Army pack train ....

Oroblanco

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ConceptualizedNetherlandr wrote
I don't think you send tons to be assayed. Refined, sure.

Some assayers were happy to process ore, not hundreds of tons but Waltz did not need to send hundreds of tons.

assayer-ad1.jpg
from
Mohave County miner. (Mineral Park, A.T. [Ariz.]) 1882-1918, December 09, 1883

Notice that this assayer is clearly offering to melt gold and silver into bars and stamp them; rich ore like Waltz's could very easily be handled by an assayer, possibly cheaper than a smelter. Assayers had to make a living, and once a gold "rush" was over, other services helped make ends meet.

Perhaps you missed it where I mentioned that newspaper ref was one of many, just go to the Library of Congress newspaper archive and search for "Wells Fargo" in Arizona newspapers dating to Waltz's lifetime, there are hundreds and date to as far back as newspapers exist for their collection. Perhaps you make assumptions too quickly. :dontknow:

Signing off for the evening, good luck and good hunting amigos I hope you find the treasures that you seek.
Oroblanco
 

Not Peralta

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Oroblanco, there may be a very good reason why waltz didn't want anyone in Arizona to see what type of gold he had, and Im sure he did not want it assayed, np:cat:
 

Apr 17, 2014
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ConceptualizedNetherlandr wrote


Some assayers were happy to process ore,
It says bullion, not ore.
not hundreds of tons but Waltz did not need to send hundreds of tons.

View attachment 1013921
from
Mohave County miner. (Mineral Park, A.T. [Ariz.]) 1882-1918, December 09, 1883

Notice
where he is located - where was that ore supposedly sent??
that this assayer is clearly offering to melt gold and silver
bullion
into bars and stamp them; rich ore like Waltz's could very easily be handled by an assayer, possibly cheaper than a smelter. Assayers had to make a living, and once a gold "rush" was over, other services helped make ends meet.

Perhaps you missed it where I mentioned that newspaper ref was one of many, just go to the Library of Congress newspaper archive and search for "Wells Fargo" in Arizona newspapers dating to Waltz's lifetime, there are hundreds and date to as far back as newspapers exist for their collection. Perhaps you make assumptions too quickly. :dontknow:

Signing off for the evening, good luck and good hunting amigos I hope you find the treasures that you seek.
Oroblanco

So what year was it sent and what happened to all the $ ???
 

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Not Peralta

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Oroblanco, just a few days ago on another thread I talked about the sealed mines around the massacre grounds, there are still mines close by this area that people have not seen in over a hundred or so years. have to stop and make some :coffee2: just woke up. np:cat:
 

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It says bullion, not ore.


It does say "bullion" and not "ore", but "bullion" is in fact already in bars and stamped after being extracted from ore ... so the ad is confusing, because why take a bar of bullion and melt it to make another bar? Unless they mean melting bullion to form bigger bars from smaller ones, or vice versa. Ad doesn't say that ....

Once extracted from the ore, the gold can be called "parted bullion", so possibly nuggets to be melted into bars?

-- my very inexpert contribution ... Google is my friend but may not know as much as folks here do :)
 

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coazon de oro

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Roy

Not all prospectors are alike. Some like myself and perhaps Waltz have a good spot with nice gold and only take what they need. Personally I could care less. It's not going anywhere. Just depends on a persons nature. Others with gold fever will stop at nothing to get it all.
Perhaps the mountain only punishes the greedy. Now there is a thought!

Howdy Sarge,

I agree with you that not all prospectors are alike. Many who consider themselves experts, claim there is no gold in the Superstitions. I am glad that you have proved them wrong, and can only wonder how you would fair in areas where they say there is gold, like Alaska.

While it may not be Lost Dutchman gold, it is gold none the less. Placer gold from the Superstitions may all look the same, but the gold in quartz in the matchbox is different, and could very possibly come from a deeper place below those mountains.

