Watercolour and crayon
©2022 Charlene Brown
Unlike Sabino Canyon, the location of my virtual camping and hiking last week (really just a picturesque ravine in the Santa Catalina Mountains north of Tucson), this week’s setting is infamously connected to the legend of the Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine.
According to this legend, Jacob Waltz, who was actually a German immigrant employed at the Vulture Mine, claimed to have found the mother lode of gold in the Superstition Mountains. He revealed its location to only one person as he lay dying in 1891. And he didn’t reveal it very clearly. Many lives have been lost since then as searchers climbing into every obscure corner in the extremely rugged terrain. There is now a widespread suspicion that Jacob was systematically stealing gold from the Vulture Mine, and came up with the story of the lost mine to explain the bags of gold under his deathbed.
Next I’ll paint my virtual hike up one of the precipitous paths among the crags of these mountains.
