New site?...with different clue versions?

[Oroblanco]

Glad to see things are getting back to "normal" here - and my apologies if I seemed rude too. The reference to having a single mental drawer set me off, and really if anyone here has only a single mental drawer it is ME! Wayne is a good guy so it was a bit shocking to see the remark.

I am still curious about where this alternative version of the LDM with different clues etc came from? It is quite different, and I do not recognize where this version might have come from?

On the portable drywasher tale linked to Waltz, I believe the Holmes version had him telling the carpenter that he wanted it because he was "losing some fine stuff" or words to that effect. On the face of it, that strikes me as a bold faced lie, drywashers are notoriously poor at capturing the fine gold. However prospectors and especially an experienced desert rat type would know that by using a drywasher to test samples in larger sizes, looking for ANY trace of gold (NOT as a mining tool) as a way of tracing back to the ore vein. Same idea as postholing and panning. But this means I am calling Jacob Waltz a liar, which would put the entire tale in jeopardy in the eyes of the skeptics!

Please do continue, and if anyone can enlighten me as to where this alternate version and clues originates I would sure appreciate it, thanks in advance.

Roy

 

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[Al D]

Hola Roy
you may be opening up another can of worms, seems that the fence on the truth or falsehood of the Holmes document is tall and very narrow,

 

[azdave35]

A screen or a dry washer does not fit the story of Waltz and the LDM, prospectors just used a gold pan to dry sift for color, he would not have built one unless he found some gold, which is not likely since the geology of the superstitions is not conducive for gold production,hell, Waltz himself even said it wasn't a mine in so many words, “no miner will ever find my mine”

i'm with you on that...a drywasher wasnt used for testing in those days..they were big heavy wood units and hard to transport...a gold pan first...and being as waltz supposedly had a hard rock mine a drywasher would be useless

 

[somehiker]

A screen or a dry washer does not fit the story of Waltz and the LDM, prospectors just used a gold pan to dry sift for color, he would not have built one unless he found some gold, which is not likely since the geology of the superstitions is not conducive for gold production,hell, Waltz himself even said it wasn't a mine in so many words, “no miner will ever find my mine”

I guess I should have said he probably had found a larger placer deposit which would have been worth the cost and use of a dry washer, where panning or sluice etc. was impractical due to a lack of water nearby. This of course doesn't fit the description of the LDM orthe LDM ore, so must have all happened prior to his finding his jackpot. I like the "no miner" clue myself, in that is allows for a couple of interpretations. One, that the mine is located in a place where no miner, or maybe even prospector, would waste their time looking for a gold deposit. And the other of course, being that he only called it his "mine", when in fact it was a very large cache of ore which had been partly reduced (hand cobbed) by someone else previously. If so, the real source....or sources... for that ore could have been well to the N/S/E/or W, in which case a single mine with gold that matches all the samples from the candlebox, might not even exist.

 

[Al D]

I guess I should have said he probably had found a larger placer deposit which would have been worth the cost and use of a dry washer, where panning or sluice etc. was impractical due to a lack of water nearby. This of course doesn't fit the description of the LDM orthe LDM ore, so must have all happened prior to his finding his jackpot. I like the "no miner" clue myself, in that is allows for a couple of interpretations. One, that the mine is located in a place where no miner, or maybe even prospector, would waste their time looking for a gold deposit. And the other of course, being that he only called it his "mine", when in fact it was a very large cache of ore which had been partly reduced (hand cobbed) by someone else previously. If so, the real source....or sources... for that ore could have been well to the N/S/E/or W, in which case a single mine with gold that matches all the samples from the candlebox, might not even exist.

I read somewhere, once that the candle box ore closely matched ore from the Baboquivari mountains, but still, not an exact match.

 

[Real of Tayopa]

no reference to Walsh was intended. It couldn't helpbut be noticed, was just passing questiom.

 

[somehiker]

no reference to Walsh was intended. It couldn't helpbut be noticed, was just passing questiom.

Nothing wrong with asking a question. I just though there was probably a better explanation for why it was there.

 

[somehiker]

I read somewhere, once that the candle box ore closely matched ore from the Baboquivari mountains, but still, not an exact match.

Unfortunately, I suspect it will take an exact match between at least one from the candlebox and one from a source, be it a cache in a pit or rat-hole sized tunnel or some other newly discovered but old mine, for the main question to be answered. At least for some of us.

