writes that "act and fiction blend in the tales", but that there are three main elements to the story:

"They are, first, tales of the lost Apache gold or Dr. Thorne's mine; second, tales about the Lost Dutchman; and, third, stories of the soldiers' lost gold vein ... he most complete version of the Lost Dutchman story incorporates all three legends". As noted below, Blair argues that there are kernels of truth at the heart of each of these three main stories, though the popular story is often badly garbled from the actual account.

In 1977, Granger identified 62 variants of the Lost Dutchman story – some of the variations are minor, but others are substantial, casting the story in a very different light from the other versions. Keeping in mind that there are sometimes considerable variance between the tales, below is a brief summary of each of the three stories identified by Granger.