I too have also thought that greed keeps many from finding anything. While not all accidents are related to greed, I do believe many are, call it Karma, Thunder Gods, or whatever. The devil took Jesus to the "wilderness", "high on a mountain" he showed him all the riches of the world (sounds like the LDM). Yes greed is evil, many lose their soul because of it.

On the statement that Waltz made where he said there was enough gold in sight to make millionaires out of twenty men, I often wonder if it is in fact the cave of gold that the Apache referred to.:dontknow:

Homar
 

Not Peralta

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coazon de oro, Geronimo wanted to make a deal and no one would listen,the apaches say, If you have the blue stone you can enter the mine. np:cat: have to get another:coffee2:
 

hooch

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Could be but I doubt it; that would have meant that Waltz's ore should have tested high for silver content, much higher than it did, which was only some 2 oz/ton vs over 5200 oz/gold. What I really think the Pit mine is, is the lost Peralta mine. Aka Ludy and Jacobs mine, Ludy brothers etc. LOVE that photo amigo, it is (almost) enough to tempt me to go visit the infamous Pit mine myself. However our time for this trip is pretty well already spoken for (can not spend the winter) so will not have the opportunity this fall.

Hooch wrote


So now you are calling me a liar? Hmm.

You like math do you Hooch? You think that a SMALL mine, could not have produced some 800 pounds of gold huh? Well how about this amigo:

Dick Holmes had an assay done on the ore from beneath Waltz's deathbed. It returned @ some $110,000 in gold per ton, and two ounces of silver. That is, divide $110,000 by the then-current price of gold, $20.67 per ounce, or in other words each ton of Waltz's ore (the type found beneath his bed) had a gold content of 5321.722302854378 ounces. Lets round that down to 5300 for the moment.

Now how much gold does it take, to make say, 800 pounds? As you know gold is measured in Troy weight, and there are 12 Troy ounces per Troy pound, so 800 x 12 = 9600 ounces of gold.

Remember that assay figure now? Rounding DOWN we have 5300 ounces per ton of rock. Now divide that 9600 by 5300, and you will know about how many tons of the rich gold ore that Waltz would have had to mine out, in order to have gotten 800 pounds worth of gold or a quarter million. Do you have a high number of tons of ore for your result, or is it more like less than TWO TONS of rock?

How much space does TWO TONS of rock take up, when it is a solid mass? (Put your hands down Don Jose, Cactusjumper and Springfield and you other greybeard prospectors!) I will give you a hint - it is less than two cubic yards.

Even allowing for waste rock removal, some lower grade ore (surely it could not be ALL bonanza grade) and you still end up with a relatively small amount of rock that got mined out, which matches fairly well with the (alternate) version of the LDM as a mine shaft with a hole no larger than a barrel, and not more than a dozen feet deep. No need for a huge funnel shaped pit, cross tunnel etc for the amount of gold he should have gotten then would be HUGE as well, not just a quarter million but many millions.

I don't know where you got the idea that Waltz was living in a "shack" he had a modest adobe home, and was apparently quite comfortable right up until the great flood of 1891 (spring) which flooded him out and he also apparently became sick due to it, eventually dying of pneumonia as he was not a young man.

Not everyone would go mine out ALL the gold he could get, many people would only mine as much as would make one comfortable, as it appears Waltz did. We could also take into consideration that up until 1886, there were hostile Apaches roaming the Superstitions whom did not hesitate to kill any whites or Pimas or Mexicans they could, and by the time they were finally rounded up, Waltz was then an old man, at 76 years of age when Geronimo surrendered. He may not have been physically able to go back and mine the gold in a big way. Would you go ALONE trekking into the Superstitions, if there was a good chance that a war party of Apaches was in there waiting for new victims?

You are certainly welcome to your own opinion(s) Hooch, just thought perhaps you had not done the math to see that the LDM really could be, and logically is, a relatively small affair. Waltz and his partner apparently only worked with hand tools, possibly not even black powder, so you know it takes a LOT of work to bust up rocks with hammer, drill, pick and bar, I would not expect that a hard rock mine made by hand tools alone would be a very large affair. But the richness of the LDM ore also points to a smaller size mine, no huge pit requiring ladders etc for this would have produced much, much more gold and there is no evidence that Waltz ever got more than a bit over that quarter million (plus the several thousand used to help his friends, etc).

