Treasure Trove Permits

[TreasureTales]

...Sure, I like to just kick the real nutters out the door and tell 'em to stay the hell off my Forest....
Scott

[emphasis added.]


Scott, this type of statement is all too typical of FS, BLM, and PS personnel. The fact of the matter is all of you are stewards of the public lands. As such, it is no more nor less your land than it is mine. You may have made the above statement partially in jest, but I have personally experienced this same attitude from many of the government employees I've met -- although I have never met you.

I am not interested in YOUR national forest, I'm interested in another one that "belongs" to some other government employees. But from one forest, park, or rangeland to another, the mindset seems to be similar. And that mindset seems to be that the government employees are not merely stewards of the land FOR THE PUBLIC'S BENEFIT, but that those same employees feel that the public lands are to be "protected" FROM THE PUBLIC. Although it is a fact that there is a faction of the public that would destroy anything and everything if given half a chance, the same should not be ASSUMED of the ENTIRE population. In a court of law, a defendant is considered innocent unless/until proven guilty. However, when it comes to public lands, too many of us are treated as if we were guilty of something just by virtue of being there.

Scott, you seem as if you are a dedicated employee and for that I respect you. However, when you make statements about laughing at some people or about shredding their applications, such statements lessen your credibility with me and also lessen my respect for the job you do. ALL people willing to take the time to file a Treasure Trove permit should be given some respect because they went to the trouble of filling out the forms. Their reasons and documentation may be laughable to you, but at least they are trying to abide by the rules. Government rules are difficult to interpret and to follow, as we all know from firsthand knowledge in our daily lives (whether the rules pertain to tax forms, mining claims, treasure trove permits, etc.), and therefore anyone and everyone attempting to do "the right thing" should be given respect. I'm sure you get many crackpots, but apparently even some of them are attempting to adhere to the laws. Do they not deserve respect, or at least some credit, for doing so?

I'm sure you have a difficult job to do, and I'm sure you'd like to have a larger budget with which to work. Perhaps priorities need to be re-evaluated. Perhaps your own input to your superiors could affect those priorities. Why preserve public lands when the public is denied access or when the public is treated all to often like the enemy? We're not all money-hungry, gold-at-any-cost people...we're often more closely related to mystery solvers and history buffs, and that isn't too different from archaeologists.

If I sound bitter, I am. I'm tired of the double standards, I'm sick of being treated like an inconvenience when I visit a FS office, and I'm frustrated that the things I enjoy doing are becoming increasingly regulated and restricted. (I remember when owning a gun was legal and owning a pot plant wasn't!) I remember when picking up a pretty rock in the national forest wouldn't bring the wrath of the federal government down on me. And I remember when somebody in a green vehicle was an ally and not an adversary. I miss those days.

Mike in California

 

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[HappyTrails55]

I applaud Treasure Trails for that Post.....That is why Outdoor Enthusiasts whether they be Miners, Dirt Bike Riders, Campers, Treasure Hunters and All Alike that Love the Outdoors for the varied reasons group together and form COALITIONS to FIGHT the SCOUNDRELS at the Highest Court Levels.........IT'S OUR COUNTRY TOO and MANY OF US HAVE DEEP ROOTS IN IT..........Happy Trails

 

[the blindbowman]

"If those are human remains Blindbowman it is worth reporting to the authorities - one never knows what you will find; may be just what you suspect it is, or it could be some other unfortunate. I hope you will let us know when your book is available?"

in fact i contacted the authorities and i have been asked to report this to the authorities of the location they were found in ASAP .. and yes i do agree they do look like human remains yet untill they are proven human . i have not broken any laws as of yet ...and i will give the locations to the pinal county sheiffs office before the day is out ..

what can i say about the site and the bones . they do look to be very old and over a 75 -120 years . i do not beleave they are older than 120 years . the site is about 6 ft long and the shevling rock about 8 ft long ...and yes we can see what looks like more bones sticking up from the dirt .the ground around the rock is unlike that under the shevling . the soil is dug and not conpacked like the rest of the area around the rock ...

we can not be sure as of yet but we do see what looks to be iron stains on the surfences of the dirt . that look to be a chain link pattern ....but yet un proven , that is our Opioion from our prespective of the photos ...

and yes i did say photos ....

there is far more to this than i can state at this time . we judged that the 70 year dutchman could have only draged the body of a 140-160 man about 200 ft down hill . this site was found around 225 ft from where we beleaved the starting point was ...

