Waltz and known facts, not stories

[RockyGoltra]

Title of this thread: Waltz and known facts, not stories.

Reading books is fine and gives you some idea of what someone else thinks, but it will never give you anything other than 3rd or 4th hand information at best.

To form solid opinions you have to get down to the first hand information or the information that was directly passed on to someone by an original participant.

One good example is several years back Roger Newkirk and I were in downtown Phoenix talking about Waltz and people related to the Dutchman story.

Roger was driving around and we happened into the old part of Phoenix known as the Coronado edition east of downtown. The section where Dick Holmes lived after Jacob Waltz died.
Roger and I drove past the old Holmes house and turned onto a street a block or two away and I recognized the house of Joe Porterie's grandson. Joe Porterie was the man who did the assay on Waltz's gold ore.

I saw Porterie's daughter's car in the driveway and said to Roger, lets stop and see if the old man would talk to us about his grandfather and the Waltz story.
Roger and I walked up to the house, knocked on the door and were welcomed inside. For the next couple hours we sat and talked with Joe Porterie's grandson who was more than happy to tell us everything he knew and remembered as a young man growing up in Phoenix about his famous grandfather and Jacob Waltz.

We took notes that day and were welcomed back later to get the grandson on tape. We also were invited to see his grandfather's record books from his assay business and the equipment that survived from his assay office. The assay records were written in French as Porterie was born and raised in France.

It was an enlightening day for Roger and I to say the least, and did we get some good SOLID information that day ? You better believe we did.

The point is, If you are really and truly serious about getting to the bottom of the Lost Dutchman legend you can't just rely on somebody else's 4th hand book or somebody's theory of how they THINK things were.
You have to go after the source whenever and wherever you find them. That is the only way you will ever form solid opinions.

For almost a half a century I have been talking with the old pioneer families and getting their stories. I have almost 300 interviews, photographs and tapes of old timers and people who were in a position to know the straight of the story.
Sadly most have passed on. Some of the last great interviews I had were with George Holmes (son of Dick Holmes), Maude Bailey (daughter of Matt Cavaness), Alma Alkire, (grandaughter of Frank Alkire), Urban Porterie (grandson of Joe Porterie), Hilda Kramer (daughter of Caroline and Alexander Steinegger and the niece of Julia and Emil Thomas), John Spangler (nephew of Jim Bark), Paul Pettit (gr-grandson of Gottfreid Petrasch).

If you want known facts and not just stories, these are the people you should have been talking to.

Best,

Matthew

Thats amazing friend. \By chance, is there a place where you have published any portions of those interviews in any way.

 

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[Clay Diggins]

BTW I did some math, $110,000 per ton of ore would wprk out to just over 550 LBs Troy per Ton of ore. So 1/4 of the "Ton" would be Gold. I haven't heard of any mine that rich. Could it have been one of the bags of not processed ore from the first or second Peralta massacure? Possible, but it is known that 2 trenches, one 50 foot and the other 70 feet long were found in Massacure Canyon. $26 Mill in 1948. The reason I have always remembered it was because he lost 1/2 to Treasure Trove and then had to pay 98% Income tax on the rest. 8 inch leather bags one inch below the surface, found with a WWII mine detector. It made front page news in 1948 all the way to Seal Beach,Calf, where we were living at the time when my brother read it.
I read it as a "Filler" in the winter of 1963-1964 after they broght back the guy from Hawaii that shot his "Boyhood Friend" over a 2 LB nugget of Iron Pyrite.

Obviously no one here is a miner. I have several ore specimens that would assay at 80 - 90% gold. Cherry picking visible gold ore and assaying that ore will always give you unrealistically high values. These type assays are only of value to scammers, frauds and thieves.

A real ore assay is done on dozens or hundreds of samples taken at random from the entire mine. When a proper assay is done there are NO mines that will consistently produce anywhere near as much gold as 6,600 ounces per ton.

Seriously - if you want to find gold study geology, mineralogy and the many great geological surveys available for all areas of the U.S. I see so many here claiming they know where a gold mine can be found but the actual science and facts show there can be no gold there.

 

[Doc4261]

Obviously no one here is a miner. I have several ore specimens that would assay at 80 - 90% gold. Cherry picking visible gold ore and assaying that ore will always give you unrealistically high values. These type assays are only of value to scammers, frauds and thieves.

A real ore assay is done on dozens or hundreds of samples taken at random from the entire mine. When a proper assay is done there are NO mines that will consistently produce anywhere near as much gold as 6,600 ounces per ton.

Seriously - if you want to find gold study geology, mineralogy and the many great geological surveys available for all areas of the U.S. I see so many here claiming they know where a gold mine can be found but the actual science and facts show there can be no gold there.

Very true. But a person that follows geology knows there are very rich veins in the middle of caderas. Which leads to the belief and probability of a mine like the ldm, or Waggoner's lost ledge. So while much might be barren, there are them bonanza deposits there.

 

[Clay Diggins]

Very true. But a person that follows geology knows there are very rich veins in the middle of caderas. Which leads to the belief and probability of a mine like the ldm, or Waggoner's lost ledge. So while much might be barren, there are them bonanza deposits there.

You are mistaken about the middle of calderas. Most Calderas have little to no metal content - however one or more edges of the intrusion zone is quite often highly mineralized.