 

[Real of Tayopa]

. ddoppplar radar has different forms, besides weather. One version can detect voids, tunnels, etc.
c
That's the version I osed. main user of that type is UncleSam

 

[Real of Tayopa]

alen, there are are no two ores exactly alike.

 

[azdave35]

alen, there are are no two ores exactly alike.

very true jose..there is also another problem with comparing ore from the box recovered under waltz bed...nobody really knows where he got that ore...did he have a mine in the supers and it came from there?...was it an accumulation of ores he had picked up at other mines he worked / owned?...something to think about

 

[Al D]

alen, there are are no two ores exactly alike.

True, I was taking the cowards way out since I could not remember when or where I had read the info, just wanted to avoid another debate,

 

[PotBelly Jim]

I don't consider you a threat to the LDM. It and I, and you I'm sure can stand on our own two (sometimes) tender feet as far as things go around here.
Despite the best efforts of members of the ever present peanut gallery to ruin the entertainment we provide for them.
The classifier screen at the Dons Club ?

arcana's website also mentions a shaker screen is being visible in one of their LDM related photos.
Sounds like they think it might be what Waltz had the carpenter in Florence make for him at one point in his search for gold.
But the story actually refers to a dry-washer, not something as simple as a screen shaker.
So Jeff might want to have another look at that part of the legend as well.

Many other posts related to this, but for sake of saving space I'll not quote them all...since Wayne brought it up first, I quoted him.

Here’s where a bookworm can help out

Let's assume for sake of argument that the dry-washer story is true.

This story didn't originate with Holmes. John D. Mitchell talked about Waltz’s “dry washer”. It helps to have read all of his work, in order to understand where Mitchell was coming from here. For example:

In “Lost Mines of the Great Southwest”, Mitchell says “…the two men returned to Florence, where a carpenter made two dry-washers for them, which they carried to the placer ground.”

PLACER ground. Not LODE MINE. Looks like everyone caught that, by reading follow-on posts.

Where it comes in handy to have a good understanding of the totality of his work, is how Mitchell came to have this information. For now, keep in mind that the book above was a general lost treasure book, and space was limited, and edited.

In his Desert Mag. article of March 1941, it becomes clear what the real story was:

“A month later Jacob Walz reappeared in Florence looking for someone to make a dry washer or rocker small enough to be packed on the back of a burro. He was directed to another German known only as Frank, who was making his living doing odd jobs of carpenter work around Florence. While the placer machine was being completed Walz told the carpenter he had found some very rich placer gravel near Iron Mountain on a branch of Pinto Creek and that he was prospecting upstream to find the vein from which the gold came….<snip>…
Old Frank, who later lived in the Pioneer’s Home in Prescott said the location of the much hunted mine did not seem to be much of a secret in those days and that many old timers like himself knew that it was located somewhere on Pinto Creek not far from Iron Mountain.”

So any reference to a dry-washer or rocker, found in the Supes near a LODE mine, and attributed to be "Waltz's Dry-Washer" is a bit of a stretch, to say the least, as Waltz was using his small rocker in placer gravels. It was small and portable, not large and unapackable; and whether it was a dry-washer, a rocker, or some combination thereof, is not entirely known.

 

[arcana-exploration]

I guess I should have said he probably had found a larger placer deposit which would have been worth the cost and use of a dry washer, where panning or sluice etc. was impractical due to a lack of water nearby. This, of course, doesn't fit the description of the LDM on the LDM ore, so must have all happened prior to his finding his jackpot. I like the "no miner" clue myself, in that is allows for a couple of interpretations. One, that the mine is located in a place where no miner, or maybe even prospector, would waste their time looking for a gold deposit. And the other of course, being that he only called it his "mine", when in fact it was a very large cache of ore which had been partly reduced (hand cobbed) by someone else previously. If so, the real source....or sources... for that ore could have been well to the N/S/E/or W, in which case a single mine with gold that matches all the samples from the candlebox, might not even exist.