. the dutchman could have only went in one direction down hill and we note that this is a large rock and not a long ledge of a mt ... as defind by the dutchman him self to dick holmes ...

you may ask how did we know where to look and where the starting point would be . i can not explan this in detail now . but i will in my book . unless the treasure troves become public before hand ...

i can only state that i am not a treasure hunter i am nagational specalist . nor do i focus on old bones or graves ..


. i hope you all under stand what this find will mean if it is in fact the nephews remains ....one if it is human remains they need be respected in the right way ...this would prove the dutchman was a murder.....and that he did in fact give dick holmes the gold under his bed ... within reasonable logic .....i tryed to talk to scott woods about these sites yet he needs photos of all evidence yet as i reported the frist time i went to the mts . near 1/3 of the pictures taken failed to stay on the camera after passing a given area ... they are no longer on the cameras merrory chip .... and yes we did record the areas that this did take place ...

. if the tunnle is the tayopa we can only guess and wait to see what it is .. but i looked right at what looks to be a tunnle opening ....
very hiden and not where anyone will ever find it ....i walked by the remains within 10ft 3 times before i spoted them ...

and yes we are awaiting 800 fs film (66 pictures ) of the area of the tunnle and sites 1,2,4,and 5....and the stone house ...

i will be talking to scott soon and the others .. ask anything you want i will try to answer if i can ...

 

[JScottWood]

Whoa - what happened to my last post? I guess tha'll teach me not to mess with the fonts...

One last visit to the Wilderness discussion. I have a couple of responses to Blazer and Keifer and then I’m going to drop out of this particular discussion. You guys need to be talking to somebody other than me if you want to pursue any desire to alter or eliminate a Wilderness. FYI the Wilderness lobby has a hell of a lot more support and money than you will ever have. Why do you think we added all those new wildernesses during that last go-round? It wasn’t because we wanted them… However, for all the power that the wilderness lobby has over Congress and the land managing agencies, they seem to lose interest when it comes to maintaining them. I was just talking to one our wilderness guys today and they are in the same boat as I am – funding cut, personnel reduced, unable to maintain trails or signs or trailheads, etc. But that’s Congress for you – they love to attend ribbon cuttings but never stick around to clean up the discarded ribbon afterwards.

To Blazer:

You said that you had some placer gold that you yourself “pulled out of the ground” as proof that there is gold inside the Wilderness. OK, I have no reason to doubt your veracity but I think that the issue is not about occasional placer recoveries. The issue is whether or not there are locatable amounts of lode gold in there. You can go into lower Pinto Creek above the SR188 bridge and find placer on a fairly regular basis. It’s downstream from one of the largest copper mining developments in the area. People have made claims in there and even tried working it but it’s a non-sustainable deposit with no clear origin, pretty much like what’s been reported from the Supers.

You noted the case of Mike Bilbrey (as cited by Jim Hatt) as a demonstration of the presence of gold in the wilderness, based on Larry Soehlig’s quote that “there’s probably enough (gold) there to let him continue with that little (mining) process.” Despite the fact that Larry never really knew that much about mining (he was a realty specialist), the statement was based on Bilbrey’s assay report, which came with no verification that the samples came from his claim area. Also, the “process” that Larry mentioned as not mining, it was exploration. What’s really telling about this is the part that’s not mentioned – Bilbrey’s claims were made before the closure deadline but he never proved up. Instead, he joined the stone tablet parade and came up with a couple of carved “Latin crosses” to complement the “Peralta” stones.

In fact, in the last years before the closure we conducted field reviews of about 17 mining claims throughout the western Superstitions, all of which were looking for the LDM (4 of them had as their express purpose “uncovering an old shaft”), and 7 treasure trove applications. Not one of the mining claims ever held up to a mineral exam nor were any ever proved up by their claimants nor did any of the claimants ever do any annual assessment work. They dug their holes, found nothing, and left, leaving us – at your (taxpayer) expense, of course - to do the reclamation years later. One of these “mining claims” was located in a prehistorically occupied rockshelter. It already had two adits driven into the back of it and had nearly all of the archaeological contents shoveled out. By the time I saw it, the site was destroyed. We had a similar incident some years later at a different rockshelter where at least 5,000 years worth of archaeological deposits – one of the most important sites ever found in the Superstitions – were destroyed by an illegal excavation seeking another “covered shaft” that wasn’t there. Likewise, none of the treasure trove excavations ever found a single grain of gold or historic artifact. Anyway, you would think that if there were locatable deposits in there that at least one of these claimants would have found and developed something, especially since by the early ‘80s there were already many dry shafts and prospects scattered around to help people know where not to look. A little bit of float just isn’t all that significant in this context.

