some lost mines do get found

[azdave35]

the forum is getting a little slow so i thought i'd perk it up a bit and seeing as those involved have recently passed i guess it's ok to tell..there is such a thing as a lost mine and sometimes they do get found and thats the case with a couple friends i knew..this did not take place in the superstitions but is in arizona...for obvious reasons the names are changed...i'll call them jim and john...in the 1990's these two were running metal detectors in a recently opened mining section..(it had been closed since ww2) ..jim got a signal and started digging ..pretty soon he unearthed a hunk of cotton white quartz about half the size of his fist and it was laced with stringers of gold...some of the prettiest jewelry rock he had ever seen..and he was in a box canyon so he knew the source was in that canyon..and the canyon was only about 1/3 mile long so he was fairly certain he could track it ..the first order of business was to detect the wash and see where they quit finding the jewelry rock...they found a few more pieces of the rock in the lower half of the canyon but none in the upper so they knew checking the upper half was a waste of time....the canyon was the perfect geological situation for what they were looking for...the bottom of the wash was actually a fault line and the west hillside was gray in color ..the east side was red...they started out detecting on the gray hillside and after a couple weeks of careful scouring they failed to turn up a single speck of detectable gold so they switched over to the red side and it didnt take long before they hit paydirt..but it wasn't the beautiful cotton white jewelry rock..it was red quartz with stringers of gold so they knew there was more than one rich vein on the hillside...they got excited and got on with the search....after a few days they hit more red quartz...then they unearthed some black rocks loaded with tiny pin head nuggets...which meant another rich vein besides the other two. But the search proved tougher than they thought..weeks turned into months but they found no evidence of a dig or tailing pile anywhere...jim quit his job and stayed onsite full time and john showed up on the weekends......jim was starting to lose hope of finding the source of the jewelry rock and one day he climbed to the top of a big rock on the hillside and just started scanning the area with binoculars...after a few hours he noticed a depression on the hillside that you wouldn't have seen on ground level..he told me it looked like someone had dug a hole and filled it in and it settled back down....it was getting late so he decided to wait until morning to investigate...jim didnt get much sleep but early next morning he got his digging tools and set out to see if this was indeed the source of the jewelry rock...the first thing he noticed was it was fairly easy digging..after a few feet he hit something metal...wasn't long before he uncovered an old shovel....after more digging he dug up and old pick..then a sledge hammer and old star drills....

time for a rest but i'll be back on in a while for part two...stay tuned

 

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[azdave35]

the forum is getting a little slow so i thought i'd perk it up a bit and seeing as those involved have recently passed i guess it's ok to tell..there is such a thing as a lost mine and sometimes they do get found and thats the case with a couple friends i knew..this did not take place in the superstitions but is in arizona...for obvious reasons the names are changed...i'll call them jim and john...in the 1990's these two were running metal detectors in a recently opened mining section..(it had been closed since ww2) ..jim got a signal and started digging ..pretty soon he unearthed a hunk of cotton white quartz about half the size of his fist and it was laced with stringers of gold...some of the prettiest jewelry rock he had ever seen..and he was in a box canyon so he knew the source was in that canyon..and the canyon was only about 1/3 mile long so he was fairly certain he could track it ..the first order of business was to detect the wash and see where they quit finding the jewelry rock...they found a few more pieces of the rock in the lower half of the canyon but none in the upper so they knew checking the upper half was a waste of time....the canyon was the perfect geological situation for what they were looking for...the bottom of the wash was actually a fault line and the west hillside was gray in color ..the east side was red...they started out detecting on the gray hillside and after a couple weeks of careful scouring they failed to turn up a single speck of detectable gold so they switched over to the red side and it didnt take long before they hit paydirt..but it wasn't the beautiful cotton white jewelry rock..it was red quartz with stringers of gold so they knew there was more than one rich vein on the hillside...they got excited and got on with the search....after a few days they hit more red quartz...then they unearthed some black rocks loaded with tiny pin head nuggets...which meant another rich vein besides the other two. But the search proved tougher than they thought..weeks turned into months but they found no evidence of a dig or tailing pile anywhere...jim quit his job and stayed onsite full time and john showed up on the weekends......jim was starting to lose hope of finding the source of the jewelry rock and one day he climbed to the top of a big rock on the hillside and just started scanning the area with binoculars...after a few hours he noticed a depression on the hillside that you wouldn't have seen on ground level..he told me it looked like someone had dug a hole and filled it in and it settled back down....it was getting late so he decided to wait until morning to investigate...jim didnt get much sleep but early next morning he got his digging tools and set out to see if this was indeed the source of the jewelry rock...the first thing he noticed was it was fairly easy digging..after a few feet he hit something metal...wasn't long before he uncovered an old shovel....after more digging he dug up and old pick..then a sledge hammer and old star drills....

