Lost Bonanzas: Tales of the Legendary Lost Mines of the American West

From inside dust jacket:

Here are true tales of high adventure, often as incredible as they are exciting. Here, too, are the frustrations of the little army of desert rats, jackass prospectors and men from every walk of life, who, for a century and more, have been seeking the legendary treasure of the hundred and more lost ledges and lodes that lie somewhere between the sun-burned mountains of southwest Texas and the snow-covered peaks of Idaho and Montana.

The lure of finding a fortune in gold or silver in some secret, unknown canyon has not been dimmed by years of failure. Even today the true seeker of lost treasure knows it lies somewhere, just waiting to be found and carried away, with no shafts or tunnels to be dug, no costly machinery to be installed. For encouragement he has the expert opinion of mineralogists and mining engineers that there is still more gold in the ground than has ever been taken out of it.

It is not with the mythical but with the genuine lost bonanzas, such as the Lost Dutchman, the Lost Adams Diggings, the Lost Gunsight and the Lost Breyfogle, amoung others, for which some documentation and historical fact exist, that these accounts of fabulous wealth, violence and savagery are concerned.

Tragedy has always stalked at the side of the searchers for lost treasure who have pitted themselves against the deserts and mountains of our Western states. Over the years, more than two thousand men have forfeited their lives to thirst, starvation, cold and Indian vengeance. If their strivings often came to naught, it was not only because the map or waybill on which they depended played them false. Oftener it was earthquake or avalanche that stopped them, and oftener still the untimely death of the one man who might have lead them to the secret golden hoard of their dreams.

Here are thrills and excitement to quicken the pulse of all eager armchair adventurers.

276 pages including index.