Lost Mines and Buried Treasures of Arizona

Arizona’s history is liberally seasoned with legends of lost mines, buried treasures, and significant deposits of gold and silver. The famous Lost Dutchman Mine has lured treasure hunters for over a century into the remote, treacherous, and reportedly cursed Superstition Mountains east of Phoenix. Gold and silver bars discovered in Huachuca Canyon by a soldier stationed at nearby Fort Huachuca just before World War II remain inaccessible despite years of laborious attempts at recovery. Outside the town of Yucca, bandits eager to make a fast getaway buried a strongbox filled with gold, unaware they wouldn’t survive the pursuit of a law-enforcing posse to recover their plunder. And somewhere in the Little Horn Mountains northeast of Yuma lies an elusive wash containing hundreds of odd gold-filled rocks. Selected from hundreds of tales passed down from generation to generation since the days of the gold-seeking Spanish explorers, the tales included here are among the most compelling that Arizona has to offer.