answers
Well ... right now I got nuffin' better to do, so lucky u
<snip>
Have at 'em oro, this one is for you
The original post appears to be directed to Cactusjumper Joe not me. Most of these questions have been beaten to death in numerous threads (old) and in detail on another forum, which we are not supposed to post here. Waltz was either in the back room of Julia's bakery or a spare room in her house (evidence seems to point to her house and not the store) the flood is well documented, Feb 18-24 1891
<view of Phoenix Feb 1891 flood>
Waltz had to be 'rescued' from his homestead by Reiney Petrasch and a neighbor (Starr), they brought him to Julia's house but he soon became ill and was not healthy for the remainder of his life, having recurring fevers and illness and some good days, passing away on October 25, 1891.
As to how a
CANDLE BOX of ore, which was not
that large could go undetected, I do not know how that question could be answered other than it would have been rude for anyone to go rummaging through his belongings even if he were ill, unless he directed them to. Would you go poking around in the belongings of a sick old man, under his bed, without his permission?
The two men
claimed to have been present at his deathbed were Dick Holmes and Gideon Roberts, however there are reasons to doubt that story not only from the provably false points in the Holmes manuscript, but some researchers have found evidence that Holmes was not even in Phoenix on the date that Waltz died. So use your own judgment when reading the Holmes manuscript, and keep in mind that the directions given in it, do not match what Holmes did on the death of Waltz. If the directions are accurate, the very first place Holmes should have gone to go to the mine would have been First Water, but instead he went to Hidden Water spring.
We might note that the first places Julia and Reiney went to look for the mine was up into Javelina canyon on the south side, and then a trip around the north of the mountains, trying to find the trail that leads to the mine. Julia gave it up, Reiney's birth father and brother came to help in the search and the rest as they say is history. They did not go to Hidden Water.
This also raises questions about the supposed "confession" we find in the Holmes manuscript, in which Waltz supposedly admits to having killed several men to get the mine and to keep it, including his own "nephew". No one, as far as I have heard has ever found any "nephew" of Jacob Waltz being in Arizona to have worked the mine with him. There is a documented shooting death linked with Waltz which occurred at his homestead in Phoenix, which however he claimed was not his own doing, but that two Mexicans had come to visit, one borrowed Waltz's shotgun and killed the other Mexican, before fleeing.
If the Weiser story can be believed, we might pick some clues from it; note that Weiser in fleeing from the attacking Indians, ended up coming out near Sacaton south of the Superstitions, and Waltz went to Adams Mill near Florence to get supplies after the mule getting into their food incident. This may indicate that the mine is somewhere along or near the southern edges of the Wilderness Area, which coincidentally when the USGS did their studies of the minerals present, also found a number of indications of silver, gold and copper present. According to the AZGS, in Arizona, gold is always associated with copper in the state, so just FYI.
Many of the "clues" you find in both the Julia Thomas/Reiney Petrasch version and the Holmes version, appear to have come from a completely unrelated lost mine associated with two men named Ludy or Ludi. In my opinion these clues should be ignored, unless you are hunting for the lost silver mine of the Ludy brothers also called a lost Peralta mine. Bicknell, the first man to publicize the Lost Dutchman's mine, found evidence of primitive
silver smelting in a stone cabin in the Superstitions, which he located by following these doubtful clues. As to the 2 Soldiers story, it appears that story was transplanted from another lost mine possibly located in the Dripping Springs mountains nowhere near the Superstitions, and was found in the early 1900s so is not lost today. The Ludy brothers story appears in Barry Storm's first book on the LDM, rather odd that he did not notice the many parallels.