You went on to say that you had a problem with wilderness areas that contain existing roads and that “the new maps no longer show the road going back to Reavis Ranch and the exclusion of that road from the area claimed by the Wilderness Boundary. Is there a hidden agenda to erase that road and then claim it never existed and include that area into the description of the Wilderness Area too?”

What can I say – most of the Wildernesses on the Tonto contain historic roads. One of them contains a whole uranium mining complex. And as far as the “untrammeled by man” requirement goes, they all contain human-engineered prehistoric landscapes and archaeological sites, but apparently that doesn’t count. As for the road to Reavis, once upon a time that was a private inholding, like Tortilla Ranch, and by law we are required to provide for access to those. After we acquired the property, that legal need ended and we converted the whole shebang to Wilderness. There was never anything hidden about that. On the other hand, the new Forest maps do show fewer roads than they used to. A large part of the reason for this had to do with the fact that it was our wilderness specialist (a real prince of a guy who liked to burn down historic cabins in the wilderness to the point where there are now none left – he even burned down the single oldest Anglo structure left standing on the Forest, built in the 1870s) was in charge of updating the maps. Not exactly a conspiracy, though, since the rest of us in the outfit were as pissed off about that as you are. In the future, under the new “Travel Management” directive, we will try to show a more accurate rendition of our roads, but at the same time, we will be closing a lot of them for resource protection (rapidly developing gully erosion on large parts of the Forest) so I can’t say that the next generation of maps will have more or fewer roads shown than the current map.

To Keifer

You asked “ Does anyone know why select areas of the Sup’s are blurred out on the aerial photos available at Goggle Earth? Who would have the horsepower and the will to accomplish that if not the federal Gov’t? I can understand there desire to block views of Area 51 and other sensitive military installations, but why the Superstition Mountains, unless they are afraid that someone might see something in the way of old trails or mining areas that might lead them to something the FS is trying to keep secret?”

That was sarcasm, right? You know as well as I do that huge parts of Google’s coverage are made up of low-resolution satellite photos. Do you really think that the government that can’t even keep super-secret CIA operations out of the news would even think about going to such lengths to hide a couple of roads in a wilderness that swarms with thousands of visitors every year?

To Mike in California;

You took exception to my little joke about wanting to kick the nutters out the door as evidence of insensitive and unresponsive bureaucratism.

Jeez – give me a break! If I wasn’t able to vent a little black humor and joke with my friends in the Forum, I’d probably go postal. Do you have any idea just how crazy and aggressively paranoid some of the people I have to deal with are? What would you call people who threaten you because you tell them that their giant carved poodle pointing the way to the personal treasury of the King of Spain that is being guarded by Aztec troglodytes is just a natural rock outcrop? Ask any one here – or any of the dozens of Dutch hunters I’ve dealt with over the years – whether or not they have been treated with disdain by me (OK, there might be one from last year, but he just got angry and stopped talking to me when I pointed out that different parts of his story contradicted each other and that he had no physical evidence that any human had ever set foot on his particular outcrop of solid rock since the lava had cooled). I may be a little sarcastic from time to time, and more than a little skeptical all of the time, but as much as I might want to (I do have other work to do, after all, which is actually starting to suffer as a result of the time I’ve been spending here lately) I have never lost sight of the fact that the National Forests are public land and I have never dismissed any treasure hunter out of hand no matter how crazy they were. Besides, if I were the kind of dismissive bureaucrat you think I might be, then what am I doing here in this Forum?

By the way, my government vehicle isn’t green – I wish it were, but I don’t have enough money in my budget to buy one of those; I have to rent my plain white “fleet special” from GSA.

But enough about all that - it looks like it's time to talk to our friend the Blindbowman again...