The Superstition caldera is a resurgent Caldera. It first collapsed into a medium sized Caldera then went through a long period of lava and ash eruptions which filled the Caldera. Those lava and ash flows contain no gold. The Caldera is bounded on the north by some barren plutons and on the west by the Valley of the Sun trench but the south eastern edge of the Superstition caldera is well known as one of the richest mineral deposits in the world. Kinda near where you are looking ... some of the richest mines in the world that have been in continuous operation since the 1870's and 1890's kind of mines. You probably drive by them while you are looking for mines.

Here's a map of the whole caldera area. It is an aerial view with roads and faults overlaid. You can see Apache Junction and Gold Camp on the west, Hwy 60 east west along the southern rim of the Caldera and a whole bunch of giant white holes dug in the mountains just to the north of the highway around Miami, Claypool and Globe. These rich pits and shafts cover more than 300 square miles of the Superstitions. There have been billions of dollars of copper, gold and brass monkeys mined from those pits and shafts. Even today mining, exploration and even new mines are ongoing in the area.

As a geologist ( I'm not one but I work with some of the best in the world ) If I were looking for Jacob's mine I'd look where the minerals are - no matter what the magic hat or map or rabbit's foot says.

 

[Doc4261]

You are mistaken about the middle of calderas. Most Calderas have little to no metal content - however one or more edges of the intrusion zone is quite often highly mineralized.

The Superstition caldera is a resurgent Caldera. It first collapsed into a medium sized Caldera then went through a long period of lava and ash eruptions which filled the Caldera. Those lava and ash flows contain no gold. The Caldera is bounded on the north by some barren plutons and on the west by the Valley of the Sun trench but the south eastern edge of the Superstition caldera is well known as one of the richest mineral deposits in the world. Kinda near where you are looking ... some of the richest mines in the world that have been in continuous operation since the 1870's and 1890's kind of mines. You probably drive by them while you are looking for mines.

Here's a map of the whole caldera area. It is an aerial view with roads and faults overlaid. You can see Apache Junction and Gold Camp on the west, Hwy 60 east west along the southern rim of the Caldera and a whole bunch of giant white holes dug in the mountains just to the north of the highway around Miami, Claypool and Globe. These rich pits and shafts cover more than 300 square miles of the Superstitions. There have been billions of dollars of copper, gold and brass monkeys mined from those pits and shafts. Even today mining, exploration and even new mines are ongoing in the area.

As a geologist ( I'm not one but I work with some of the best in the world ) If I were looking for Jacob's mine I'd look where the minerals are - no matter what the magic hat or map or rabbit's foot says.

View attachment 2064172

To say I'm mistaken is probably wrong word.
Here's a learning read for ya. It's the reason for el hoyo, if ya know where that's located. I'm talking low tonnage , high grade yummies. The shit dreams are made of.

 

[Doc4261]

You are mistaken about the middle of calderas. Most Calderas have little to no metal content - however one or more edges of the intrusion zone is quite often highly mineralized.

The Superstition caldera is a resurgent Caldera. It first collapsed into a medium sized Caldera then went through a long period of lava and ash eruptions which filled the Caldera. Those lava and ash flows contain no gold. The Caldera is bounded on the north by some barren plutons and on the west by the Valley of the Sun trench but the south eastern edge of the Superstition caldera is well known as one of the richest mineral deposits in the world. Kinda near where you are looking ... some of the richest mines in the world that have been in continuous operation since the 1870's and 1890's kind of mines. You probably drive by them while you are looking for mines.

Here's a map of the whole caldera area. It is an aerial view with roads and faults overlaid. You can see Apache Junction and Gold Camp on the west, Hwy 60 east west along the southern rim of the Caldera and a whole bunch of giant white holes dug in the mountains just to the north of the highway around Miami, Claypool and Globe. These rich pits and shafts cover more than 300 square miles of the Superstitions. There have been billions of dollars of copper, gold and brass monkeys mined from those pits and shafts. Even today mining, exploration and even new mines are ongoing in the area.

As a geologist ( I'm not one but I work with some of the best in the world ) If I were looking for Jacob's mine I'd look where the minerals are - no matter what the magic hat or map or rabbit's foot says.

View attachment 2064172

Most of us are very familiar where the calderas are. Here's a simpler view.

 

[Doc4261]

To say I'm mistaken is probably wrong word.
Here's a learning read for ya. It's the reason for el hoyo, if ya know where that's located. I'm talking low tonnage , high grade yummies. The shit dreams are made of.

When u find that place , u will see sinter terrace like this. The quartz banding.. 100 ft below or so the gold and silver would drop out. Why the old timers would dig 100 ft prospect holes. To get to the drop out layer in the deposit. these are from the Sups above looking down at el hoyo.

 

[Doc4261]

This is what the ldm deposit is. The side with the red x is all gone , worn away . The deposit is on the side of a mntn as it was pushed up with the resurgence of one of the the calderas. I've posted some of the mercury in the ore in the past in one of the viens. 4 of the said mines are depicted on the h/p map.

 

[Doc4261]

Most of us are very familiar where the calderas are. Here's a simpler view.

Think this maps shows best how the edge of one caldera can very well be in the middle of another. Let's think, clue that has been said about the ldm. It within a 5 mile diameter of weaver's needle. The map can show it a possibility of it being there. Never mind count ing the rings out 1,3,5 miles to where other deposits will be like those in the SE. Of the mntns. The mercury test also performed over the mntns show there is mineralization in confines of the wilderness.

 

[Clay Diggins]

 

[Juiced8]

Damn Clay, you know your stuff! Finally, someone!

 

[Singlestack Wonder]

Ditto on Clay Diggins!