"Quest for the Dutchman's Gold" by Sikorsky -- The Lost Dutchman Mine!

[Ed Augusts]

"QUEST FOR THE DUTCHMAN'S GOLD : The 100-Year
Mystery!"

Sikorsky, Robert. Quest for the Dutchman's Gold : The 100-Year
Mystery! The Facts, Myths and Legends of the Lost Dutchman Mine and
the Superstition Mountains. Golden West Publications, Phoenix, 1991.
Trade Softcover. Illustrated throughout, including both covers, with
photos, drawings, and maps.

Here is a BOOK that has made more money for its author and publishers
over the past few decades, than the "Lost Dutchman" mine ever did.
The book is a fascinating interface between fact and legnd, the
Superstition Mountains, and human superstitions. Considering the mine
has always been known as the "Lost Dutchman" mine, the first myth
dispelled in this book is that the actual "Dutchman" in question,
turns out to have been, not any kind of Dutchman at all, but a German
lad named Jacob Heintz.. Nor did he ever get lost, although his mine,
if there ever was one, was lost for good. Nor was he, the German
whom the Dutchman mine was named after, ever really the possessor of
any kind of mine, lost or otherwise.

He never was such a really big factor in the Superstition Mountains or
in Phoenix, where he ended his days. He died not only broke, but was
so broke for the last few years of his life that he signed over his
property to some fellow countryman in exchange for having a roof over
his head and being taken care of for the rest of his life. But there
IS quite a bit of mystery about this "mine", whatever it is. Because
for a lengthy period of time, for thirty or forty years at least,
anyone wandering into the Superstitions was in danger of being shot
between the eyes and/or of having their head separated from their
body! YES, unless you subscribe to the theory that wild beasts of
undisclosed speciation are roaming the canyons and trails and pull the
heads off dead prospectors and stray visitors, then the headless
bodies --not to mention heads without bodies-- are hard to explain.
In a cool section of this gritty book, the author goes into some
detail on how prospector after prospector, amateurs fresh off the
train from Milwaukee, as well as seasoned veterans, were in mortal
danger from the moment they left the outskirts of civilization at
Phoenix, and went up into the canyons, washes, and pinnacles of the
Superstition Mountains.

The book is peppered with photos, half of them about the author's
peculiar quest for the Lost Dutchman mine, starting about 40 years
ago, and a mad-woman who had an obsession about a certain steep rock
formation and brought men to their deaths in trying to find an
entrance. She nearly killed the author, Sikorsky, when he was a young
man, and working for her. Photos of him from these days pepper the
book.

The mystery of the mine is nearly impenetrable, however, and made
worse by the fact that this book, with its 749-odd facts, assertions,
names and dates, was very poorly edited. In many respects, this book
is a hodge-podge. Historical facts and fictions are scattered from one
end of the book to the other, not in any kind of logical order. The
book is fun as hell, and hell can't be much hotter than the gulleys
and trails of the Superstition Mountains in the Arizona summer. But
the book ends-up reading as if it was written in some kind of secret
code. And maybe it is! Or, more likely, the author is playing with
his readers. After all, he doesn't believe the Dutchman Mine exists.
Nothing like it! The former title of this book (in a former
incarnation) was “Fool's Gold”. He makes everyone who left the East
and Midwest to come hunting for gold in Arizona's Superstition
Mountains sound like tin-horn fools... the ones that survived, and
especially the ones who fell victim to mysterious accidents and
murders. But these purported, would-be gold-seekers were fooling
themselves. Most of them from these dingy, wet Northern cities were
really just entranced with the thought of the sunny, bright,
stupendously arid climate of Central Arizona. That's what brought
them out! The Apaches, the Peraltas, the Dutchman... these were just
legends and fairytales and sooner or later most of these gold-seekers
found that out. "Go there & do thou likewise --at your own peril!"
-----Ed