To tie this in to the topic, what if the Apache Trail IS the Military Trail that Waltz referred to? It was the route you would take to get to Fort McDowell, which was in existence in his day, and no doubt Army pack trains traveled it, on the route between Ft McDowell and Ft Reno in the Mazatzals. I would point out that when Waltz said the "military trail" he was saying something that must have been common knowledge among the people listening (one version has it that he said this in a saloon packed with people trying to get clues from him) so it is not likely that the "old military trail" was one rarely used or hardly known to most people. Logically it would be a military trail used enough and long enough, that it was known to many folks as "the" old military trail.

What this could mean is that the mine could actually be in sight of the modern road today known as the Apache Trail! (And by extension, very likely would mean the mine is outside of the Wilderness Area, and thus not subject to the severe restrictions!)

Good luck and good hunting Hooch, Cactusjumper and everyone reading this, I hope you find the treasures that you seek.
Oroblanco

:coffee: :coffee2: :coffee2:

Not calling you a liar at all, im saying that its next to pretty much impossible for a single person by themselves to mine and refine 750 pounds of gold, especially for a single shipment like in the above story I replied to.
 

cactusjumper

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Roy,

There are many possibilities to explain that story. Problem is, you must change the details of how the story first appeared to make any of those possibilities work. Have you changed the original story?

Take care,

Joe
 

Oroblanco

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Roy,

There are many possibilities to explain that story. Problem is, you must change the details of how the story first appeared to make any of those possibilities work. Have you changed the original story?

Take care,

Joe


Which "original" story do you refer to? Sims Ely/Jim Bark? Mitchell? (published before Ely's book) Bicknell's? Holmes? The version you find (however short on details) in the Pioneer Interviews?

You forget that the letter in which Higham (if memory serves) mentioned seeing the receipts, WAS NOT FOR PUBLICATION. It was a private letter. People make mistakes. So YES I am quite comfortable in adjusting a word which could have been a mistake by the writer. He had also mentioned that the Petrasch boys were discouraged and had about concluded that Waltz had told a big story, until they found the receipts. This was not in Ely's book, nor Mitchell's article(s) and certainly not in Bicknell's articles which I suspect Bicknell would have certainly trumpeted it. Consider the actions of the Petrasches, Holmes, Julia - all went hunting for the mine, some stuck to it for the rest of their lives. No one does that if not convinced the mine exists, and has reason(s) to be convinced.

Hooch wrote
Not calling you a liar at all, im saying that its next to pretty much impossible for a single person by themselves to mine and refine 750 pounds of gold, especially for a single shipment like in the above story I replied to.

Who said it was a SINGLE shipment, or that it was entirely the work of ONE person? Waltz had a partner for at least a short time, so some work was done by two persons. Over a span of twenty years, (at least, possibly more) on a number of visits to work the mine, I do not see any problem with several tons of ore being mined out even with just hand tools. The letter with the reference about the shipment receipts is plural, it was not a single shipment. That makes sense too, rather than a whopping 800 pounds plus in one load.

Side thing here but it does not make sense to melt bullion bars/rounds to make bullion bars/rounds. Also we could point out that "official" US Assayers offices were licensed to purchase gold and silver (which then was shipped to the US Mints) and in some cases, local Assayers even minted coins for local circulation, like happened at Dahlonega, Pike's Peak, and at San Francisco, where Augustus Humbert struck the first US $50 coins (now often called "slugs" they were legal) and for those with doubts about anyone sending ORE to an ASSAYER, here is the text from an ad from where Humbert worked:

Moffat & Company immediately ceased their own operation and prepared for the increased business under their federal contract by moving from Clay and Dupont Streets to larger offices on Montgomery Street between Clay and Commercial. On January 22 the following notice appeared in the Herald:

"United States Assayer’s Office – we give notice that on or about the lst February ensuing we will be prepared to receive Gold Dust for SMELTING AND ASSAYING and forming the same into ingots and bars in accordance with our recent contract with the Secretary of the Treasury, authorized by an act of Congress approved 30th September, 1850, “under the supervision of the United States Assayer” AUGUSTUS HUMBERT, Esq., who will cause the United States stamp to be affixed to the same.

