Treasure Hunter
William Blackwell (Advert’73) of Zephyr Cove, Nevada, hunts for Spanish treasure in the eastern mountain ranges of Arizona. He began hunting after 32 years of practicing entertainment law in Los Angeles, California. Decades after hearing tales from his father about the lost gold in the Superstition Mountain Range, Blackwell joined a group expedition featured in the documentary , now streaming on Apple TV.
How did you get involved in this expedition?
Seven years ago, I read online about [treasure hunter] Robert Kesselring, who thought he had found the Lost Dutchman Gold Mine, one of the holy grails of treasure hunting. At the end of the article, he said, ‘I’m looking for an attorney to do some pro bono work for me to try and get digging permits and everything.’ Instantly, I emailed him back and wrote, ‘I’m your guy.’
How did the documentary come about?
Kesselring took me out to some sites, and I said, ‘Robert, this would make a great documentary because we know where the goods are.’ Having been in LA for a while, I knew people. I contacted Hollywood producers Robert May and Bob Brown. They liked the idea, and we put it together within five months.
In the documentary, there were pipe bombs found around a dig site. What happened? Pipe bombs were all over the place, so we stopped and contacted the sheriff’s department. The man who’d placed them had left a backpack there with his name and number on it. The FBI interviewed him.
That put the kibosh on the things we wanted to do in the documentary — digging down eight feet and bringing out gold bars. We’ll go back out there, though.
Do you know the history tied to the gold mine?
The film takes place in the middle of the Superstition Mountains. The Spanish started exploring in the 1580s, coming up into Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah and western Kansas, mining for gold and smelting it into bars. In the 1840s, the prominent Paralta mining family were in the Superstition Mountain Range, making gold bars and caching them in order to take them back to Mexico. Story has it that the Mexican government was going to use some of that gold in an attempt to buy some of the territories of New Mexico and Arizona from the U.S.
An extraction team recovered gold bars from a number of sites. But in 1848, the Apaches killed all of the miners except for a couple who escaped back to Mexico. That’s why the bars are still there today.
So what’s next?
This is an Indiana Jones adventure. I’ve become a full-on treasure hunter. Now I’m digging on a Spanish treasure vault that’s been there for 350 years. No one has ever set foot in it. A few guys in their 70s are not going to break through in a short period of time though — it’ll be a work in progress.
Photos courtesy William Blackwell