No website worth its salt would fail to mention the most notorious and popular treasure legend “The Lost Dutchman”.

Since I feel I’m worth my salt it is included here as a free treasure read; however, a better and more accurate version is available in the ebook.

I found the info for this short story in an old newspaper article while rummaging through my uncle’s papers.

The newspaper story includes a couple of new twists. For one, it changes the origin of the legend to make it more politically correct… by making the so-called Native Americans, docile creatures, instead of the bloody savages that they were and it changes the name of the friend associated with the Dutchmen to Smith.

I imagine this was to suit the newspaper story for we are told that if your name is Smith and your great grandfather was a gold prospector in the early west of the 1880’s you are the heir to the fabulous lost Dutchman gold mine.

Of course the name Smith gives a warm fuzzy feeling to a larger percentage of the newspaper’s readers rather than the name of the actual friend of the Dutchman… Reinhart Petrasch.

I identified Petrasch in my book and there was no indication that he was an heir…but, I guess you have to sell newspapers.

Anyway, the real reason I am writing this is because the newspaper included a treasure map.

Hell any time you can get a treasure map you have to run with it… So to get on with it…

It starts two centuries ago long before America’s westward push when Spanish explorers, from Mexico, stumbled upon some innocent Indians working a rich gold mine deep in the barren superstitions.

The Spaniards seized the mine, enslaved the Indians and sent gold ingots to the Spanish crown. Then after a few years the Indians revolted, massacred the Spanish then carefully covered the mine.

These statements sound a little bit strange when compared with the knowledge of today’s Indian reservations. We know that the words ”Indians” and “working” should not be used in the same sentence.

We are now told that this great natural treasure was lost for another century. When some more Mexicans found it and then a few weeks later a bearded desert rat named Jacob Walz Wandered into their camp.

When Walz murdered the Mexicans it was to be the start of a bloody saga by the Dutchman to keep the secret of his mountain bonanza. Five additional men were to be murdered while searching for the mine before Walz died in Phoenix in 1887.

The existence of the mine was well known in frontier Phoenix. The townspeople saw many chunks of the rich ore, shot through with pure gold that Walz had used to buy his provisions.

Legend has it that Walz had a box of the rich ore under his bed when he died. The final tidbit in the news article was that on his last breath the Dutchmen gave a verbal will bequeathing the mine to a prospector named Smith.

So I give to you this fabulous map that you are free to copy, buy a plane ticket to Phoenix Arizona and head north into the mountains.

Incidentally, according to the newspaper, you will be up against more than a maze of sheer chasms and raw peaks because three modern gold seekers have been mysteriously murdered looking for the lost Dutchman. The word "modern" has to be taking kind of subjectively as this newspaper article was sort of old.

Again, here is the map… you have been warned….