The Lost Dutchman

I play fast and loose with the "facts" behind the treasure map in The Devil's Highway. It suited my purposes to move the legendary gold mine from the Superstition Mountains to El Camino del Diablo.

Search the web and you'll find all sorts of stories about this mine — arguably the most famous of the many legendary lost gold finds. Some stories identify the Dutchman as Jacob Waltz, who was actually German — but never mind that — while others say his identity remains unknown.

In the 1930s treasure hunter Adolph Ruth disappeared searching for the mine. Only his skull was found, with two bullet holes in it.

The Peralta Stones popped up in the 1960s and are said to include etchings including a coded map to he mine. Many say they are a hoax.

The stories go on and and on. And now there's a new one. The storied Lost Dutchman Mine is on The Devil's Highway - pass it on!

Oak Island

I first became interested in lost treasure as a child because of the mysterious findings on Oak Island in Canada.

This story involves some fancy etched rocks too: In 1795 two boys in Nova Scotia rowed out to the small, deserted island and found a large depression in the ground. Directly above it was a tree with deep rope marks on a branch, as if it had been used to hoist something heavy. They began to dig and found flag stones covering a pit. More digging revealed a layer of logs.

Years later others would dig further and find rocks etched with a odd markings, later decoded to say something about $2 million being buried 40 feet below.

While that sounds simple, every excavation has failed, largely due to water seeping into the shaft. Whether the flooding is due to geographic features of the tiny island or, as is often speculated, booby traps, the world still doesn't know. And now, more than 200 years later, a dedicated band of treasure hunters is still trying to solve the mystery.

And what happened to the rocks that really got the legend rolling? Well, they mysteriously vanished years ago.