Allen M I talk at length on the site about earth quake rubble and debris, please read and not skim over stuff. The photo with Rodger and Webb where Rodger is looking back behind down on the ground at the stones fixed into the circular hole in the ground is part of the original trail (IMO) that was what they said was dangerous because it is was steep for a short way, but then right after where they are it has collapsed down into the canyon. I purposely cropped that off. Later on it the old trail picks back up. So no Waltz could not do it in two days and mine today. and I do not think he did a two-day turnaround by himself unless he was only after a stash or two like the one supposedly found a while back? What do you Think Wayne? also, Wayne, it appears, in fact, I am sure of it there are other mining efforts above the alpha pit mine and the type rock is not the same as the volcanic type by the quartz mine. Also, there is white quartz all over the place close to the pit mine but you do not have to go very far and it all but vanishes. So my Wayne my question is how uncommon would it be to have different types of gold on the same mountain? And do you think after his partner was dead he could have mined and made a two-day turnaround, I am sure he could not. And one thing for sure he could not clear the debris today by himself, hell that is why no one has found it.

 

[somehiker]

A three day return trip to the mountains from his homestead in Phoenix certainly wouldn't have left any time for mining work.
Even if he had two mules, one with his kit, and one to ride.
So, if the time given is accurate, I would have to say that for those trips he was making withdrawals from a cache he had made previously, somewhere close to that end of the range. He said he had made three altogether, but had emptied one of them.....probably that one. The other two, one large and one small are, according to clues, much closer to the mine itself....and within sight of each other, as well as the "mine" itself. One in the tunnel below the pit, which he said that he partly walled up with rocks, and the other buried at one corner of the old house foundation. That's how the clues read to me anyway. I don't recall anything having been said by Waltz about the location of the emptied cache, but it would have been somewhere easy to reach from town.
Lots of calcite crystal (calcium carbonate) in the rocks out there. Lumps laying around, and veins of it too. Many people mistake it for quartz.
Waltz wouldn't have.

 

[arcana-exploration]

A three day return trip to the mountains from his homestead in Phoenix certainly wouldn't have left any time for mining work.
Even if he had two mules, one with his kit, and one to ride.
So, if the time given is accurate, I would have to say that for those trips he was making withdrawals from a cache he had made previously, somewhere close to that end of the range. He said he had made three altogether, but had emptied one of them.....probably that one. The other two, one large and one small are, according to clues, much closer to the mine itself....and within sight of each other, as well as the "mine" itself. One in the tunnel below the pit, which he said that he partly walled up with rocks, and the other buried at one corner of the old house foundation. That's how the clues read to me anyway. I don't recall anything having been said by Waltz about the location of the emptied cache, but it would have been somewhere easy to reach from town.
Lots of calcite crystal (calcium carbonate) in the rocks out there. Lumps laying around, and veins of it too. Many people mistake it for quartz.
Waltz wouldn't have.

Man, I am not the only one up late on a Sat nite, Wow that is great information. Hey a few things, shaker box on the ledge thing I say the onthe site that it is most likely not a shaker box but is interesting and we need to check it out on the next trip, also I state that it is is it would not from Waltz period, but later on maybe in the last 50 years or so. Also, WE have some samples and it is white quartz, which was verified. Anyways to the question is it possible for two types of gold to be on the same mountain? Also was there a possible not found at Hiden Water -AQ in modern times?
That is interesting I never heard that, but when we looked at some of the photos from the last trip I took hundreds oh photos scanning the canyon, and below the mine not too far just off the old trail there appears to be just below the trail which you would not notice if you were on the trail you would walk right by it a small overgrown is were it looks like someone had placed rocks into, you really hvae to look at it a while too, and looks like some of it has fallen inward and you can see there appears to be a void behind it. I showed it to the guys and told them we next to check that out next trip, I actally never heard that mentioned that way. My thinking was they left multiple animals off-site, where sometimes they would go for the night away from the site and then comme back the next morning and leaving most of animals off site I reasoned that's were I would leave a stash for future reterival, you know there are so many stories you have to consider them all but say waht would I do.

 

[PotBelly Jim]

Glad to see things are getting back to "normal" here - and my apologies if I seemed rude too. The reference to having a single mental drawer set me off, and really if anyone here has only a single mental drawer it is ME! Wayne is a good guy so it was a bit shocking to see the remark.

I am still curious about where this alternative version of the LDM with different clues etc came from? It is quite different, and I do not recognize where this version might have come from?

On the portable drywasher tale linked to Waltz, I believe the Holmes version had him telling the carpenter that he wanted it because he was "losing some fine stuff" or words to that effect. On the face of it, that strikes me as a bold faced lie, drywashers are notoriously poor at capturing the fine gold. However prospectors and especially an experienced desert rat type would know that by using a drywasher to test samples in larger sizes, looking for ANY trace of gold (NOT as a mining tool) as a way of tracing back to the ore vein. Same idea as postholing and panning. But this means I am calling Jacob Waltz a liar, which would put the entire tale in jeopardy in the eyes of the skeptics!