Cheers,
Scott

 

[DEMON]

got 5 bucks on scott lol

 

[JScottWood]

Blindbowman,

Hey Bob, sorry you didn't find everything you were looking for but I'm anxiously awaiting your photographs. The one you posted here appears to look at the bones from a different angle than the ones you sent me at work. Now neither of them look human. I would avoid calling the County Sheriff just yet - let me look at the photos some more, and any others that you have as well. There are two things I want to be sure of first, namely that they are or are not human and second that you haven't stumbled upon an Apache grave.
Talk to you soon, I'm sure, but for now, it's been a long day.
Cheers,
Scott

 

[the blindbowman]

i agree scott, i have been ask to take the photos to a speacalist in anthropology at a near by university, even the local coroner could not say ether way if they were human bones or not ...only that they could be .. so i will take the to the university ...

and i hope others here at this site under stand why i did not distrub this site . it is not wish to distrub graves anthropology is best left for anthropolagist . sorry to say i am not one !lol ... i no my lemits ...and this to me is reseach for recovering data and clues .not to distory them ...if the site is human it is a great find if distrubed it could be useless as reseach data ...

even if it is a pain to just photo this site but it is what it is . on photos ... and if the bones are human they say the anthropolagist will know that and can prove it ...

and yes i agree to go into the mts and recover dat and photos takes a lot of hard work and time and it may take months to even cover a area with a over all inspection of the area ....

i under stand it is much like crabing for straws , but this is often treasure hunting basics ....the person that can build a hay stack has a chance ...lol

i often run across data i have no idea what it is or if it is even related to the reseach ...


one was a 3 inch wide pure quartz vine that ran some 6o ft up a hill and had the most beautfull color i have seen in years .almost gem stone quality ..... yet i did take note that the vane ran up and down the hill vs sideways and this is some 600 ft from where we beleave the stone house is ...almost in line where we beleave the tunnle would run in the same dirrection.. so even if something dose not look usefull only time and perfection and hard work can prove or disprove some data ...

i am going to stop posting my reseach here at the site for good reason yet i may read some of the post and replies when i can ...

maybe the worse thing anyone can find out there is them selfs ....

 

[Real de Tayopa Tropical Tramp]

HI My friends SCOTT & BOWMAN, I am curious, what lies on the other side of the wall behind the bones? You can also see what appears to be a bit of wood in the upper left section of the wall.

Tropical Tramp

 

[Real de Tayopa Tropical Tramp]

K Gentlemen, It is past time to lay off of Scott as a representative of all that is bad and let's pick his brains for Archaeological data. We have a gold mine of information locked up in there and we are wasting it by only nit picking on him instead of learning.

Sheesh. he has absolutely no more control over these things than you do. but he does have information that is valuable to all of us, and for free yet, just by being normally courteous..

Scott please do not terminate, give us another chance. Tell your superiors that you are conducting a spontaneous infomal course in basic Archeology for treasure hunters on how to look, find, and preserve Archaeological sites, data etc. This would make your jobs easier and would greatly lessen distruction of the wilderness / national forest areas.

An excellent example is "what is behind what appears to be an adobe brick wall further inside of Bowman's burial cave". Obviously if it IS an adobe wall, it is very important to everyone, especially your Archaeological staff.

If it is an Adobe wall, it would relate to the Spanish era. --Peraltas ??

The Adobe bricks appear to be slighty distorted by downwards pressure compressing and forcing the top to the right

The piece of wood at the top left could well be part of a lintel no? It has been forced down on the left side.due to the wall partially collapsing by being displacd to the right. thus lowering the height.

Tropical Tramp (dying of curiosity.)

 

[the blindbowman]

i am sorry to have not explaned the photo better but me and scott are talking in emails and this is not a wall .. the shevling rock is just that a rock about 10ft around in size and chest high and just this one side is shevled with this over hang ....,we just dont want people going in and stealing the grave site if thats what it is .. and as of right now i was told the upper bone is a humours of a human arm but at frist sight and the person needs copyies of the photos do prove one way or the other if they are in fact human ...he stated that the other looks like a leg bone . and said often when the body is pushed in to a small space it ends up in the fetist postion makeing the arm and leg bones almost side by side as what is seen in the photo ...we also would have to rememmber that the skin and body parts would most likely mummafi in the heaT and the reason the one bone is lighter in color is because it is in the sun more than the other bone .........and yes i agree scott can share lots of good data if we can stop the trolls from playing their games .. we could learn a lot from him !

