The Bull Dog Mine..

[djui5]

Some think the Bull Dog mine is the Lost Dutchman Mine. Does anyone know if a cave was ever discovered in the area? Some of the other clues fit, but that cave, I haven't heard of a cave in the area. Also, what about the setting sun shining into the mine?

 

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[boulder dash]

Randy I think you could be onto somthing was that not a very rich mine?? As with the setting sun hitting the mine it could possably in the summer but not in the winter. Also that peak is quite big could that be mistaken for the el sombreroo. As far as a cave in the area??do we all really even know if there was a cave??

 

[boulder dash]

Sounds like below the bull dog mine would be a great place to try a little placer mining. Prob under claim may be worth checking on. Randy it would make sence that he was getting it there, such a mineralized location more of a chance for great gold.

 

[boulder dash]

I agree, alot of people would go to bed tonight pissed if that was LDM mine. Find out if the shaft is virtical that would be a great detail to help solve your question.Also I to have found gold in the Supers on the west side not to far from peralta trailhead but is was very small and very little.

 

[Oroblanco]

Hello friends,
You can find the Bulldog mine at:
http://www.topozone.com/map.asp?lat=33.46194&lon=-111.51

If the Bulldog mine is the Lost Dutchman then we can all quit wasting time hunting for it! However, the geologists who have examined the actual ore from Jacob Waltz have stated that it is unlike any known mine ore; we know that gold ore is a bit like fingerprints, no two ores from different veins are alike so it seems unlikely that the Bulldog is the same as the Dutchman mine. Then too, it IS worth pursuing the Bulldog, even if you have to buy it - for the Bulldog was a said to be a great producer of gold!
Oroblanco

WHOOPS forgot to add the Township, Range and Section - here it is: T1N, R8E, Sec 2

 

[Oroblanco]

PS - here is a Mapquest locater map, if the topo threw you off:

http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?ovi=1&zoom=8&mapdata=OE4WNszgW9ya%2f8M3BUMDGfB6EaBWozEAXnheZ1%2f61E2XAxXRy7VGLRC63FfrMml7Enf4ZwGuE4Wkf7bJk3A1AUlt9T0xa6gfIsJmIhIeF71JKj2CbTmvVQ1Y6GVGUNIyYogLbDTbyNCWWlF6jVBwH0%2fDiNZjtWCwgtno5frr3IVUxF0hU7mW1MIJcaCzHtHUFPD6noEkhB07lzz0N2meI%2fVs7Uvz0tLaJ42HXDp0xTj4dHJlIC8NC94jRLIMOdcYvx0S9us%2fYugy6MSegMO0E6ue1YnKGaAQY2JgLwV4AV01BaZzKXVqCEd6AT1lNvoBYDqbIWGQ%2bzh8CPWp6G%2fd5BmFVaYJPpM3pU7ZCmOdWoVWSnHNgjDUeox3v6pJnJ72IDVpI6IRVT1E7GtHKZn%2f7CigtXKI2ZAqRbHypFhnbaDshz3jycDHx6b62BLHKDID7L50sxFvwQ4WR5cB9EXdk%2fvi92%2fyI%2bTerACdmXlcQcHV84693GX4%2fn9HD9ktgqch8VD1sHJZ20OMYnMo8Kb9AX9RgatKlihdyrAsNbWoioocOCN0186Acb45rqkiKkuJ6%2bS6zXys9lirjkpOe%2bUKIAal6XdtBG1jzJVwsvt%2fILU%3d#map1-linkmap1-link

WOW that is one LONG linkee! Sorry 'bout that! It should work though, you can see it is not in the Superstitions and pretty close to Cityland.....
Oroblanco

 

[gollum]

I agree with Oro here.

There are known samples of Dutchman ore, and a known assay of same ore. Any ore from a supposed Dutchman Find would have to match that assay! So far, I think the count is something like 188 LDM finders, but NOBODY has matched the ore composition yet! KEEP LOOKING!

Best,

Mike

 

[Oroblanco]

Gollum I see we are on the same side yet again - what the heck is T-net coming to here?

You know what, there was a single incident of someone having ore that was described as looking to be identical - I can't find my copy of The Curse of the Dutchman's Gold by Helen Corbin but the person who looked at this piece was either Bob Corbin or Tom Kollenborn. Now that is not the same as a professional geologist's opinion, but both of these fellows had sure looked at the known ore samples still extant enough to have been able to recognize it when they saw it, it stands to reason. The person who had the ore had been Walt Gassler, at least according to the person who showed the ore.

