question mark mine at second water

PotBelly Jim

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i know alot of you have been to the mine above 2nd water...there is a shaft that goes down in a zig zag path..if you would like to hear the story of how it came to be like that let me know..my old partner is the one that sank the shaft

How in the heck did he keep it cleared out or get anything into/out of it? Spit 'er out Pard!:icon_thumleft:
 

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azdave35

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Dec 19, 2008
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How in the heck did he keep it cleared out or get anything into/out of it? Spit 'er out Pard!:icon_thumleft:
i met warren back in the 80's...we were involved in a couple mining projects together...him and his partner bruce had met a man named obie stoker in the late 70's..obie told them a tale about him and his wife finding a tunnel above second water spring...the tunnel went in the mountain about 300 foot..then it opened up into a big cavern...18 ft in diameter..whoever had worked the mine back in the day had hit a lense or pocket and it opened up big...obie told warren one wall of the cavern was a 18 ft thick quartz vein.
 

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azdave35

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he then told warren that he had mined 10k worth of gold with small hand tools...alot of it was laying on the floor of the tunnel where the previous miners had left it....he had made a few trips in there and on the last trip in he noticed something different on the east end of garden valley...the land looked different..kind of jumbled up...he proceeded on to the tunnel and found it caved in and he couldn't get back in...when he got back in town he heard there had been a small earthquake in the supers...he knew it was going to be a while before he could get back in...
 

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azdave35

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this happened back in the 30's and obie spent years trying to get that tunnel cleaned out...in the early 60's he recruited a couple guys to help..they dug for a while but soon realized it wasn't going to be easy..so they bailed out on obie...in 1969 he found a couple more guys..same deal..they worked a while and gave up....then in the late 70's he met warren and bruce...these two were young and strong and weren't easily discouraged like the ones before them...obie had a good story and receipts where he had sold a little over 10k worth of gold in tucson...that was enough to convince warren and bruce..they had complete faith in obie..BUT..just to make sure it wasn't a goose chase they hired the best dowser in the country at the time..i believe he was from kansas...they transported him to the site and he went to work...pretty soon they noticed he was headed up the mountain from the mine tunnel entrance..he stopped at a spot about a third of the way up the mountain...he said instead of trying to clear 300 ft of tunnel they would be better off going uphill above the tunnel entrance and shafting straight down right into the cavern...past the caved in portion of the tunnel..he marked a spot and told them if they shafted 50 ft straight down they would break into the cavern where the vein was...he also told them he had never had his dowse rods respond as hard as they did today...according to him there was a huge vein of gold bearing quartz ..thats what they wanted to hear and proceeded to put a claim on the spot in all 3 of their names..warren ,bruce and obie...
 

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azdave35

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warren ,bruce and obie now had a plan and a claim...but in order to pop a 50 ft shaft in the supers they needed to file a notice of intent and a plan of operations with the feds.....which they did...the f.s. came out to inspect the claim and wanted to see their proof of mineral..in order to mine on f.s. land you must have valuable minerals present...and they had nothing on the surface...now they had a dilemma...no minerals..no 50 ft shaft... after some thought they came up with a plan...they would prospect around the site and try to find some mine able minerals to present to the feds..12 ft south of the spot the dowser marked they had a surface assay of 2 oz per ton...the feds were watching them by now and made sure they only blasted on the spot where the assay was...so they started drilling and blasting 12 ft south of the original spot..they got down 15 ft ..by this time the feds quit checking on them so they drifted 12 ft north..which put them on the original dowser's spot...then they shafted straight down again...and that's the reason for the zig-zag in the first part of the shaft....warren and bruce were the only ones doing the severe manual labor so drilling and blasting and mucking this shaft proved to be a long drawn out process... what they thought was only going to take a few months..got drawn out into years...and time was running out because the feds put a time limit on mining in the supers...in 1983 they were kicking everyone out..matter of fact by this time there were only a handful of miners with claims left in the supers...bob corbin..chuck crawford..bob ward...and a few others..the rest had all been bullied off their claims
 

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azdave35

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as the 1983 deadline was rapidly closing in on them warren and bruce were doing all they could to finish the shaft....the miners that still had claims were having monthly meetings with the feds trying for a stay of execution but to no avail ..the law was the law and they weren't changing it for a few miners...at the time the miners all lost their claims and were booted out of the supers warren and bruce has shafted down 45 ft.....5 ft short of their 50 ft goal...if they had been allowed to keep going and connect into the cavern would there have been an 18 ft thick vein of gold and quartz like obie said?...guess we'll never know:dontknow:
 

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markmar

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Hi Dave

I want from you to be honest for this question: Obie and your friends did follow a lost Ruth's map?
I have the impression how they did, but in the wrong place and with a bad interpretation of the clues given in the map.
 