 

[TreasureTales]

Hey RT, I'm all for learning from Scott, I just don't want any stones unturned (hahaha, poor little attempt at archaeologically-sensitive site destruction humor). I mean, I don't want another bureaucrat trying to baffle anybody with bs. And I certainly am sick and tired of hearing bureaucrats (and politicians--which are the same in my opinion) crying about how much money they don't have to do all that they'd like to do. NONE OF US HAS ENOUGH MONEY, but we do the BEST we can with what we have. Being a natural-born skeptic, I'm willing to hear all sides of a story, I just won't fawn over somebody with a title and a government vehicle (rented from GSA or not!!!).

Now, let's see what we can learn from Scott and what he can learn from us. Let the debate continue, but don't discount legitimate points as being "nit picking on him" (your own words, RT), but rather as illuminating some of the common traits seen in all-too-much bureaucratic parlance.

On the thread that seems to have started this interesting discourse ("You're All Being Played for Fools," originated by blindbowman), I was somewhat leaning to Scott's "side" of this debate. Now I'm leaning back towards the middleground. I think there are legitimate grievances on both sides of this issue, let's see if we can't reach some type of commonground, even if we can't reach a meeting of the minds on all things.

Trolls, blindbowman, who are the trolls? This gets interestinger and interestinger all the time.

 

[the blindbowman]

lol scott has a hard job already , dont judge him by the level of our evidence .... i have never requested a treasure trove permit in my life and i did not know anything about these matters untill talking with scott and working on the reseach ... so even if the treasure trove permits are screened well it is for the over all good of the mts .and anyone that has step foot in them knows just why ...

even if it makes our job harder .i welcome the over sight after see what and why it is place ....

what good is finding something if you dont find it legally . you get less and almost none of what you find can be athinacated for history . and often cost everyone new leeds at the same time ....


if i find anything i want it to go down in history as well as being proven .....

 

[TreasureTales]

Well, we seem to have a concensus...we all hope Scott will continue to teach us about the Treasure Trove Permit process and the difficulties he encounters with some folks. (And we hope Scott will be understanding of some of our bellyaching about the type of treatment some of us have experienced when dealing with bureaucrats.) There's plenty of anecdotal stories from all, I'm sure, so let's just get on with increasing the learning curve.

 

[Oroblanco]

It is past time to lay off of Scott as a representative of all that is bad and let's pick his brains for Archaeological data.
Ditto- Mr Wood is not "the enemy" we should be going after with our complaints. I appreciate his being open to even talk with us, when we ARE seen as "the enemy" by the ultra-protectionists who use every opportunity to SUE the Forest Service into complying with their interests. A game of regulation by lawsuit those groups seem to love.

As Scott has pointed out, it is in the government's interest for you to find a cache of treasure; they get half of it off the top and you still have to pay income taxes so there is not a lot of incentive to STOP you from claiming a treasure, however they have to have it well proven before granting permits or the whole of the Superstitions would be torn up by the overzealous diggers who likely would not be bothered with back-filling and restoring the sites. Hence the requirements to document your finds (photos, research etc) before any permit is granted. It may seem unreasonable red tape but without it, consider what the beautiful Superstition mountains might look like! Government is a highly echeloned heirarchy of bureaucracy, and any treasure trove permits granted will be 'answered for' by the person who granted it to his/her boss, always with an eye to being correct and legal so HAS to be well founded and documented. These permits cannot be passed out willy-nilly.

Blindbowman, if you should locate a cache of treasure - are you sure you would not have any use for the proceeds? For instance a treasure worth some $20 million, (not impossible, consider what Mel Fisher got from the Atocha - over $400 million and still producing) after the government cut would likely leave you with a "paltry" four to five MILLION dollars - in my view a tidy sum! Plus you would have those proceeds absolutely legally, rather a nice feature in my opinion, after all fame is a fleeting thing that fades quickly and so easily lost, while the luster of gold lasts!

