Legend holds that Aztec priests smuggled Montezuma's treasure north after the Spanish conquest, hiding it somewhere in the canyon country of Utah. The film traces the modern hunt for that treasure back to a prospector whose vision of a hidden cave set off decades of digging, and it follows the searchers, believers, and skeptics who kept the story alive long after his death. Interviews and location footage take viewers into the canyons themselves, where amateur treasure hunters still probe rock faces and dry washes for the entrance a curse is said to guard. Reports of unexplained accidents and deaths tied to the site run through the narrative alongside the more mundane explanations offered by historians who doubt an Aztec emperor's gold ever crossed that much desert. The film lays out the physical evidence dug up over the years, from old tunnels to disputed artifacts, without settling whether any of it points to real treasure or just to how badly people want it to exist.