Moffat & Co.

We also announce our intention of erecting forthwith extensive Reverberatory Smelting Furnaces for the purpose of reducing ores and gold-bearing black sand.

Due notice will be given of the removal of the U. S. Assayer’s Office to Montgomery Street.

Moffat & Co."
<borrowed from Augustus Humbert Mints the First Gold Coins From the Mother Lode - Michael Moore's Blog - San Leandro, CA Patch

I put the relevant section in BOLD to highlight it, it was not that way when printed.
Google is great as is Bing, but the internet does not have all the info.

H 2 Charlie - if you think about it, it does not make sense that Waltz would have higraded gold ore from the Vulture, hauled it ALL the way to the Superstitions to then hide it. It is quite a distance, and the main means of transport in his day was horses and mules. Besides, other researchers have searched the records of the Vulture mine, and found NO evidence that Jacob Waltz ever worked there, and the ore is not a match for the specimens from Waltz like the famous matchbox.

To get back to the topic - if the Apache Trail was/is the military trail referred to by Waltz, now consider that in the single attempt by Waltz to take Julia and Reiney to the mine, they traveled that road. Also, when Dick Holmes attempted to trail Waltz to the mine, they also traveled that road up until they turned off to go to Hidden Water. Holmes also went over that same road the moment Waltz was dead, on his way to Hidden Water. Julia on her first attempt to go the mine, also went over a part of the same road. Interesting, no?

Good luck and good hunting amigos, I hope you find the treasures that you seek. Apologies if I missed any questions addressed to me.
Oroblanco

PS I found an error in an earlier post, the Lib of Congress newspaper archive now has issues of AZ newspapers dating all the way back to 1859, which is before the time when Wells Fargo agents were operating in AZ. They are adding to the LOC archive all the time, and I did not know of the expansion to that early date. Some fascinating info in those early newspapers, including reports and letters from King Woolsey, Sylvester Mowry, Charles Poston among many others I highly recommend the site for anyone interested in Arizona history.
 

sgtfda

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Howdy Sarge,

I agree with you that not all prospectors are alike. Many who consider themselves experts, claim there is no gold in the Superstitions. I am glad that you have proved them wrong, and can only wonder how you would fair in areas where they say there is gold, like Alaska.

While it may not be Lost Dutchman gold, it is gold none the less. Placer gold from the Superstitions may all look the same, but the gold in quartz in the matchbox is different, and could very possibly come from a deeper place below those mountains.

I too have also thought that greed keeps many from finding anything. While not all accidents are related to greed, I do believe many are, call it Karma, Thunder Gods, or whatever. The devil took Jesus to the "wilderness", "high on a mountain" he showed him all the riches of the world (sounds like the LDM). Yes greed is evil, many lose their soul because of it.

On the statement that Waltz made where he said there was enough gold in sight to make millionaires out of twenty men, I often wonder if it is in fact the cave of gold that the Apache referred to.:dontknow:

Homar

Homar I have friends mining in Alaska. You see them on the gold show. I have no interest in going there. Too cold and I don't care for the huge skeeters. The Superstitions are just 20 min away and enjoyable in the cool months. I never understood Dutchhunters who know nothing about prospecting going out looking for the mine. They could be standing on it and not have a clue. Want to find gold go to the mineralized areas it was found in the past. It's there. Last spring a truck driving down on of the popular dirt road hit a tree stump on the side of the road. A friend and I dug a bucket of dirt out of the tree roots and it was full of gold. People drive past there all day long and don't have a clue.
If you have a interest in Dutchhunting join a prospecting club and learn from the members. I did. I don't know it all but I'm working on improving my skills. I give a lot away to friends who helped me. There is not a lot of gold from that area floating around other than some specks folks found over the years. Other than the Pitt mine!
 

sgtfda

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Only reason to melt bars if they were cast at the mine but not refined. A good example is Spanish silver bars that had a very high lead content. Rose wrote a story about some he found that were 50% lead.
 

