The Man Who Walked Into His Own Secret

Percy Fawcett completed seven expeditions for the Royal Geographical Society, mapping thousands of miles of Amazon jungle that had never appeared on any European chart. He survived piranha, rapids, indigenous arrows, and diseases that killed men around him with grim regularity. He was one of the most experienced tropical explorers alive.

He was also convinced the Amazon contained a lost city, and he intended to find it alone.

He called it "Z." His evidence was thin — partly an eighteenth-century Portuguese manuscript describing stone ruins no one had seen since, partly a feeling that the jungle was hiding something enormous. He planned his 1925 expedition with his eldest son Jack, twenty-two, and Jack's friend Raleigh Rimell. He kept his intended route secret, fearing rival explorers would reach Z first. He told the Royal Geographical Society almost nothing. He told his wife only slightly more.

On May 29, 1925, the three men crossed the Upper Xingu River and walked into the forest.

The Kalapalo people, among the last to see them, later told investigators that they watched smoke from Fawcett's campfire rising above the canopy for four consecutive days after he departed.

Then it stopped.

No confirmed trace of the three men has ever been found. Over the following decades, at least thirteen rescue expeditions went looking for Fawcett. An estimated one hundred people died trying.

His secret route kept its secret.