About the author

Jim Hatt first heard the story about the Lost Dutchman Mine, which he now believes is one of the locations on the Peralta Stone Maps, from his great-grandfather Earl Arthur Hatt in 1956. Earl had personally known members of the Petrasch family who were among some of the earliest searchers for the lost mine of Jacob Waltz (the Dutchman). Earl maintained little more than a casual interest in what eventually grew to be one of the most famous legends in the history of lost mines in the entire Southwest. The story smoldered through four generations of the Hatt family until it fell upon Jim’s ears and burned into his soul.

Jim dreamed of going to Arizona and searching for the lost mine all of his life, but it was not until 1989 when his children were grown and starting separate lives of their own, that he felt free to pursue his own dreams. Jim left a full time lucrative career in commercial nuclear power and began living on intermittent consulting contracts in the nuclear field, and odd jobs around Apache Junction, Arizona in order to dedicate more and more time to chasing the legend. It was a decision that he has never regretted in the years that have passed since. In 1998

Jim was selected as one of five men to be profiled in a documentary filmed for A&E about the search for the Lost Dutchman Mine. Also profiled in the documentary were Tom Kollenborn, Bob Corbin, Clay Worst and Ron Feldman. One day of filming was dedicated to an interview of Senator John McCain filmed in the shadow of the Superstition Mountains, where as a younger man he had also left his footprints along the rocky trails in the land of legends.

“If someone is surreptitiously working the Lost Dutchman Mine, and it is in the Superstition Wilderness Area, they are breaking the law, and they are making lots of money while they are doing it. You interrupt them . . . and their main goal is going to be to keep you quiet!” ~Jim Hatt~

The above quoted from Jim Hatt in the documentary THE LOST DUTCHMAN MINE filmed by Greystone Communications for A&E on location in the Superstition Mountains in 1998.

Lost Dutchman Maps

Maps to buried treasure and lost mines in the Superstition Mountains of Arizona are not at all uncommon.  Most local residents of Apache Junction, Arizona who’ve lived there for any length of time can go to a desk or dresser drawer in their home and pull out a handful of maps they have collected over the years from newspapers, magazines, books, and even from various websites on the Internet.  These maps, when followed correctly, are supposed to lead to some long lost and forgotten cache or natural deposit of gold somewhere in the Superstition Wilderness or surrounding area.

Unfortunately, many of these maps have been redrawn to fit specific areas with landmarks that could be found, when the original area shown on the map could not, the intent being to dupe an investor into financially backing a quest for a lost mine or buried treasure..  Others have been deliberately altered and surreptitiously circulated by greedy individuals of low moral character whose intent was to cast doubt on a map that they themselves believed to be of great value. 

Peralta Stone Maps

Without a doubt the most fascinating of all these maps is a set of stone slabs, each of which measures approximately 18 inches wide, 12 inches high, and 2 inches thick. The slabs feature beautifully carved symbols of a Trail, a Horse, a Dagger, and a Priest, and one has a recessed area for another stone that is shaped like a heart, as well as numerous wavy lines that appear to be topographical features. These stone slabs, or maps, have come to be known as the “Peralta Stone Maps” because the names   “Pedro” and “Miguel” are carved on them leading to the reasonable conclusion that these names refer to the same two men that are spoken of in the well-documented stories concerning a Pedro and Miguel Peralta who are reported to have descended from mining families in Sonora, Mexico who worked mines in what is now as the state of Arizona.

Reportedly, the Stone Maps were found sometime in the late 1940’s by a Police Officer from Portland, Oregon named Travis Tumlinson. According to the story Tumlinson told, he was passing through Arizona on a trip and pulled off to the side of Hwy 60 east of Apache Junction to take a stretch break, and while walking around stumbled over the corner of one of the stones sticking up out of the dirt. In 1995, Al Reser, a longtime resident of Apache Junction and lost mine hunter, took me to a location on Hwy 60 just west of Florence Junction where he pointed to the spot that a man named Charlie Miller, who had been a close friend of Tumlinson’s brother, told him was the spot where the Stone Maps had been found.

