Greetings Friends,
Good luck to you Blindbowman with getting your permits approved, perhaps you will have better luck with the Forest Service than many others have had - since most of the Superstitions are within the Superstition Mountains Wilderness where no mineral entry (mining claims) are allowed to be approved, unless they predate the designation of Wilderness. Not sure on the treasure trove permit.
Most accounts place Tayopa in Mexico well south of the Superstitions, as they said you could hear the church bells of Tayopa in Nacori on a clear day:
However we now know that there were three Tayopas over the years, so it is conceivable that there could be yet another site which was known by that title.
There are stone "houses" in the Superstitions, though exactly who (whom?) constructed them is open to conjecture; most archaeologists hold the opinion that the stone structures in caves and outside were built well before the arrival of the Spanish, around 1300 AD. They are all relatively small too, but of course it would be no surprise if Mexicans or Americans for that matter made use of them, especially with very hostile Indios haunting the area.
Siegfried Schlagrule wrote:
Here's where you have a problem. I don't dispute that you may have found a mine or even three mines.
I agree, and it is problematic - for after Jacob Waltz died, literally
hundreds of treasure hunters and prospectors have been poking around in the Superstitions, digging shafts, driving tunnels and blasting away, where they HOPED the lost Dutchman mine would be, often times in places where there was not only no gold, but no HOPE of any gold being found. The unfortunate aspect of this is, that it is difficult to establish the precise age of these old workings (many of which date to the late 1890s so look quite old now) and when a modern treasure hunter stumbles onto one of these old workings (which would not really be fair to call them "mines" as they never produced anything but heartbreak and tears) unless they are 'prospector enough' to look for gold ore and not pyrites, they are likely to conclude that they have found NOT some old and worthless workings of a Dutchman-hunter but the actual lost Dutchman mine! (Or the legendary Peralta mines, or Jesuit mines etc.) So just finding some old mines (there are a bunch of these old workings in Needle Canyon and other places in the Superstitions) which may not really BE mines is not the end of your troubles! The fact that an old shaft or tunnel lays un-concealed in any way is a good indicator that it is NOT the lost mine of Jacob Waltz, or any other "famous" lost mine.
Blindbowman wrote:
the bad thing is 99 people out of hunderd could walk within 10ft of these sites and not even see them unless they know what to look for , the indains did a good job of covering them over ...
Whether the mine (or mines) were hidden by Waltz or by Indios, the fact that
the mine was carefully concealed is the main reason why we do
not know the precise location today. People may have even walked OVER the mine of Waltz, without realizing it! Tayopa was a different story, even the village where the miners (and their families) lived was burned by Apaches (if memory serves, may be wrong - perhaps it was Seris?) and over time the brush and trees grew and concealed the location very well. However though there have been many who have searched for Tayopa (and some continue to this day even though it is no longer "lost") there were never the sheer number of searchers as have been involved in searching for the Dutchman's mine over such a (relatively) restricted area. This is why we are taken aback when someone states that they have found the Dutchman or Tayopa for that matter, when we know that special efforts were made to conceal the mines; unless the treasure hunter is willing to do some serious digging and did it, it is unlikely they have found one of the famous lost mines but rather some old workings that produced nothing. You must be aware of the
many folks who have made some
very extravagant claims about having found the Dutchman, (Pegleg's gold, the Breyfogle, and many others) but fail to provide the proof, so we are left wondering about their veracity. They could be telling the truth as they believe it to be, but are actually mistaken about what they have found.
i will not stop even if it cost me my life
I hope it will not come to that, NO treasure is worth dying for - heck how could you spend the profits if you are dead!
However to die while doing something one enjoys is not the worst way to go either, like our friend James Archer (who taught us how to prospect and mine diamonds at the Crater of Diamonds park in Arkansas) who passed away while digging diamonds, which was his favorite thing to do.
Good luck and good hunting to you.
If your find turns out to be what you say it is, I hope you will post some photos etc and not rub it in TOO much!
Oroblanco