time for a rest but i'll be back on in a while for part two...stay tuned

back to the lost mine
after finding the tools in the mine jim kept digging and by this time john showed up and they double teamed the tunnel..soon they hit the prize..white quartz jewelry rock..at first they just found a few pieces while digging out the tunnel and finally at the back they hit the vein..they worked at liberating the quartz from the host rock and it was looking good until they hit the end of the vein...it had pinched out but they had collected about 3 five gallon buckets of the jewelry rock..and most of it was even better than the float they found in the wash..some of it was more gold than rock...it was a shallow rich pocket that pinched out...or so they thought...they grabbed the gold and the gear and headed uphill to camp...they spent that night and the next day lusting over their hard earned prize..but they were a little bummed because it pinched out but something was still bugging jim...they both headed back home and jim thought about it for a couple days and decided to take another look in the mine...back at the tunnel jim took a better look at the back wall..he noticed a tiny seam of red quartz and started to chip away at it...pretty soon it opened up to about one inch wide and it too was loaded with gold...he headed back to town and showed john the red quartz he found in the tunnel..the gold fever was back and they were soon headed back to the mine....they went to work chasing the little vein...they tunneled over 100 foot over a period of a few years and the vein changed every 5 foot or so..it would get pretty rich and open up to 6 inch wide and then it would pinch down to 1/4 inch..they even lost it a few times but kept digging and it would turn up again,,also they would run into new veins...they hit a beautiful vein of chrysocolla and also a silver vein...after a period of time the tunnel started to look dangerous and it did cave in a couple times ..the hanging wall was collapsing and after about 100 foot the veins started to turn and head straight down so they abandoned the tunnel and went back to metal detecting the hillside..by this time minelab had come out with the model sd2000 detector..their first P.I.detector...john was the first man in the valley to get one and it opened up a whole new world ..they were finding bigger nuggets and gold in quartz specimens much deeper

more to the story later...

 

[deducer]

Interesting story, Dave. Looking forward to the rest of it.

 

[azdave35]

Interesting story, Dave. Looking forward to the rest of it.

thanks deducer...they were two tough old individuals with an amazing work ethic...old school people...i'll add more to the story later

 

[azdave35]

by this time the guys had bought milling equipment and a trailer to haul it with...the equipment consisted of a jaw crusher with a set of rolls...a ball mill ..two stage screening shaker and a small concentrating table..the poured a small concrete slab to mount the concentrating table ..with this equipment they would process the lower grade ore they had pulled from the mine..they had a pretty nice clearing they set their camp up in...there was another campsite about 100 foot up the hill with a firepit but it was on an angle so they made their own site..they had run their detectors all around the camp site many times but never paid much attention to the firepit...but one day just for the heck of it john ran his minelab over the firepit up the hill and the detector started yelling..at first he thought it was trash in the pit making the detector go off but he kicked at the pit and it was solid..then he got to thinking maybe it isn't a firepit ...he told jim about it and they geared up with a few tools and set out to dismantle the firepit...after a few whacks with the pick they came to the conclusion this was no firepit...it was a black ore chimney ..and it didnt take but a few hours to figure out it was loaded with gold....they had found the source of the black float rock that was on the hillside below (see part one)...

more to come

 

[gollum]

Great story buddy.

Keep going!

Mike

 

[azdave35]

Great story buddy.

Keep going!

Mike

thanks mike...these two guys found a geological anomoly on that red hill....they worked it until they got too old and their health started going downhill and then sold the claim..the man that bought it is still getting gold off it to this day

 

[azdave35]

the black chimney:

finding the chimney gave the guys a much needed morale boost and they got busy shafting down on the chimney (i never saw the ore but i did see the gold that came out of it..looked like little globules of gold)..they worked it down to about 12 foot and it also pinched out..but just like in the tunnel they ran into some horizontal stringers of red quartz with good gold...the stringers were small (none were more than 2 inch wide) but they produced nice gold..they dug a trench and followed the veins for about 30 foot horizontally and just like the tunnel they started to turn and go straight down..they shafted down on the vein as far as they could reach and then one guy would go in the shaft head first and the other guy would hold his feet while he chipped gold and rock out of the bottom of the shaft...lol...pretty soon either could reach the bottom so they quit..actually old age was catching up with them and they just wern't up to the hard work it would require to keep shafting down so they went back to detecting and drywashing the wash below the hill...it was a few years after this that i met the guys

continued

 

[azdave35]

who lost the mine?:
when i first met jim they hadn't been doing much at the mine..just some placer mining...both him and john were not in shape to do much else...he told me the story i just related to you...we became very good friends and went on many prospecting trips together..one thing that always bothered jim was who threw the tools in the mine and covered up it up?..why didn't they ever come back and work it?..i suggested maybe they were run off by indians..he told me the tools he found in the mine weren't that old ..maybe from the 1930's or 40's...we both figured it got shut down in 1942 when the govt shut small mining down for the war ..i told jim about another friend of mine that i've known for 30 years...he had worked a mine about 1 mile south of jim and john about the same time they were there..he said he never ran into him...i'll call him "dan"...i asked dan if he ever ran into jim while he was up there mining and he said no...i then related the story jim told me to dan...dan got a big smile on his face and told me to pull up a chair...he said years ago when he was at his claim a big fancy SUV pulled up and some people got out and came up to dan and struck up a conversation..one of them was an elderly woman..she started asking dan questions..she wanted to know how long he had been in the area?...had he done much exploring around here?..he answered her and she began to tell dan what the questions were about....back in the late 30's she had two brothers that were prospecting somewhere near this area...they located a rich mine and hadn't got to work it very long before the war popped up and they had to go do their duty..they told her that the mine was very rich and they tossed their tools into the mine and buried the entrance and as soon as they returned from the war they would uncover the mine and get to work on it..unfortunately they never made it back alive ..the woman didnt care about the gold she just wanted to see the mine...dan told her he was sorry but he didn't have any info that would help her...they piled back into the suv and dan never saw them again......later that week i stopped by jim's house and told him what dan told me...he just sat there with a peaceful look on his face..he now knew who lost the mine

more later

 

[Oroblanco]

Great posts Dave, please do continue!

