Is the Pit Mine really the Lost Dutchman mine?

[PotBelly Jim]

Herman's 1953 interview

Thought I would upload (or try to, not very good at this stuff) Herman's 1953 interview for those who have never had a chance to read it...I always thought he may have done some LDM "housekeeping", it would not surprise me at all if he knew what would be in the pit mine when opened...Best, Jim

 

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[cactusjumper]

roy..what makes you so sure the pit mine ore hasn't been compared to known samples of ldm ore?

roy..what makes you so sure the pit mine ore hasn't been compared to known samples of ldm ore?

Dave,

Just curious........

Ya reckon this piece was tested?​

Take care,

Joe​

 

[azdave35]

Dave,

Just curious........

Ya reckon this piece was tested?​

Take care,

Joe​

joe...alot of things happen around here that isn't public knowledge

 

[Ponchosportal]

No one will ever produce a photo or an ore sample and claim it came from the pit mine.

All hat no cattle.

 

[Oroblanco]

No one will ever produce a photo or an ore sample and claim it came from the pit mine.

All hat no cattle.

To be fair, I believe someone had posted photos of the so-called Kochera ore here on T-net some time ago, but unfortunately I don't have a copy of that photo. Of course it is possible that the Kochera ore did not come from the Pit mine either.

Also to be fair, had the fellows who worked the Pit mine claimed it was the lost Peralta mine, I would not have any objections for there are no known specimens of this lost mine's ore. However I don't believe the Peralta mine had anything to do with Jacob Waltz and his mine on several grounds.

Please do continue, very nice ore specimen Joe! Thanks for sharing the photo!

 

[somehiker]

All this storytelling has nothing to do with the promotion of two authors and three books, does it ?
Where even the hints that the efforts at the "HEAT" dig were a cover for the illegal "pit mine" dig and profits may serve to generate further sales of those and future books .
Nothing wrong with that, or the tv shows that also tell the many tales of those mountains, the mines, and the folks that look for them.
Gold is where you find it.

 

[audigger53]

So far for the last 100 years the only "Gold" from the LDM has been from book writers about the LDM. IMO

 

[Cubfan64]

So far for the last 100 years the only "Gold" from the LDM has been from book writers about the LDM. IMO

I doubt very much that any of those books made any of the author's very wealthy. On the other hand, I suspect the town of Apache Junction and places like "Goldfield" have reaped quite a bit of tourist "gold."

 

[markmar]

Thought I would upload (or try to, not very good at this stuff) Herman's 1953 interview for those who have never had a chance to read it...I always thought he may have done some LDM "housekeeping", it would not surprise me at all if he knew what would be in the pit mine when opened...Best, Jim

Jim

Nice read on Herman's interview . I would dissagree only with what said Herman about the distance between the " Placer " and the " Quartz " . Maybe he gave intentionaly the wrong 1 mile distance .
How in the world could hear Walzer ( the name in the Herman's statement ) the knocks in the mine from a mile afar , considering how the Mexicans were working the mine illegaly and they should make the most silence possible to not give away the spot ?
I believe the truth is different , and is how Waltz found first the " Quartz " mine and after the " Placer " which was/is very close ( in sight ) from the " Quartz " mine .

 

[PotBelly Jim]

Roy, since this is your thread, I'm letting you know I'm changing my vote from NOT LDM to...OMG, it might be...Glad the Feldman Bros. had that Cochise show on the other night, that's what prompted me to google LDM and I wound up here...been reading furiously to try and catch up...

My problems with it being the LDM was 1) my long held belief that since there was no known surface deposit of LDM size in the Supes at this late date, and since everyone hides their stuff out there, why wouldn't JW use it to stash his gold? Seriously, even Ted DeGrazia hid stuff out there. So I always thought JW brought caches in from somewhere else. 2) Mining in secret when every silver miner and his brother was so close you could have heard their picks??..By sometime in the 1870's, he would have gotten busted if mining out there, so it had to be caches, hopefully nowhere near the Rogers district. 3) I always thought the Mexican mines in the Supes were silver mines. Never thought the Silverlock/Malm gold came out of the Supes, figured it came out of the Orohai's. Lumped Kochera in with that due to how it was claimed it was found. In other words, I never thought there was a rich gold mine in the Supes, but believed a whole lot of gold and other stuff was cached out there by lots of people. Caches work! I have about 100 of them from all the stuff I thought was turquoise or gold as a kid. (by the time I was 12 I figured out it was all pyrite and azurite/malachite/chrysocolla and whatever else green mung, so it became Leaverite...it's all under highways and shopping malls now)