Unlike their paper counterparts, the Stone Maps remain unmodified by the passage of time, but they do not escape the haze of mystery, suspicion, and doubt that surround all so-called “Treasure Maps.”  Clay Worst, another longtime resident of Apache Junction and lost mine hunter, took me to a different area where the late author Bob Ward had personally shown him the exact spot where someone other than Travis Tumlinson had found the Stone Maps. I also read another account that stated that a third individual claimed he found the Stone Maps on the south side of US 60, several miles east of Florence Junction. According to this account, both men claimed to have sold the Stone Maps to Tumlinson for the meager sum of $100. 

Recorded history as well as simple logic does not back up their claims. If either of the other men had found the Stone Maps, surely they would not have sold them before first trying to establish their monetary value.  In seeing what the market would bear they obviously would have had to show the stones to a good number of individuals. Nobody, to my knowledge, has ever said that they saw anyone in possession of the original four Stone Maps prior to the date that Tumlinson claimed to have found them. Furthermore, why would they sell them to an individual from out of state (Tumlinson) who was just passing through when there was any number of financially healthy and well-known local treasure hunters who, I am sure, would have shelled out a lot more than $100 for the maps if they had been offered to them.

Personally, I believe Travis Tumlinson found the Stone Maps right where Al Reser showed me. Every scholarly individual who has examined the stone maps has been unable to conclude when, or where, or by whom, the maps were created. One consistent conclusion they could come to, was that there are definitely two different authors using two different methods of making inscriptions on the faces of the stones. The first author was a master of his craft and very consistent in the depth, width and style of his carvings, while the second author lacked the skill of the first author, and his carvings are little more than scratchings on the surface. Apparently someone that knew how to read the maps, or had actually been to the area they applied to, was giving verbal instructions on how to use them to someone else that was informally scratching these instructions on the face of the stones

For more than 50 years the Peralta Stone Maps have been the subject of controversy and debate.  Over this time period those who’ve studied the maps have remained firmly divided into two separate camps of believers and nonbelievers. 

Except for the maps themselves, the believers have little to nothing in the way of physical evidence to support their arguments that these maps are authentic records of a one hundred or more year old mining operation in the Superstition Mountains of Arizona. 

The nonbelievers have even less evidence to support their arguments that, for example, these stone maps were created as part of some fraudulent scheme to extort money from unsuspecting investors. Interestingly enough, even the nonbelievers are as irresistibly drawn to any discussion or article about the stone maps as the believers are!  These maps possess some unexplainable quality that grips the imagination and does not let go whether a person believes them to be authentic or not.

The carvings on the stone maps suggest that they are Spanish or Mexican in origin and the names Pedro & Miguel carved on them suggest they may have been created, or at least once owned, by the Peralta family of Sonora, Mexico.  As is well known, the Peralta name is indelibly etched into the legend of the Lost Dutchman Mine, because Jacob Waltz himself stated on several occasions that his mine was an old Peralta mine.

One puzzling aspect of the original four stone maps found by Tumlinson, which the believers have had a hard time explaining since the day they were found, is that they just don’t seem to lead you anywhere specific. There is no clearly defined starting point and no obvious landmark of any kind that lets you know when you have reached the end of the trail. For those who claim to know how to read them and who have succeed in working their way through the mountains to what they believe is, (based on their interpretations of the maps) the end of the trail, there is never anything there that can be directly linked to anything on the stone maps or that can be used to verify that they have arrived in the right place.

Until now, no one has been able to identify the end of the trail because they have failed to study all the pieces of the stone map set.  The set includes not only the Horse/Priest, Heart, and Trail maps, but also the lesser-known Latin Heart, found in the same general area as the other four pieces but many years later.

The key to the Peralta Stone Maps is the Latin Heart. Once you understand how to use it, it provides the information that can be used to verify that you have reached the end of the trail. Only after that has been verified, can you begin to understand the information on the Priest/Horse map.