 

[Old]

Thanks Dave, great story. Love it.

 

[azdave35]

the gold:

not long after i met jim he invited me over for a visit...i arrived and after some small talk he went inside and came back out with a small suitcase and a file folder..he opened the folder and pulled out pics of the white quartz jewelry rock..some of it had been treated with hydrofluoric acid (it dissolves the quartz and leaves the gold)...most of the specimens had more gold than rock..i asked if he had any more of the actual rock that i could see in person..he didn't but he told me if i wanted to see the actual rock ..it was on display at the mineral museum in phoenix....he told me that when they first found the jewelry rock they needed money to continue on with the mine so they sold it to a local politician...jim and john didn't realize that jewelry rock such as this was worth 10 times as much as the gold value and they sold it to the politician for spot price of gold ...at the time probably 300-400 an ounce....and i did go to the mineral museum to see the jewelry rock on display..and it was there just like jim said...but the politician had his name on it and taken credit for the find...go figure..lol....they soon learned they had been screwed and never let that happen again...jim put the pics back in the folder and proceeded to open the suitcase...it was full of some of the better specimen's of the red quartz and gold that they mined from the tunnel and trench..also some of the globule gold that came from the black chimney along with many nuggets they had taken from the hillside and the wash below..some as large as an ounce...then he asked me to follow him to the back yard where he had 5 five gallon buckets of red quartz..lower grade ore than what was in the suitcase but still high grade ore..you could see stringers of gold running through most of the rocks..i took a few rocks home and slabbed them for jim..i also cut a few cabs out of it..he told me john had a few buckets of the same at his house....the suitcase just went back and forth between jim and john's house...if jim had someone he wanted to show off the gold to...he would take the suitcase home ..and vice versa...the two old timers totally trusted each other....jim asked if i wanted to take a trip to the mine with him and john and of course i agreed...they gave me a complete tour of the red hill and showed me where they mined all their gold...once i saw the area it was clear to see why all the gold was there..it was a geological wonder

 

[azdave35]

stolen gold:
i was at jim's and we were waiting for john to show up..we were going to take a ride out to little san domingo wash where john had been down in a shaft years ago and discovered a small vein with some visible gold..he was going to show me where it was and try to see if we could get down into it...jim and i waited for john to show up and we were getting worried..pretty soon we get a call from john....he was lost and didn't remember how to get to jim's.......we looked at each other and said..this isn't good..jim gave him directions and he finally showed up...we got in the truck and headed out...john seemed a little odd..he wasn't right....and when we got to the little san domingo area he was disorientated and couldn't find anything....we didn't know it at the time but Alzheimer's was setting in on him.....i would stop by john's to check on him from time to time and sometimes he knew who i was and sometimes he didn't....they finally had to bring in a caretaker to help john out...one day i stopped by and john had the suitcase out showing the caretaker all the gold..as soon as i got home i called jim and told him he better go get the suitcase...it was a few weeks before jim made it over to john's but when he did the suitcase was gone..so were the buckets of ore john had out in the shed....

 

[EarnieP]

Julia!

 

[azdave35]

more like julian..he was an illegal alien that john's medicare sent over to care for john

 

[Loke]

Thanks Dave - that's an awesome story!! (a simple 'like' is not enough)

 

[azdave35]

thanks loke..a little more to come later

 

[azdave35]

back to the earth it came from:
fast forward to 2015...john has been gone for a few years and jim is in bad health also..most of the gold he labored hard for was stolen except for the 5 five gallon buckets of red quartz in his back yard....he finally succumbs to his illness and passes on...his daughter comes in and has all jim's stuff hauled off to the dump (including the buckets of ore) and sells the house...some lucky scrounger might have found the quartz at the dump and recognized it as gold but i doubt it...it more than likely went back to the dirt it came from

i posted this because those two old timers were good friends and i thought you would enjoy it.. some of you will believe this story and some wont...but the guys sold that claim about 10 years ago to an ex partner of mine and he is still working it and getting gold from it..matter of fact he is a member of this forum (i checked and he hasn't logged in for a while but he is still registered )...don't ask for his name because i don't want to send a stampede of nuts to his claim...hopefully you enjoyed the story and maybe even learned a little something...there are still plenty of things to find out there if you look

 

[Azquester]

Thanks Dave, You just made my day!

Love that story!

 

[deducer]

Thanks Dave, I really enjoyed the story too.