Former insurance salesman Dana Olson had often heard tales of the Aztec treasures buried at the Falls of the Ohio while he was growing up in Southern Indiana. Olson discovered the long-forgotten story of Prince Madoc of Wales while researching a different subject. . The more he read, the more convinced he became that the legend of the Welsh prince, who visited America over 300 years before Christopher Columbus was, in fact, a true story.
Totally infatuated with the ancient account, he began a personal crusade to collect as much of the story as he could find, before the legend had entirely faded away and was utterly lost from public knowledge. He gathered pertinent historical documentation from dusty archives across the U.S. and he personally visited and plotted the supposed trek of Madoc's Welsh colonists' migration across the U.S. Since then, Dana has become a popular character throughout southern Indiana and has received acclaim for reviving the Legend of Prince Madoc. Recently, Dana was the recipient of a Certificate of Merit, earned from Writer's Digest's 2000 National Book Award Contest.