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azdave35

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Hi Dave

I want from you to be honest for this question: Obie and your friends did follow a lost Ruth's map?
I have the impression how they did, but in the wrong place and with a bad interpretation of the clues given in the map.
marius...i wasn't in on the project with these guys...i never met obie and bruce...i only knew warren....this is the story that warren told me....but i never heard warren talk about any maps...although warren did think the question mark mine was the ldm...he got that idea from obie....i can tell you one thing though...warren had complete faith in obie....up until the day he died he believed everything obie told him...and obie never told him about following a map..he just stumbled onto the mine tunnel back in the 30's
 

markmar

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marius...i wasn't in on the project with these guys...i never met obie and bruce...i only knew warren....this is the story that warren told me....but i never heard warren talk about any maps...although warren did think the question mark mine was the ldm...he got that idea from obie....i can tell you one thing though...warren had complete faith in obie....up until the day he died he believed everything obie told him...and obie never told him about following a map..he just stumbled onto the mine tunnel back in the 30's

Then, Obie didn't tell all the truth to Warren. Obie was searching for the " knob " mine which was mentioned in Erwin Ruth's clue. Is the same mine with Not Peralta's mine. This mine was depicted in a lost Adolph Ruth's map and in a Grijalva stone map.
Not Peralta believed too how this mine was the LDM but IMO it's not. This mine don't fits the descriptions given by Waltz and Reed about the region and the shaft. This is the only mine where the gold vein starts on a wall in a cave.
Now read the similarities between the Obie's clues and the " knob " mine. The knob at its base measure about 300 feet long and is about 50 feet high. The volcanic buble on its top, which has the cave inside, measure about 18 feet in diameter and the gold vein in the cave's wall is about one foot large.
The 30's era was a continuous quest for what the lost Gonzales-Ruth maps could lead to.
 

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azdave35

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Then, Obie didn't tell all the truth to Warren. Obie was searching for the " knob " mine which was mentioned in Erwin Ruth's clue. Is the same mine with Not Peralta's mine. This mine was depited in a lost Adolph Ruth's map and in a Grijalva stone map.
Not Peralta believed too how this mine was the LDM but IMO it's not. This mine don't fits the descriptions given by Waltz and Reed about the region and the shaft. This is the only mine where the gold vein starts on a wall in a cave.
Now read the similarities between the Obie's clues and the " knob " mine. The knob at its base measure about 300 feet long and is about 50 feet high. The volcanic buble on its top, which has the cave inside, measure about 18 feet in diameter and the gold vein in the cave's wall is about one foot large.
The 30's era was a continuous quest for what the lost Gonzales-Ruth maps could lead to.

marius...the vein didn't actually start on the wall....it was a pocket where the original vein opened up ...it is very common in arizona mining...the vein will get larger and form pockets...some very large...then the vein will pinch down again and maybe another 30 ft open up again...whoever started the tunnel was probably following a vein maybe a foot or so in diameter and hit the jackpot when it opened up....another tidbit that i always thought shed a bit of truth on obie's story was that a pretty well known treasure hunter by the name of burbridge found some gold bars at second water spring..i always thought the gold came from that mine...one more thing warren showed me ...directly across from the mine are some carvings on top of a hill..old and kinda hard to read but there was a turtle carved on a big flat rock...and also 2 foot prints...if you stood at the back of one of the prints and looked straight ahead to where it points..it points directly at obie's mine....the other footprint pointed to a mine up high on the cliffs of battleship mountain ...obie said it was a silver mine and that he had found silver mule shoes on top of battle ship mountain...the last time i was at the carvings some puke had busted off one of the footprints carved in the flat rock
 

PotBelly Jim

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Then, Obie didn't tell all the truth to Warren. Obie was searching for the " knob " mine which was mentioned in Erwin Ruth's clue. Is the same mine with Not Peralta's mine. This mine was depited in a lost Adolph Ruth's map and in a Grijalva stone map.
Not Peralta believed too how this mine was the LDM but IMO it's not. This mine don't fits the descriptions given by Waltz and Reed about the region and the shaft. This is the only mine where the gold vein starts on a wall in a cave.
Now read the similarities between the Obie's clues and the " knob " mine. The knob at its base measure about 300 feet long and is about 50 feet high. The volcanic buble on its top, which has the cave inside, measure about 18 feet in diameter and the gold vein in the cave's wall is about one foot large.
The 30's era was a continuous quest for what the lost Gonzales-Ruth maps could lead to.