There have been other claims besides the 188 who said they found it, like the one that it is nothing but high-graded ore from the Vulture, or it was the Mammoth mine and there is even a whole website that claims to have found it and now has it; however none seem to hold water if you look at them. That single piece that did match has had me puzzled for some time (since Walt died) and we can't know if he actually got it from the vein or from tailings or drift etc. It gives ME hope that there is a tailing pile, or some drift pieces of ore that could be followed up to the spot where the mine is, then of course some real digging would have to be done but heck I can still work a number 2 shovel!

As for the Bulldog, hey it is still worth investigating! With modern metal detectors, if you could get ownership of the mine of course, it ought to be possible to do what the owners of the 16 to 1 mine did, just find rich pockets of remaining ore that was missed (because it was not visible) and with relatively minor blasting take out quite a good amount of gold! Of course if the current owners want zillions of dollars for an old mine, then it is not worth pursuing.
Oroblanco

 

[boulder dash]

I have done a little bit of hard rock mining and one thing that stood out to me was a vain was never consistant. I hear the LDM vain is 18inches and prob has pockets. The left side of the vain may have been super rich with a few pockets while the right side may be void of all gold. Walsh could of just saved the very best stuff.That real good stuff could of played out or changed in the vain making the vain look just a little different.So it could be possable that thay did find the gold but did not compare there very best pieces.

 

[Aurum]

djuji5,

The Bulldog mine location was first noticed by John B. Montgomery while prospecting in the area about 1865 but the location according to Montgomery only showed a little surface color and he moved on to richer diggings.

On November 5, 1892, Orren Merrill, C.R. Hakes, Orlando Merrill and J.R. Morse located and later filed claim on the "Bull Dog" mine. According to Orren Merrill, the site was located after the rich deposits in Weeks wash were noticed and during an extensive investigation of the entire area. No previous excavations were noted at the Bull Dog site. Lacking the funds to exploit the mine the owners bonded the mine to two Phoenix businessmen, Charles Ellis and Gus Hirshfeld for $50,000. In 1894 a downshaft was sunk on the vein and produced free gold to the 100 foot level. A ten ton stamp mill was erected at the Bull Dog site and $70,000 of gold was recovered by 1896.

The Bull Dog was a single vein deposit in quartz and calcite that ran north and south for about 400 feet in length and about two feet wide. The gold ran an average of 3 to 10 ounces per ton but high grade pockets of up to 100 ounces were recovered. At 105 feet the vein pinched into iron sulfides and all work stopped.

By 1917 the mine had been sold to Ralph Shill and his brother Milo. The brothers hired geologist Alfred S. Lewis and the group worked the mine dumps and recovered some $100,000 in gold, more than was taken from the original effort.
Lewis later worked a small pocket of rich ore which quickly played out.

The mine was sold in 1927 to Elmer Boyle who acting on a tip from Alfred Lewis, discovered another rich pocket that produced $2,000 and an off shoot that eventually yielded $150,000. Following that effort Boyle sold out his interest to Milo Shill who once again tried his luck at the mine.

In 1942, Alfred Lewis made the last serious attempt to mine gold from the Bull Dog. He and a few other miners extracted a small amount of gold but nothing substantial and the men abandoned the claim.

In the 1970's a renewed effort to open up the lower levels was made but with very little results. It was at this time that Curtis Chapman took over the mine site and used it as a sand and gravel operation. About 1997, Hank D'Andrea and Ernest Savino acquired the mine, the mine was flooded by this time and water still fills the tunnels and shaft.

In it's history, the Bull Dog mine produced a recorded 6,700 ounces of gold. The second highest producer in the Goldfield District behind the Mammoth Mine.

In 1966 I visited with Beatrice Lewis, wife of Alfred Lewis who was living in a small house at the Mammoth mine site, about where the Goldfield Ghost town sits today. She showed me gold samples taken from the Bull Dog's richest ore and her husbands notes and diagrams of the Bull Dog mine and ore deposit. I have seen the matchbox made from dutchman ore, also the cufflinks, stickpin and single piece of gold that survived from under Waltz's deathbed. The Bull Dog gold and the Waltz gold are definitely not a match, either in visual appearance or element composition.