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This has digressed a tad into supposed evidence of a mine with lots-o-gold by lack of evidence of receipts of shipments. Any paperwork from anyone supposedly in receipt of said shipments? And SHOW ME THE MONEY. If indeed this happened there had to be banking records of some sort. Did they send back gold coins? Checks? What?

And if so, what became of all that?
 

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There is a fairly concise summary here, seems to be contributed by or based on Tom Kollenborn. Which one of you guys is him anyway?

Apache Junction Public Library - Archeological Society


Jacob Waltz moved to the Salt River Valley in 1868 and filed a homestead claim on 160 acres of land on the north bank of the Salt River. It is from here Waltz began his exploratory trips into the mountains surrounding the Salt River Valley. If Waltz had a rich gold mine or cache he had to have discovered it on one of these prospecting forays. Old timers claim Waltz prospected every winter between 1868-1886. Waltz died in Phoenix, Arizona Territory on October 25, 1891,

I don't know how true that is or isn't. If it needs correction say so.

This gives him 18 seasons to discover and mine. Max. What years did he supposedly ship all that gold? What year did he claim to have buried the mine?

From a previous portion in the article (go read it) is seems Waltz probably made out in the Bradshaws, brought his gold with him and the supes was his retirement/recreation area. Probably enjoyed being out there doing it (prospecting). That is what he knew.
 

cactusjumper

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Concept.,

"There is a fairly concise summary here, seems to be contributed by or based on Tom Kollenborn. Which one of you guys is him anyway?"

Tom rarely looks at the LDM forums. I don't believe any of our current posters are Tom Kollenborn, but we would all be the better if he was.

Good luck,

Joe Ribaudo
 

Cubfan64

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Roy, I noticed you posted this...

Well, Waltz did not get all the way to the mine with Julia; according to that story, they had taken a wagon, and he had told Julia and Reiney to wear old clothes for they would be going through heavy brush, which might also be a clue. Considering the distance from Phoenix to the Verde river crossing, it may just be that was how far they got that day, and he intended to cross the Salt river the next day, as we find in the Holmes account

Can you remind me where this story originated? I don't remember it being mentioned by Bicknell, Ely, Mitchell or anywhere in the Bark notes. I do recall the story, but can't for the life of me remember where it comes from since none of the other early sources ever mention Waltz actually starting out with Julia and Rhiney - only that he planned to, but got sick and never recovered.
 

Oroblanco

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I can't recall the source offhand either - possibly Helen Corbin, "Curse of the Dutchman's Gold"? I will see if I can find it, if I can find those books that is! (Never move into an un-finished home, thinking you can work around your stuff!)
 

: Michael-Robert.

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There is a fairly concise summary here, seems to be contributed by or based on Tom Kollenborn. Which one of you guys is him anyway?

Apache Junction Public Library - Archeological Society




I don't know how true that is or isn't. If it needs correction say so.

This gives him 18 seasons to discover and mine. Max. What years did he supposedly ship all that gold? What year did he claim to have buried the mine?

From a previous portion in the article (go read it) is seems Waltz probably made out in the Bradshaws, brought his gold with him and the supes was his retirement/recreation area. Probably enjoyed being out there doing it (prospecting). That is what he knew.

I would like to know the answer to these two questions also?
 

roadrunner

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How about General Stoneman.
Stonemans grade was a military trail.
Maybe Waltzs mine was actually part of the trail.
This trail runs right over or next to the silver king.
The Silver King was found because of a 1/4 acre or so of pure silver sitting right on top of the ground i believe.
I will have to go look again.
Stonemans grade is north of superior.
Get here by Queen Creek in the day, and from the milk ranch,reavis ranch trail, which a car could drive down it in the past.
 

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