The “Latin Heart”

The Latin Heart is the most important of all the stones in the Peralta Stone Map set and the only stone in the set that provides specific information pertaining to the location of the mines or caches depicted on the other stones.   Like most people, my first exposure to the Latin Heart was in 1990 when I read Bob Ward’s book Ripples of Lost Echoes and saw the drawings there showing both sides of the Latin Heart.

On the front side of the Latin Heart is an arrangement of Latin words.  Unfortunately, due to wear on the front side of it, the person who drew the paper copy was unable to make out three words, instead drawing empty boxes in these three locations. My research determined that the Latin words on the Heart, which can be read, are written in what is referred to as “ancient” Latin, a form of Latin, which in some cases is significantly different from modern Latin.

Although the back of the heart is covered with symbols that appear to be Roman numerals, as Bob Ward suggested in his book, I was constantly being told by people in the field of mathematics that they could not be Roman numerals because Roman numerals do not use symbols like ((((((  and  ))))))) nor is any symbol repeated more than three times. Well, through persistence and the wonders of the Internet, a friend of mine, Louis Smith of Alpine, Arizona, was able to provide the answer to the meaning of the symbols. The symbols turned out to be, like the Latin words, a form of “ancient” Roman numerals that are different from the Roman numeral system in use today.  Translations of the Latin words and Roman Numerals are given in the tables at the end of this article.

I never gave much thought to the Latin Heart until one day when I saw a copy of it on Al Reser’s dinning room table.  I asked Al about it, and he began telling me the history of the Latin Heart, as he knew it. He told me the story about how he had learned from Charlie Miller exactly where Tumlinson had found the Stone Maps and that several other people also knew about that location.   According to Al, one of them went back to that spot years after Tumlinson gave up on finding any more stone map pieces, and that person, being a little more persistent and searching a wider area than Tumlinson had, found the Latin Heart lying right on top of the ground.

Al may have mentioned his name, or maybe not, if he did I can no longer recall it.  Al never saw the Latin Heart Stone himself, but he told me that a wrangler by the name of Bill Hinton or Hidden my memory is not clear, who also had known Charlie Miller, knew the whole story about the Latin Heart, had seen the original many times, and could verify everything Al said. After hearing Al’s story I developed a sincere interest in the Latin Heart, but no matter how hard I tried I could never get Al to allow me to make a copy of his copy of it.

Out of frustration, I finally said something to Al about not needing his copy because there was one in Bob Ward’s book. Al grinned and made a remark that suggested his copy was in some way different from the one in Ward’s book. For months I tried to locate someone else who had a copy of the heart other than the one in Ward’s book, then one afternoon I received a phone call from Tom Kollenborn, a local well-known historian and author, who knew I was searching for a copy of the Latin Heart other than the one that was in Bob Ward’s book.  During the conversation he announced that he had located a copy, which was in the possession of a friend, whom he did not name, but said was currently living in Texas. Within three days Tom presented me with the copies of the Latin Heart shown above.

The way to solve the mystery of the Peralta Stone Maps is to follow the directions engraved right on them,  “BUSCA EL MAPA,” Study the Maps, and then follow them to where you think they lead. When you have arrive at what you believe to be the end of the trail, you remove the original Heart insert from the cavity in the top Trail Map and insert the Latin Heart into the cavity (This explains why the Heart Cavity was cut out in the upper Trail Map and the original Heart is removable. “BUSCA EL COAZON,” Study the “Latin Heart”.  If you find the landmarks specified on the Latin Heart in the vicinity around you, YOU ARE AT THE END OF THE TRAIL!

The only thing left to do is to locate the points identified as “MEUS” on the Latin Heart. One of them is most likely going to have a number of the landmarks around it that Lost Dutchman Mine hunters have been searching for since the ‘Ole Dutchman died in 1891, and will validate the link between the Peralta Stone Maps and the Lost Dutchman Mine.