So now, after reading through most of the thread, a couple of things I didn't and couldn't know about: 1) The pit mine shaft was extended A LONG WAY. I have to ask myself, WHY? There is only one reasonable answer for this. 2) Joe said he had it on good authority that the mine was covered in the manner described by Holmes. Good enough for me. Why would any silver miner do that? Even if we consider all the mining activity that took place there all the way thru the depression...Why? 3) Now that I've seen those big ol chunks of gold, and people of good repute jump up and down and try to let us all know they came out of the pit mine without really saying it...last time I saw pics of any ore from the pit mine, it was underwhelming...the pics posted here now, that's extremely rich stuff...So: If the people hiding under camo extended a hard rock shaft that far, they were mining. So I was wrong all along about there being only caches. If they mined the specimens shown, and people I trust believe they did, under a sealed mine, with that view of Weaver's Needle, they found the LDM. In my opinion. Gonna take awhile for this to sink in for me. Wish I was a fly on the wall. Best, Jim

 

[cactusjumper]

Jim

Nice read on Herman's interview . I would dissagree only with what said Herman about the distance between the " Placer " and the " Quartz " . Maybe he gave intentionaly the wrong 1 mile distance .
How in the world could hear Walzer ( the name in the Herman's statement ) the knocks in the mine from a mile afar , considering how the Mexicans were working the mine illegaly and they should make the most silence possible to not give away the spot ?
I believe the truth is different , and is how Waltz found first the " Quartz " mine and after the " Placer " which was/is very close ( in sight ) from the " Quartz " mine .

Marius,

There is more than enough documented evidence that Jacob's last name was Waltz and not Waltzer, to satisfy most researchers into the LDM. Beyond that, Herman came down after Waltz's death to help search for the mine. Who knows the truth of what he heard.....As to which came first, the hard rock mine or the placer, the stories are all over the place.



Good luck,

Joe

 

[PotBelly Jim]

Jim

Nice read on Herman's interview . I would dissagree only with what said Herman about the distance between the " Placer " and the " Quartz " . Maybe he gave intentionaly the wrong 1 mile distance .
How in the world could hear Walzer ( the name in the Herman's statement ) the knocks in the mine from a mile afar , considering how the Mexicans were working the mine illegaly and they should make the most silence possible to not give away the spot ?
I believe the truth is different , and is how Waltz found first the " Quartz " mine and after the " Placer " which was/is very close ( in sight ) from the " Quartz " mine .

Marius, thanks...you are probably right about that, and if you think about it, there will be many more things about the things Herman said in that interview that you'll question. I'll admit to that being the reason I posted the interview in the first place. I hope you'll not think less of me for doing so. It's hard to explain, but things people understood about this whole mess back in the day have been lost. My grandfather was acquainted with Herman during the 30's and 40's, and I'll never forget one day I questioned things I had heard and wondered if Herman was a liar. My grandfather severely chastised me, told me when I was man enough to judge another, in such a bad situation, to bring it up then and be damned. I never forgot that piece of wisdom...Nor the meaning behind it about Herman. Best, Jim

 

[markmar]

Also , I can't understand why John Reed lied to Clay , saying to Clay how he lied to Erwin and Ely about the three rocks at the size of a barrel , which exist and mark the mine site .
I believe Reed never forgot where the mine site was , but he just didn't want to reveal the site . As Clay said , John Reed was a strange man .

 

[audigger53]

Marius,

There is more than enough documented evidence that Jacob's last name was Waltz and not Waltzer, to satisfy most researchers into the LDM. Beyond that, Herman came down after Waltz's death to help search for the mine. Who knows the truth of what he heard.....As to which came first, the hard rock mine or the placer, the stories are all over the place.



Good luck,

Joe

IMO and from research from both my brother (now passed over) and I, LDM Waltz. Waltzer was the one that turned in $18,000 to Wells Fargo in Tucson and started the gold rush up to Phoenix looking for the "Dutchman with a gold mine". But Waltz was the only one that "Fit the Bill" at that time. Again Just MHO.

 

[Oroblanco]

Jim I don't have a way to change the votes, sorry. I agree with your issues with the Pit mine as the LDM, and have more, such as why Waltz wouldn't have been very worried about the silver prospectors and miners so active in the area, SO close to the mine. Also, the mining claim maps are never 100% accurate, many mines had operations that are not shown on the maps. I would propose that the Pit mine is and was a silver mine, with pockets of gold.

Before someone jumps in to tell me that no one would ever do that work for silver, think again. Today no one is interested in silver mines, but it was a hot item in the pioneer days. Heck Nevada was built on the silver mines.

