Booty on the Trail.......

[Twisted Fork]

Should you see such stones in a tree or sitting next to one, you are probably on to a cache site and mine. The booty stone or trowel or sword tip refers to "booty, concealed & smoothed over, at the depth of a rapier sword." Nuggets above the portal, bullion above the vent; both are concealed openings. This carving sat at the smelter site, a few hundred yards away, between one old Spanish mine long since played out by early pioneers, and another that's hands off to you and I.

 

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[djui5]

 

[Leones Corazon]

Still can't get used to the utah tree markers....i'll bet there is a duplicate trail in stone along the way due to what can happen to tree's such as fire and insects....

But you can definately tell that rock was held against the tree to make the shape....

DW

 

[Twisted Fork]

Right you are AZ. A bread trail if you will. Individual stones somewhat uncommon or out of place to their source location, sometimes set in and a little out of wack with the way nature would leave them. The desert more than anywhere else. You would hardly know they were there unless you were watching for them. Cool eh?

 

[BLACKFOOT]

Like the small white stones marking the trails across the black Lava flow southwest of Grants New Mexico. when you get up on a hill you can spot them way out on the lava. they stand out like a neon lite.

 

[Leones Corazon]

I would think stones in the forest to mirror marks on a tree would be a bit out of place in an aspen grove to begin with..... . Our like site number one here on the western slope....large red rocks just don't belong on sand stone....lol. After looking at rocks for so many years i can't get past it and look at tree's.

About all i have noticed out here with trees is when a horse head marker is concerned there will be a hand (axe) hewn path of stumps to match the trail for the animals....

DW

 

[Twisted Fork]

Is there 8 of them? I would hit the area throughly with the double box.

 

[Old Dog]

Ed,

These are cool.
Once we realised what they were the reason became obvious.
stand on top of the hill where they all come together and they are like 10 yard wise clearcut pathways through the desert that look like spokes on a wheel.
There are hundreds of the stumps ranging from a foot to four feet tall. All of them are inside the trails they mark, and all are axe hewn.

Mule trails are fun to follow as well. These go for miles in just about every direction. There are also triangular pointers intermittently telling whether it is an incoming or outgoing trail.

Thom

 

[Twisted Fork]

Cool beans....Most folks just can't accept how long those tree stumps can survive. I found two 4 foot pine stumps 15 years ago at 10'000 feet elevation that were only 6 inches in diameter. They were clearly marked of on a Spanish map from 1856. One of them fell over as I walked up to it, and the other also, when I touched it a couple of weeks later; and that's just regular old pine...........

 

[Old Dog]

Ours are Juniper. and in this climate that stuff will last centuries.

OD

 

[imafishingnutt]

Um i would have looked close at the direction the rock was pointing on the ground it could have been a clue to the next mark.
do you remember which way it was pointing on the ground.........

 

[Twisted Fork]

Good eye, they serve several purposes. If you draw a basic terrain topo of the area, and them position the stones on it, they tell you how to pen knife across point to point in order to slice and dice the paper map and then reference the reassembly into yet another new map assembly, which reveals the related cache and mine locations and the routes in and out of the area, to and from the next mountain range and the lay line to reach it's main site axle marker.