As to how to sort out the BS from facts, I wish you the best of luck. Many thousands of treasure hunters have been trying to do that for well over one hundred years. What we can separate out is limited, for example the description of the mine having a funnel shaped pit and a tunnel beneath, seems to have come from the Ludy/Peralta silver mine story and not from Waltz. One description has it that the opening of the mine is no larger than a barrel, and is not more than 12 feet deep. Considering the limited amounts of gold seen being sold or in his possession at his death, this is more logical than a huge mine with funnel shaped pit and steps leading down etc. A small mine opening would have been FAR easier for Waltz to have concealed than a huge pit, and since few people are looking for such a small opening, it is very unlikely that anyone is going to find it, especially if vegetation has grown over the opening which is highly possible. Waltz's statements about how much gold was remaining is just hearsay, but if it is true quite a lot of gold is remaining so one thing working in your favor is that time and the action of weathering may erode out some small pieces of ore (called "float") that might help someone trace it back to the mine, or perhaps a landslide may uncover the vein some day. A major earthquake struck Arizona in the late 1800s and may have helped hide the mine even more effectively than Waltz did too, so that finding it will take a lot of work, perseverance and more than a little luck. It would be wise to learn some basic prospecting, buy or study photos of real gold ores, so that if you see it in the field you will recognize it. At least one of the two USGS mineral studies done on the Superstitions Wilderness Area are available free online, just go to the USGS web site and search in the publications, it will be in PDF format so you will need a program that can open that kind of document files. I would also recommend visiting some gold mines, and take note of what the geology looks like around and in the mine (if access is possible) so as to get a good idea of what to look for. After all you will be looking for a lost GOLD mine, it is logical to learn to recognize what a gold vein looks like so you won't walk right past the Lost Dutchman while trying to follow out some questionable clues.
More than 100 different people have all claimed to have found the Lost Dutchman mine, yet only a handful ever had any gold to show for it; and only one had gold ore that looked like it matches Waltz's gold (Walt Gassler - and he died without telling anyone where it was!) and all of these different people found the LDM in 100 different places. So don't be too surprised if people are skeptical, if you should claim that you have found the lost Dutchman's mine, unless you have some gold to show and that gold ore matches Waltz's. Also bear in mind that many people believe that Waltz never had a gold mine, that he high graded it from some other mine, or was otherwise stealing it from some place, or that the mine was only a tiny rich pocket that was cleaned out long ago and many other doubts. There was no Social Security in Waltz's day, and it was fairly common practice for gold miners to save up hand picked gold ore as a sort of retirement fund for emergencies, just as Waltz seems to have had (he sent Reiney to dig up some cans of gold he had buried at his homestead in Phoenix, which was used to help bail out Julia when she was in financial straits). Tom Kollenborn, perhaps the most respected Arizona historian, has theorized that this is the truth about Waltz, that he had no mine in the Superstitions just a collection of ore specimens from the various mines he had in the Bradshaws, California or even in the Carolinas. Plus if the mine is located in the Wilderness Area, you will have a very uphill battle and loads of red tape before you might have any chance of ever mining out some gold from it legally. To do it illegally would run the risk of prison time, confiscation and fines to boot.
People have been adding BS to the original story of the Dutchman's lost mine ever since Pierpont Bicknell, and a lot of it was recently published too. With any lost mine or treasure, in my opinion your best information will always be the oldest available, as it is the closest to the events so less time and chances for that BS to have gotten blended in or even mistakenly added. Many of the early Dutch hunters had little idea of geology or prospecting and did not know a placer from a lode, as you can find in Ely's book that he did not notice that distinction. Some modern books are excellent, like Dr Glover's or Helen Corbin's first book, but with many of the others you should have that proverbial bag of salt handy when sorting out the facts found in them. Hard facts and provable evidence is not plentiful in this story.
If I have not talked you out of it by now, then I will add this. There is a fair chance that the mine is outside of the Wilderness Area boundaries, as the USGS mineral studies point to anyway; several good to excellent gold mines were found outside of the Wilderness area in the Goldfield area and even one on the south side (the Palmer mine) so there is gold in the area. In fact a vein of gold runs right into and under the Lost Dutchman state park, but if you try to dig that up you will definitely go to jail, and really it belongs to a mine in Goldfield by law. On the east side of the Superstitions Wilderness Area, quite a few silver mines and a few copper mines were found and worked, and where you find silver and copper, you stand a fair chance of finding some gold too. The famous matchbox made from Waltz's gold is made of a somewhat rare type of ore for Arizona, a vein formed at great depth in the Earth, and this type of gold deposit does not commonly 'pinch out' like the much more common epithermal gold veins (meaning formed near the surface) so if that matchbox ore really came from Waltz's mine, and it is really in Arizona, chances are the vein is quite deep and large so not likely that anyone has mined it out our we would have heard of it long ago and the mine would not be lost.
I did not mean to speak for our amigo Cactusjumper Joe, I am sure he is quite capable of addressing all of your questions and will back up his statements with sources. Just thought perhaps I could help clear up a few things in the meantime.
I wish you all a very MERRY CHRISTMAS, good luck and good hunting amigos, I hope you find the treasures that you seek.
Oroblanco
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