Marius thanks, I don't have permission to use the photos from the site you suggested, I have seen good photos of the ore myself, just thought others would like to see it.

Please do continue,

 

[PotBelly Jim]

Jim I don't have a way to change the votes, sorry. I agree with your issues with the Pit mine as the LDM, and have more, such as why Waltz wouldn't have been very worried about the silver prospectors and miners so active in the area, SO close to the mine. Also, the mining claim maps are never 100% accurate, many mines had operations that are not shown on the maps. I would propose that the Pit mine is and was a silver mine, with pockets of gold.

Before someone jumps in to tell me that no one would ever do that work for silver, think again. Today no one is interested in silver mines, but it was a hot item in the pioneer days. Heck Nevada was built on the silver mines.

Marius thanks, I don't have permission to use the photos from the site you suggested, I have seen good photos of the ore myself, just thought others would like to see it.

Please do continue,

Roy, all good points as usual, impressed with your conviction, that’s for sure. Just want to add, it’s not that I don’t think silver mines are worth covering over and protecting, I was coming at it from the angle that when the gov’t stopped the price-fixing on silver, everyone went broke (silver miners). So a lot of those guys just walked away.

Heck, if there was a pit mine of silver I could clean out legally, I’d at least try it! I’m no miner, though....so this is likely the only pit mine I’ll ever get to clean out:


View attachment 1525968

Best, Jim

 

[audigger53]

Roy, all good points as usual, impressed with your conviction, that’s for sure. Just want to add, it’s not that I don’t think silver mines are worth covering over and protecting, I was coming at it from the angle that when the gov’t stopped the price-fixing on silver, everyone went broke (silver miners). So a lot of those guys just walked away.

Heck, if there was a pit mine of silver I could clean out legally, I’d at least try it! I’m no miner, though....so this is likely the only pit mine I’ll ever get to clean out:


View attachment 1525968

Best, Jim

It wasn't the Gov. The Brooks Brothers(?) tried to drive the price up in the 19880's without looking at what it was used for. So when the price got up there Xerox, Fugi, Polorid, sold a lot of their Silver that they used for making
film. Drove the price back down and the brothers went bankrupt. At that time the CCD cameras were not on the market and they used Silver Nitrate for the film. It has gone up since then but a lot of it is still used in XRay film.
So before looking at the price for something, figure out where it is used before spending your money. Gold goes up with unrest (wars, ect.) as it is a hedge, not an investment. Gold will buy the same amount of stuff (cars, food, ect.) that it did before inflation as after inflation. But if you do buy Gold, it costs 3% to guaranty the quality and 3% to buy it. When you sell it they take another 3% commision to buy it. that's 9% off the top for buying and selling real gold, not paper promises that you will get gold for your paper.

 

[audigger53]

I did a "lot" of looking when we were out looking for lost mines as I wanted to know what we would do if we found one. BTW some places wanted up to 10% to refine the gold, best I found was 3%, sorry to say never got to use that knowledge--- yet. LOL

 

[cactusjumper]

Roy, all good points as usual, impressed with your conviction, that’s for sure. Just want to add, it’s not that I don’t think silver mines are worth covering over and protecting, I was coming at it from the angle that when the gov’t stopped the price-fixing on silver, everyone went broke (silver miners). So a lot of those guys just walked away.

Heck, if there was a pit mine of silver I could clean out legally, I’d at least try it! I’m no miner, though....so this is likely the only pit mine I’ll ever get to clean out:


View attachment 1525968

Best, Jim

Jim,

One thing is, pretty much for sure, in the three years that the Pit Mine was worked, silver was not worth enough to make that relatively shallow mine worth the risk that working inside the Wilderness Area would create. I would say, they were not working an old Silver Mine for that metal. Even as an old cache for high grade silver ore, I doubt the fines and prison time could be overlooked.

It has been speculated many times before, that Waltz may not have had a specific mine in the Superstitions. This because his ore has been described in various configurations in many of the stories. Being a rock dummy, that makes perfect sense to me. It may have just been Waltz's personal bank for the best ore he had collected over many years. On the other hand, it could have been someone else's bank and Waltz just happened to be the Willie Sutton who found it:


OLD GREYBEARD?

Take care.

Joe

 

[audigger53]

Heck, if there was a pit mine of silver I could clean out legally, I’d at least try it! I’m no miner, though....so this is likely the only pit mine I’ll ever get to clean out:


View attachment 1525968

Best, Jim[/QUOTE]
Watch out Jim, you may find someone digging up your pit mine to find out what else went in to the "hole". LOL