Hola amigos,
Apologies again for not keeping up with class. I hope this won't count in the report cards.
On the ironwood logs put in by Waltz to seal his mine shaft, yes it has been some 120 years, but I would not exactly start off looking in the expectation that they MUST be rotted away by now. Desert Ironwood is remarkably resistant to decay - more so than cedar, apparently, in a dry climate. Tools and relics made of this same ironwood have been dug up in Los Muertos site near Tempe AZ, that date to over 700 years ago, and were intact! These had absolutely zero protection from the elements, just buried in the earth much as Waltz did with his logs. So don't hold your breath counting on those logs caving in.
We can go round and round on ore and whether a match on it would be possible or mean anything, however it is the best possible method we have to certify or verify that a gold ore is in fact a match for that used in the famous matchbox and jewelry. If we resort to matching up clues, well then the mine is not lost, it has been found - over and over and over, without anyone bringing out a single speck of gold. Then back in the early days of Dutch hunting, before even Sims Ely's book came out, the mine was found repeatedly, and those finders brought out gold to prove it, though that gold did NOT match the gold of the matchbox etc and were not the mine of Waltz. Gold ores are indeed something like fingerprints in that no two sources will match, and you do not have to take my word on it, look it up yourself.
It is not my purpose to convince you to believe in the Lost Dutchman mine - and if your purpose is to discourage others from searching for it, well good for you; perhaps fewer people will end up dead or injured or lost in the Superstition mountains. If we do not have some kind of scientific standard to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, then we must start accepting the many hundreds of claims that people have made, that they found the mine and there was no gold, no quartz etc. All of those old early Dutch hunter prospect holes that dot the Superstitions will fit the bill for such a claim and there are dozens of them, and most of them are located where some of those clues will fit. So whether you wish to use a gold ore comparison as a way to verify the mine as found or not is up to you.
Stick to the earliest sources you can, and avoid the later ones when possible. Too many errors and even deliberate falsehoods have gotten into the mix at this point to trust most modern sources overmuch.
One last thing, but Mr Roberts stated that he would place Waltz's gold shipments, (if any) between the years of 1870 and 1885; I am not sure what he is basing this estimation on, but I do not think we can narrow it to those dates without evidence to do so; Waltz had interests in gold mines even before 1868, and may have shipped gold from one or more of them, and we do not know the exact dates he found or worked his mine in the Superstitions. For that matter, he may have shipped ore from his home well after having mined it, as he did keep stashes of hand picked rich ore hidden on his farm, and was seen selling a burro load of ore in Florence. He may have shipped ore at any time from arriving in Arizona to his death.
Now if anyone wishes to call me a dammed liar, I will do my utmost to live up to that accusation!
Oroblanco
, gentlemen 
