The Apache Trail: Superstition Country

Goldfield Ghost Town on State Route 88 — a rebuilt 1890s gold-mining town at the foot of the Superstition Mountains, the addressable start of the drive up the Apache Trail.

Goldfield — the boomtown at the foot of the Superstitions that found REAL gold in the 1890s, roared to life, and died just as fast when the vein gave out. The true gold, before the legend.

Lost Dutchman State Park, spread beneath the sheer west face of the Superstition Mountains — named for the most famous lost-gold legend in America, and the trailhead into the range itself.

The legend of Jacob Waltz, 'the Dutchman' — the old prospector who died with the secret of a fabulous gold mine in these mountains on his lips, a mine that has never, ever been found.

Take a good look at the desert you're driving through, because it's a special one — this is the Sonoran Desert, and it is, in a strange way, the richest and greenest desert on the whole planet. The reason is rain: unl…

The great cliff wall of the Superstition Mountains — the Flatiron, Weavers Needle, and the hoodoos: the eroded remains of a chain of ancient supervolcanoes.

The dark legend of the Peralta massacre — the Mexican mining family said to have been ambushed carrying gold out of these mountains, the tale that supposedly began the whole lost-gold curse. And why historians say it…

Ever wonder why they're called the Superstition Mountains? It's a wonderful name for a range this wild and strange-looking, and the story behind it is worth knowing. It doesn't come from the treasure hunters, and it's…

The saguaros get all the attention out here, and fair enough — but look closer at the hillsides as you drive, because this is a whole crowded garden of desert plants, every one of them with a clever trick for survivin…

Adolph Ruth, the elderly treasure hunter who walked into the Superstitions in 1931 chasing the Dutchman's mine and vanished — and the skull, found months later, with two holes in it.

This country looks empty and still from the road, but it is quietly teeming, and if you drive slow with your eyes open — especially in the cool of morning and evening — you'll start to see it. Keep a watch on the road…

How the Apache Trail was built — a freight road blasted and hand-laid through canyon walls in 1903-1905, largely by Western Apache laborers whose mortarless stone work still holds up the road you're driving.

Here's something worth knowing as you wind up this improbable road: it was never meant to be a scenic drive at all. It was built for one hard, practical reason — to tame a river and build a dam. Back at the turn of t…

The famous legend of a Thunder God guarding the Superstitions' gold — and the honest, more respectful truth: that the Apache themselves say the outside world invented it, and that to them gold was never treasure at all.

As you drive deeper into these mountains, it's right to know whose homeland this is — because long before the gold-seekers and the road crews, this was, and is, the country of the Yavapai and the Western Apache people…

A few straight words about this road and this desert, because both deserve your respect. First, the driving: State Route 88 is narrow, it winds, and in places it runs along real drop-offs with not much shoulder and no…

Canyon Lake — the sapphire reservoir the Apache Trail suddenly meets deep in the desert mountains, held back by the 1925 Mormon Flat Dam, one of the chain of dams the Salt River wears.

Tortilla Flat, population six — the last surviving stagecoach stop on the Apache Trail, where the pavement ends and the tour turns around. The grand finale, and the gateway to the wild, closed country beyond.