November 23, 2009 © Thomas J. Kollenborn. All Rights Reserved.
Spirits were
high among the three very amateur adventurers searching for Waltz’ lost
gold mine, but the tortuous summer heat and humidity soon took its toll.
Toward the middle of the second week it was impossible to search accept
in the very early morning or late evening. At the end of the third week
the three explorers collapsed from exhaustion, lack of food and water.
The search for Waltz’s mine was abandoned and the three returned to
Phoenix exhausted, defeated and unsuccessful.
A local newspaper, the Arizona Weekly
Gazette, noted the expedition with the following excerpt on September 1,
1892, “A Queer Quest, Another Lost Mine Being Hunted by a Woman.”
This prospecting venture reduced Julia
Thomas to financial ruin. She and the Petrasches were destitute, having
no source of income or a place to reside. Julia soon departed company
with the Petrasches and married a farm laborer named Albert Schaffer on
July 26, 1893.
At Schaffer’s encouragement Julia
produced maps using what information she could remember. She became very
resourceful and began producing excellent maps illustrating how to
locate the lost gold mine of Jacob Waltz, her recent friend. These
fraudulent sheets of paper were probably the first maps to the
Dutchman’s Lost Mine. It is also quite apparent that Julia Thomas gave
Peirpont C. Bicknell an interview about the Lost Dutchman Mine. Bicknell
chronicled the mine in the San Francisco Chronicle in an article on
January 13, 1895, making reference to most of Thomas’ clues. Now the
story was out nationally that there was a lost gold mine in the
Superstition Mountains.
The abandonment of the Petrasch brothers
by Julia Thomas left them on their own. Rhinehart worked around Phoenix
for awhile and eventually move up to Globe. He worked as a caretaker at
an archaeological site in Globe for many years before committing
suicide on February 5, 1943. Rhinehart was known as “Old Pete” around
Globe and Miami. Herman had many odd jobs, first working as an
apprentice blacksmith, then working for different cattlemen around the
Superstition Mountain area. He was an excellent carpenter and worked at
the old Reavis Ranch house for the Clemans Cattle Company in the 1930’s.
Hermann also repaired waterholes and
windmills for the Clemans. He was seriously injured when a packhorse
pulled his riding horse over backward along Hewitt Canyon in 1938.
Hermann eventually settled near the bank of Queen Creek in the area of
the Martin Ranch. The Martins looked after Hermann for many years. They
would take Hermann to the dances in Superior where he would play his
fiddle. Old Hermann had a host of friends, including my father.
Newspaper reporters, authors, and magazine writers visited him from time
to time and many articles were written about Hermann and his search for
the old “Dutchman” mine.
My father and I visited old Hermann
Petrasch on Queen Creek in October of 1952, during my freshman year in
high school. I was more interested in baseball than I was lost gold
mines at the time. He told us he was ailing a bit, but was still willing
to talk with us. Hermann never complained about his aches and pains, he
just endured. Herman Petrasch passed away on November 23, 1953.
I would like to clear something up about
an old photograph taken of Hermann Petrasch in Queen Creek with a gold
pan and shovel. The photograph appeared in Barney Barnard’s book, giving
credit for the photograph to him. The person who actually took that
photograph was Robert L. Garman, one of Hermann old friends.
The awful irony of the Petrasch- Thomas
episode is that their journey into the Superstitions in the blistering
hot days of August 1892 led them directly over the Black Queen and
Mammoth mines that were discovered later that year. It was in April of
1893, four men discovered the famous Mammoth mine. That mine produced
two million dollars in gold bullion when gold was worth only twenty
dollars a troy ounce. Some historians believe the Bull Dog or Mammoth
mine was the source of Waltz’s bonanza gold ore.
Julia
Thomas and the Petrasch brothers were not successful in finding the
Dutchman’s Lost gold, however, they initiated a legend that will likely
endure forever.