Marius, I don't recall ever hearing Obie Stoker was searching for a knob mine or anything to do with a Ruth map? Not that I know or care all that much about maps...as you know...I'm sure Joe knows just about every detail of what Obie was doing, hopefully he will weigh in.
 

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azdave35

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Marius, I don't recall ever hearing Obie Stoker was searching for a knob mine or anything to do with a Ruth map? Not that I know or care all that much about maps...as you know...I'm sure Joe knows just about every detail of what Obie was doing, hopefully he will weigh in.

jim...obie told warren he just kinda stumbled onto the mine at second water...it was somewhat hidden by nature...bushes , trees and rocks....obie had problems from being in the war..joe called it shell shock...nowadays known as PTSD ..
 

markmar

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I believe the "?" mine was an old prospect hole started by an Anglos after 1890. Maybe by Chunning? There was never a 300 feet tunnel IMO. The Spanish/Mexicans who worked gold mines in the Supers, didn't dig their mines more than 30-40 feet deep. These are the deeps of those mines found by the few Anglos.
 

markmar

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marius...the vein didn't actually start on the wall....it was a pocket where the original vein opened up ...it is very common in arizona mining...the vein will get larger and form pockets...some very large...then the vein will pinch down again and maybe another 30 ft open up again...whoever started the tunnel was probably following a vein maybe a foot or so in diameter and hit the jackpot when it opened up....another tidbit that i always thought shed a bit of truth on obie's story was that a pretty well known treasure hunter by the name of burbridge found some gold bars at second water spring..i always thought the gold came from that mine...one more thing warren showed me ...directly across from the mine are some carvings on top of a hill..old and kinda hard to read but there was a turtle carved on a big flat rock...and also 2 foot prints...if you stood at the back of one of the prints and looked straight ahead to where it points..it points directly at obie's mine....the other footprint pointed to a mine up high on the cliffs of battleship mountain ...obie said it was a silver mine and that he had found silver mule shoes on top of battle ship mountain...the last time i was at the carvings some puke had busted off one of the footprints carved in the flat rock

Dave

Seems in the Supers is raining gold bars. There are at least another three cases of persons who found gold bars or gold in caves they couldn't remember their location. :icon_scratch:
 

PotBelly Jim

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I believe the "?" mine was an old prospect hole started by an Anglos after 1890. Maybe by Chunning? There was never a 300 feet tunnel IMO. The Spanish/Mexicans who worked gold mines in the Supers, didn't dig their mines more than 30-40 feet deep. These are the deeps of those mines found by the few Anglos.

Perhaps you are right, Marius. Who knows how many different people worked that particular hole and for how long? I would imagine though that Obie knew what 300ft looked like.
 

markmar

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Perhaps you are right, Marius. Who knows how many different people worked that particular hole and for how long? I would imagine though that Obie knew what 300ft looked like.

Jim

Forty years is enough time to uncover a caved in tunnel. Using dinamite for the big rocks , I believe more than five years would been too much.
If there would be so much gold Obie claimed, then he should stake a claim on the spot with the samples he sold in Tucson, and become a partner with a minning company which would has the gear to excavate and uncover the tunnel .
Forty years was enough to take the proper decision .
Makes me a big impression of how many honest people worked for a few men's illusion.
 

deducer

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marius...the vein didn't actually start on the wall....it was a pocket where the original vein opened up ...it is very common in arizona mining...the vein will get larger and form pockets...some very large...then the vein will pinch down again and maybe another 30 ft open up again...whoever started the tunnel was probably following a vein maybe a foot or so in diameter and hit the jackpot when it opened up....another tidbit that i always thought shed a bit of truth on obie's story was that a pretty well known treasure hunter by the name of burbridge found some gold bars at second water spring..i always thought the gold came from that mine...one more thing warren showed me ...directly across from the mine are some carvings on top of a hill..old and kinda hard to read but there was a turtle carved on a big flat rock...and also 2 foot prints...if you stood at the back of one of the prints and looked straight ahead to where it points..it points directly at obie's mine....the other footprint pointed to a mine up high on the cliffs of battleship mountain ...obie said it was a silver mine and that he had found silver mule shoes on top of battle ship mountain...the last time i was at the carvings some puke had busted off one of the footprints carved in the flat rock

John Burbridge?
 

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