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The Superstition Mountain Treasure Stone Maps were accidentially discovered by Travis "Jack" Tumlinson on the south side of the Superstition Mountains. He was climbing to get a view of Weaver's Needle, when he stumbled over the first of the stone maps. Weather had eroded the ground around the map, and a corner was protuding up. This was in the late 1940's, and he found the remaining maps in the same general area during the early 1950's, where they had been buried for approximately one hundred years. He continued to search for a number of years after that, but he did not find any more maps, nor did he or anyone else find the mines or treasure that the maps point to.
Legend has it that the maps were made by a priest from the Church of Spain during his assignment to the Spanish Peralta family who owned some mines in the Superstition Mountains area. Many call the maps the Peralta Treasure Stone Maps, and claim they are a map to the Peralta mines and other treasures. They are now called the Superstition Mountain Treasure Stone Maps, for that is what they truly are. The gold and whatever other treasures that they point to came from the Superstition Mountains, and the stones themselves were once part of the Superstitions. An ASU geologist once authenticated the stone carvings to be at least 100 years old (at the time they were tested) based on weathering and other factors. The maps are now owned by the Flagg Foundation, and reside at the Mesa Southwest Museum, 53 N. MacDonald, Mesa, Arizona, where they can be viewed and freely photographed.
Tumlinson never disclosed where he found the maps, but he inadvertently left a few clues. While looking for additional stone maps, he found a Saguaro cactus with a hole in it and some other markings in the area. He said when he looked through the hole in the Saguaro, he could see the general direction of where the maps had been buried, but not at the exact location. Many have scoffed since then, saying the hole was nothing more than a cactus wren hole, or the nest of other creatures, of which there are thousands in the Saguaros of the Arizona desert. In this case they are wrong. An employee of Solutions, Inc., Tempe, Arizona, has resdiscovered where the stone maps were found. To our knowledge, outside of Tumlinson, no other person knows where he found the maps. Some one may know, and we may not have heard about it, but even the custodians of the maps at the museum do not know, so we feel that it would have been publicized long before now, if someone knew.
The employee is a long time Superstition Mountains adventurer, hiker, prospector, treasure hunter, and cowboy who used to chouse cattle for the old JF ranch near Iron Mountain. The mere fact that he is also a computer scientist doesn't get in his way of the outdoors. He is always looking for something new in the mountains. One day while horsebacking on the south side of the Superstitions, he discovered a Saguaro with a hole in it's side. He has seen hundreds of Saguaros with holes in them, but this one was different. The hole was mid-height of the cactus (about 5 feet), just to the right of the cactus skeleton. The tubelike hole traveled a straight path from northeastly to southwestly, angling slightly downward. The northeast side was approximately 3/4" in diameter. An almost perfect circle. The southwest side was considerably larger; appoximately 6 inches, in a sort of elongated diameter. It had the appearance of being shot with a bullet. The scars around the larger side were very old. Appearing to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 years old. When the employee looked through the hole, he could see in the direction of the largest Saguaro around, but not exactly at it. It was a very old, very large, majestic Saguaro with many arms.
The spines on a Saguaro are at least a couple of inches long. They stick that far out from the front (northeast) opening of this particular hole. When the employee looked through the hole, he recalled what he had heard that Tumlinson had said about looking through a Saguaro cactus hole. The employee couldn't believe that anyone would intend for someone to put their eye that close to the spines. Everything seemed to match what Tumlinson had said except for that. Puzzled, the employee looked around for a minute, and then up. He saw a notch at the top of the Saguaro, that caused the top to lean in a slight "V" shape. He had seen hundreds of Saguaros bent at the top from rot, etc., but this too was different. The "V" was similar to making a fist of your hand, holding it upright, and sighting between your thumb and the closed fingers. It dawned on him that this was a marker, and now he knew how it worked. He mounted his horse, and positioned himself away from the Saguaro until he could see daylight through the hole from the horse's back. He then sighted through the "V" shape at the top of the Saguaro. What he saw was the exact place where the stone maps had been buried, and where Tumlinson had eventually found them. He rode his horse to the location and was able to find the exact diggings, even though they had been overgrown with many years of desert vegetation. They were near the majestic Saguaro.
The employee theorized that, if the hole had been made by a bullet, the bullet may be buried somewhere in the desert terrain behind the cactus. Finding it would help confirm the theory. He left and returned later with his metal detector. After much searching and some digging, the metal detector located an old black powder bullet (ball), buried in the dirt, almost directly in the trajectory path of the hole in the cactus. The theory (fairly confirmed now) is that the person who originally marked the Saguaro, was sitting on horseback, cut the top of the Saguaro with a sword or a lance (such as the old military Spanish Lancers used to carry), and after sighting precisely where the maps were buried, fired a bullet through the cactus. This would allow triangular referration back to the precise coordinates of the maps. Spanish marking of locations, in the desert using Saguaros, was not uncommon in those days.
Keep checking back to this page. We will be publishing pictures of the Saguaro markers and location of the stone map diggings. Even Tumlinson did not know many of these things about the area. Maybe there are still maps or other items to be discovered there. And remember, no one has found the mines or treasure that the stone maps point to, so maybe you will. Good luck to you!
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