The story of EL Dorado

El Dorado was a city made of gold just waiting to be discovered. They truly believed that this lost city existed in the New World, and countless people perished in a series of failed expeditions in the 16th and 17th centuries. Archaeological research has revealed that by the time Europeans arrived in Colombia in 1537, the scale and level of gold production had reached extraordinary proportions.

Gold did not represent prosperity or wealth to the Muisca people; it was merely an offering to the gods. Even today, the Muisca have no monetary value for gold.

During the first of his three attempts to conquer the Incas, Francisco Pizarro arrived in Peru in 1532 and discovered an incredible amount of gold. Jimenez de Quesada and a group of Spanish conquistadors arrived in Colombia in 1537 in search of gold. They had been drawn to the country from Peru by tales of El Dorado. The explorers ventured deeper into uncharted territory, and many of them perished in the process. In fact, only 166 men survived the expedition; 900 had embarked on the journey.

They eventually came across the Muisca's goldwork, and the level of craftsmanship astounded them. They were the first Europeans to witness the Muisca's techniques. Quesada, for his part, never gave up the search and returned to Colombia in 1569. Only 30 people survived a three-year expedition, out of approximately 2,000 explorers. It has been suggested that Quesada was the inspiration for Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote character.

In 1541, Francisco de Orellana became the first European to travel the entire length of the Amazon River, most likely in search of El Dorado. Quesada discovered Lake Guatavita in 1537, but European explorers did not conquer the Muisca for several years.

By 1545, the conquistadors had heard enough firsthand accounts of the Muisca ceremony to conclude that there was a vast amount of wealth beneath the water.

That year, they made their first attempt to drain Lake Guatavita, but it was far from the last. Decades later, 8,000 laborers began cutting a massive notch in the crater rim, but everything collapsed and hundreds of people were killed. Instead of being disenchanted, greedy explorers became even more obsessed with finding this mystical city.

No matter how badly one expedition failed, there was always another eager to search for El Dorado. Some discovered gold nuggets, but the majority discovered disease and death. Don Manuel Centurion, the governor of a Venezuelan province, attempted to find El Dorado in 1740, but his expedition resulted in the deaths of hundreds. Other attempts were made as explorers searched various locations across South America.

They did not, at the very least, pretend to conceal the company's purpose. The company was able to use an exceptionally strong steam pump to drain water from a tunnel that extended 400 meters from the middle of the lake after several years of excavating.

After several more futile attempts, the Colombian authorities decided that treasure hunters risking their lives in search of riches that clearly didn't exist was no longer acceptable. Lake Guatavita was designated as a protected area in 1965, making any attempts to drain the lake or other private salvage activities prohibited.

When Richard Nixon effectively dissolved the Bretton Woods system in 1971, gold's value soared and then plummeted in the mid-1970s. The number of fresh gold sites discovered by treasure hunters across Northern Colombia was one of the causes for this. Although there is undoubtedly a vast amount of riches buried throughout South America, explorers were frequently fascinated on Lake Guatavita when there was true gold not far away. El Dorado has remained a legend for hundreds of years, with explorers risking their lives in search of something that didn't exist; their acts were motivated by greed rather than a feeling of adventure.