STONE CROSSES AND THE LATIN HEART

On March 10, 1983, Michael Bilbrey, then 32 years old and already a thirteen-year veteran in the search for the Lost Dutchman Mine, filed a mining claim, LD8, in an area where he believed that the Peralta Stone Maps led to.  In an article in The Arizona Republic on Tuesday, February 1, 1983, Charles Kelly reported that Bilbrey stated he had assay reports on samples taken from his claim that showed a gold content in sufficient quantity to validate the filing of a mining claim. In the same article, Larry Soehlig, a Lands and Mineral Officer for the Tonto National Forest, is quoted as saying, “Based on what Mr. Bilbrey’s proposed he’d like to do, there’s probably enough (gold) there to let him continue with that little (mining) process.” Michael Bilbrey did find gold there.

This gold, however, was not the driving force behind Michael’s many future trips to this remote and lonely location among towering cliffs and deep valleys. Having ended up in this area following his own personal interpretation of the Peralta Stone Maps, he was constantly on the lookout for anything that looked out of place in the natural environment or which might suggest that “man”, that is, the Peraltas or Jacob Waltz (The Dutchman) had been there before him.

During one of his trips to his mining claims Michael accidentally discovered two stone crosses, each approximately 12 inches high, 6 inches wide, and a little more than 1 inch thick, partially buried in the loose gravel that covered the side of the slope near where he had been working. Both Stone Crosses had engravings on one side and nothing on the other.

The first cross has words written on it in Spanish,  “EL TESORO DE LOS EGLESIA DE SANTA FE”,  “EL CURVA DE LOS SOMEO MONTANA” which translated says something like:  “The Treasure of the Church of Santa Fe” and “The Cave of Hat Mountain.”

The second cross has a map-like orientation of symbols on it, similar to the symbols carved on the Peralta Stone Maps and consistent with the landmarks named on the front side of the Latin Heart. 

It is doubtful that Michael was aware of the Latin Heart at that time, but he could not have missed the similarities between the symbols on the Stone Crosses and the Peralta Stone Maps. Soon after making this discovery he appears to have lost all interest in his mining claims, and redirected his efforts towards understanding the stone crosses and searching for The Treasure of the Church of Santa Fe.

Because Michael could not prove his story about how he found the Stone Crosses, very few people outside his immediate group of friends believed his story. Michael endured one of the most unpleasant set of circumstances a treasure hunter can experience. He found the Stone Crosses at a time when he was alone in the mountains. An event took place, which could not be repeated in front of witnesses.  A single witness to the event, or even a dozen, may not have been of any help in correctly interrupting the inscriptions on the crosses, but at least Michael would have had someone he could share the frustration with when he was later accused of fabricating the crosses himself. Accusations that to this day still reverberate around campfires and dining room tables.

Eventually when their combined efforts produced no treasure, even his friends began to doubt him and lost interest in the crosses and the alleged treasure they applied to. Being the only person left on the planet who knew for certain that he had not fabricated the crosses himself, Michael continued the search for The Treasure of the Church of Santa Fe alone. According to people that knew Michael he remained a dedicated searcher for many years. He even relocated from San Diego, Calif. To Scottsdale, Ariz. to be closer to the Superstition Mountains and be able to dedicate more time to his search. 

There is nothing in recorded history; legend or lore, to indicate that Michael ever found the treasure in which he never stopped believing was out there somewhere. Believing myself that the Stone Crosses are authentic relics which do apply to a buried treasure of some kind, I can only assume that Michael’s failure to locate that treasure was due to the fact that he assumed the treasure was located somewhere in the immediate area where he found the crosses, and never gave enough consideration to the idea that they may have been dropped where he found them accidentally by someone (or something) just passing through the area.

Conclusion

As the story goes, the Peraltas had their mules loaded with all that they could carry, which would have included the Stone Maps, and were attempting to get out of the mountains when they were attacked by Apaches in great numbers.

In my scenario of the events that took place, it was during the chaos of the battle that the mule carrying the Stone Maps (including the Stone Crosses and Latin Heart} made up his mind that it was every man and mule for himself and set out on his own for the only way he knew out of the mountains (the way he had come in directly south towards Florence Junction). Meanwhile, the Peraltas fought their way toward the open desert using a shorter path they knew about which ultimately brought them to the western slope of the main Superstition Mountain, where legend says the battle ended in the Peralta’s defeat by the Apaches.