Aurum

 

[boulder dash]

Wow!!!! What a good job on the research. Sounds like the LDM is still out there. We cant give up hope yet.

 

[Aurum]

djui5,

D'Andrea and Savino still own the property today to the best of my knowledge. The entire surface deposit (vein) of the Bull Dog has been worked down to the 120 foot level where only iron sulfides are present. The mine is flooded and would have to be pumped out before further winzing on the vein could be attempted. Just because the vein pinched out does not mean there is no gold lower down. In fact the richest part of the Bull Dog vein may lay between the 300 and 1,000 foot level which were the richest elevations of the Mammoth Mine before it too was flooded and abandoned.

Aurum

 

[Oroblanco]

Greetings Friends,
Thank you Aurum for the great history of the Bulldog mine! Very informative.

Boulder Dash - you are not the first to suggest that the Dutchman's ore was likely a pocket, and he only took out the good stuff, what remains might be worthless. This suggestion was in fact accused of Jacob while he was yet alive, and we can only guess what the truth is (pockets do exist, in fact that is how the 16 to 1 mine is operating, mining only pockets) but when Jacob had this thrown in his face by fellow miners, he stated that there was "...enough gold left showing in my mine to make millionaires out of twenty men." Now in Waltz's day, gold prices were $20,67 per ounce, so he was saying that at least a million ounces of gold were still visible in the vein when he sealed up the mine! By today's prices that would be nearly half a billion dollars, and that only the gold that was showing!

Such a statement by Waltz has been enough to give many people an incurable case of "the fever" and even resulted in some deaths. Perhaps he was lying, (the Brownie Holmes version of how to find the mine for instance seems to be a lie cut out of whole cloth - however he was telling it to a person he likely despised as a sneaking claimjumper) but the idea of so much gold in a vein is not inconceivable nor impossible. (A discovery in Ontario in the 1800s found a cavity void with nearly that much gold visible, for instance and is documented)

The ore used to make the match box is gold in white quartz, not rose quartz. The tale of the lost ledge of gold named after the finder (Wagoner) was of rose quartz, and in the same general region - so it is quite possible there are TWO veins of very rich ore in the Superstitions which remain to be found today.
(Hmmm now pondering yet another run at those Superstitions myself! )
Oroblanco

 

[Oroblanco]

You know too there was a survey done by a government agency (don't have it handy but think it was a mercury vapor test) that showed clear implications of large gold deposits in the Superstitions, which may be deeply buried. A deeply buried ore body may well have "ore shoots" that come very close to or break the surface; the old timers used to hunt for a particular type of ore shoot known as a "chimney" which is rarely found but when found have proven incredibly rich. Some have theorized that a chimney is exactly what type of ore shoot Jacob Waltz found; if it is, then it is believable there could be a million ounces of gold remaining and even more in the deeper part of the body of the ore shoot. To hike through the Superstitions, a prospector is not encouraged by the various types of rock you find (even on Black Mesa, I am unaware of any gold mine that produced a profit) but this only would fit very well with the statements of Jacob Waltz, that "no miner will ever find my mine, because it is in a place no miner would look." Waltz was one of the rare type of prospector who was willing to expend time and effort searching grounds that were not promising.

You know, now Aurum has provided the names of the owners of the Bulldog, it might not be too difficult to contact them and enquire about whether they might be interested in selling it? Just a thought, but heck any gold mine is worth investigating, whether it is the Dutchman's or a known producer. Gold from the Dutchman's mine is not any more valuable than gold from the Bulldog....

Oroblanco

 

[boulder dash]

Randy if your interested in a gold mine I may know of one you could buy.

 

[boulder dash]

No not in Goldfield more down buy tucson. It's amazing how many good mines there are still out there.

 

[MesaBuddy]

Hey you wise guy Randy , I was up there yesterday stomping around (Bulldog Mine) actually behind it over in Bull Dog Canyon , I take the canyon all the way to the Salt River (many interesting things to be seen on the way )
It is a sand/gravel operation now , no telling if they are working the shaft or not , place is locked up tighter than a drum on the weekends , might be able to get in during the week though

Warm Regards
MesaB

 

[Oroblanco]

WOW what a cool find! Congrats!
Oroblanco