Oroblanco

 

[Real de Tayopa Tropical Tramp]

[ blindbowman ]
i am sorry to have not explaned the photo better but me and scott are talking in emails and this is not a wall .. the shevling rock is just that a rock about 10ft around in size and chest high and just this one side is shevled with this over hang
***********
Curiously enough I have seen old Adobe walls exacty like that. Can you repost it, but much lighter? or perhaps send it to me so that I can lighten it to study it?

Tropical Tramp

 

[JScottWood]

A "highly echeloned heirarchy of bureaucracy," eh? I'm gonna have to steal that one, Roy!

Once again, people, thanks for the support. I'm not here to bend anybody over the red tape dispenser - I'm as bound up in it as any of you. Ah, the stories I could tell you about working with the State Historic Preservation Officer, our Regional and Washington Offices, the ten Tribes we deal with, the pork-addicted AZ congressional delegation, ADOT, FHWA, BOR, COE, etc., etc. - but don't worry, I wouldn't want to cause a flurry of computer related injuries (foreheads suddenly dropping onto keyboards accompanied by snoring and drooling and lawsuits). Nor was it ever my intention to actually become a topic myself, though if I'd thought about it I probably should have seen that coming. Oh well. Just another day at the office - speaking of which, it's bloody 3AM!!! CY'ALL8R
Cheers,
Scott

 

[the blindbowman]

high realdetayopa

yes i can and unlike some of trolls i am not trying to missleed anyone ..i am just posting what we have found with out destorying our chance to recover our goal ... the reason i did not post the out picture of the rock it self is because that picture was send to scott for the permit and i felt it would have people destrubing the site ... but here is a better look at what we are calling the nephew site .

 

[the blindbowman]

let me add a few things that may give some insight to these to photos . for one we are looking ad the stains on the rock face above and in the back of this site . with under standing if this was a body that those stains could be caused from body fluids as the body decays it cast out ward these fluids and the other thing we took note of was the darker redish stain to the more right side of the photo , if in fact this was the nephews remains . the dutchman stated he had shot the boy in the forhead yet at the angle of this stain we could be in fact looking at the exit wound at the back of the skull area . if the dirt and skin were covering the suface of the skull ...and that would place what could be stains from a chain near the neck area of the remains these stains of what could be a chain are just to the left of the dark red stain and about 6-7 inches away makeing the boy about 5'10 - 6' even

we noted if this was a arm bone of the humrous the leght would be around 12-13 inches .when compaired to my own arm at the sight . i am 5' 9" and my arm is 11 1/2 lenght of the humrous ... if i am right that may have been why the dutchman shot frist because the boy was in fact taller and bigger than he was at 70 years of age ...

maybe the dutchman's sister sent her biggest son and that in it's self would make logicial sence .....why send a small boy to help ? the other thing is if these are the boy , he had just come from Germany and his bones would show he was of Germany main land i beleave , un like those born here in the states ...

but the fact remains .not destrubing this site may make it far more valueable to the over all reseach . just as good C.S.I . work uncovers clues and evidences not seen by the naked eye ....

we have no idea if the boy had anything in his pockets or on him . thus destrubing the site these things could be lost ....

wish me luck i hope this is the nephew's grave site ....

 

[Real de Tayopa Tropical Tramp]

HI Bowman, your new pictures clarifies the background, sniff, so much for my brilliantly conceived Adobe wall sigh. However difficult as it may seem, I have been wrong before, don't talk to my wife OR Or I will talk to Beth.

On the skeleton? since your picture "does" lack detail and perspective, are we looking at a skeleton face down with a projectile exit on the right posterior parietal area of the skull? If so, I would assume that it was from a very low velocity projectile since there is very little evidence of fracturing characteristic of the exit wound of a normal pistol or rifle bullet.

Since the range of pistol projectile velocities in that period ran only to about 7-800 fps I would assume that it was actually an entrance wound. a rifle would have an even more shattering effect.

If by any chance the above is correct, based upon practically no clear evidence or detailed picture, then I would have to say that if it was the Dutchman's nephew, that he was shot from behind. - murder not self defense.

Tropical Tamp (who would love some clear pictures to clarify his hasty, probably incorrect, deductions)

 

[Real de Tayopa Tropical Tramp]

Shehs Bowman, I now see a bit of perspective in relation to the upper bone that I missed when I posted, this means that it is not a skeleton face down. sorry & appol.

Tropical Tamp