The mule loaded with the Stone Maps could have escaped the battle and passed through the area where Bilbrey found the Stone Crosses, which had fallen there from the packs where they settled into the loose gravel and lay undisturbed until Bilbrey found them in the early 1980’s more than 100 years later. The mule then continued on, heading south with the remaining pieces of the stone maps still on his back, making it all the way to Florence Junction before they started breaking loose from the packs. The Latin Heart falling first by itself, and the remaining stones falling together where Tumlinson found them in the late 1940’s.

It is true that Tumlinson said that he dug the maps out of the ground, but anyone that has lived in the desert, knows that heavy objects left lying on the ground will sink into it when the rains soften the ground. If they lay there through 100 years of monsoon rains, I would expect them to be at least partially submerged and have to be dug out of the ground. This is consistent with Michael Bilbrey’s story about having to dig the Stone Crosses out of the ground where they had settled.

Had the Stone Crosses, the Latin Heart, the Priest/Horse Map, the two Trail Maps, and the first Stone Heart all been found in the same place at the same time, someone might then have been able to evaluate them as a complete set, determine the correct way to make use of them and locate the mines or treasure they pertain to long before now.

All photographs used in this article are of full-scale Museum Quality Reproductions of the Peralta Stone Maps, Stone Crosses and Latin Heart

Latin to English Translations DESILIENS AQUA AURUM  (water falling down over gold) DESILIENS: falling down or declining AQUA: water AURUM: gold of golden color, CRATER . . . possibly a Low area like a valley MEUS  (Mine) A possession or an excavation for metal or mineral SPECUS  (Cave) or a void of some kind CACUMEN (Extreme High Point) point, tip, top, peak NOTO MEDULLA  (Observe the Middle) NOTO: observe or notice MEDULLA: marrow, middle, heart (center) FAUCES  (Narrow Pass) Small throat, gullet, neck, strait, channel, pass or gorge TABULA  (flat top area) plank, board or table TRANSEO ECCLESIA  (Religious Assembly Area) TRANSEO: to cross, pass, pass over or through ECCLESIA: a church or gathering place for worshipers NOTO  (Observe) to look for, observe, write down or record, brand, indicate, denote, or to mark (a place of importance) DOMUS  (House or Camp) A place of residence FORNIX  (Arch) Vaulted Arch, something high that can be passed under INTER SEPTENTRIONES ET OCCASUM SOLIS  (Northwest) INTER: between, among or during SEPTENTRIONES: Great Bear   (NORTH) OCCASUM SOLIS: Sunset, (WEST) (Between North and West) NOTO TRIANGULUM  (Observe the Triangle) to look for, observe, write down, record, Brand, indicate, denote, or mark “The Triangle.” MERIDIES CACUMEN (Highest Point to the South) MERIDIES: South CACUMEN:  point, tip, top, peak or Highest Point MONETA (Smelter or Arrasta) A place where valuable items are worked with CAVERNA AURUM (Cavern of gold) CAVERNA: cave       AURUM: gold BARATHRUM  . . .  (Lowest point)

Ancient Roman Numeral Translations
1-I 2-II 3-III 4-IV or IIII 5-V 6-VI or G 7-VII 8-VIII 9-VIIII or IX 10-X 11-XI 12-XII 13-XIII	14- XIV 15- XV 16- XVI 17- XVII 18- XVII  or XIIX 19- XIX or XVIIII 20-XX 30-XXX 40-XL or XXX 50-L 60-LX 70-LXX 80-LXXX or XX(	90-X( or LXXXX 100-( 200-(( 300-((( 400-(((( 500-D or I 600-I)( 700-I)(( 800-I)((( 900-I)(((( 1000-(I) or M 10,000-((I)) 100.000(((I)))

Special Thanks to Doug Stewart who maintains a website at:  http://www.lost dutchman.com  for his much appreciated consultation in the preparation of this work.

Copyright © 2005-2006 by Jim D. Hatt All Rights reserved, No part of this document may be reproduced or copied in any form or by any means graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or retrieval systems without the written permission of Jim D. Hatt.