Please do continue, and if anyone can enlighten me as to where this alternate version and clues originates I would sure appreciate it, thanks in advance.

Roy

Hi Roy,

Mitchell published the "carpenter dry-washer story"...what you're remembering is the "deathbed account" to Dick Holmes. Waltz tells Holmes that he had stashed some lumber up near the mine, as he was going to build a "rocker" because he was losing some of the finer ore Just one of many examples in the Holmes manuscript that seem like made-up "fluff" to fill out what was otherwise a true family story...searching for the Lost Dutchman.

One thing that stands out in Mitchell's tale, is that the carpenter, "Old Frank", lived up at the Pioneer's Home in his golden years. This gives us a relative timeframe for the story: The Pioneer's home got it's first resident in 1911. Mitchell published his desert mag article in MAR 1941. So, sometime between late 1911 and around late 1940, Frank (if he existed) would have been a resident.

Since the Pioneer's home had very few beds available, it would seem an easy task to find "Old Frank"...not too high on my list of things to do in Prescott, but who knows...next time I'm at Sharlot Hall I might skip on down there for a quick check.

Take care, Jim

 

[deducer]

deducer..every time there is a little squabble in here you blame it on so called trolls or members getting off topic...the truth is we get off topic here because someone with a big mouth insults one of the other members...plain and simple....the moderator does a great job here..he just cant control people's big mouths

The insulting or insinuations start once posters go off-topic.

And nothing makes discussions go off-topic faster than trolling, mostly by new posters. They are not here to discuss, and appear to discuss, but in reality are just manipulative, or post just to gain satisfaction from jerking someone's chain.

 

[Al D]

Hi Roy,

Mitchell published the "carpenter dry-washer story"...what you're remembering is the "deathbed account" to Dick Holmes. Waltz tells Holmes that he had stashed some lumber up near the mine, as he was going to build a "rocker" because he was losing some of the finer ore Just one of many examples in the Holmes manuscript that seem like made-up "fluff" to fill out what was otherwise a true family story...searching for the Lost Dutchman

Take care, Jim

This is one of many examples why I reject the Holmes account, why would Waltz even bother with the loss of some fine gold dust when his ore was so rich? And Waltz stated that there was enough gold there to make many people rich.
and, the threat of Apache attacks was still to be contended with and rockers make a lot of noise.

 

[Al D]

Man, I am not the only one up late on a Sat nite, Wow that is great information. Hey a few things, shaker box on the ledge thing I say the onthe site that it is most likely not a shaker box but is interesting and we need to check it out on the next trip, also I state that it is is it would not from Waltz period, but later on maybe in the last 50 years or so. Also, WE have some samples and it is white quartz, which was verified. Anyways to the question is it possible for two types of gold to be on the same mountain? Also was there a possible not found at Hiden Water -AQ in modern times?
That is interesting I never heard that, but when we looked at some of the photos from the last trip I took hundreds oh photos scanning the canyon, and below the mine not too far just off the old trail there appears to be just below the trail which you would not notice if you were on the trail you would walk right by it a small overgrown is were it looks like someone had placed rocks into, you really hvae to look at it a while too, and looks like some of it has fallen inward and you can see there appears to be a void behind it. I showed it to the guys and told them we next to check that out next trip, I actally never heard that mentioned that way. My thinking was they left multiple animals off-site, where sometimes they would go for the night away from the site and then comme back the next morning and leaving most of animals off site I reasoned that's were I would leave a stash for future reterival, you know there are so many stories you have to consider them all but say waht would I do.

It is very possible for there to be different formations of gold within the same mountain range, with that said, I think it should be noted that the geology of the Superstition mountains is not conducive to the formation of gold.
it is interesting to note that the areas where there is a lot of busted quartz, there is no mine shaft or hole, and no discernible quartz vein, it is more likely, in my opinion, that the general premise of Kenworthy is correct in that the Superstitions was a depository of gold recovered from a number of mines which represented the Kings royal fifth. This concept accounts for the numerous mine tunnels found which have not one trace of gold or gold bearing material.
It explains almost all of the enigmas of this story, digging mine tunnels in areas where there shouldn’t be any gold, the arrastras and charcoal pits, numerous rock houses etc the mystery of the mesquite forest and Kenworthy’s trail markers.